24 Hours of Le Mans

Well, looks like and Audi is gonna win.

Apparently Ferraris and Prototypes don't get along all that well.  Last year, both McNish and Rockenfeller in Audis had pretty spectacular crashes with Ferraris.  This year Davidson in one of the Toyotas had a Ferrari turn in on it.  So, about 5 hours in, one of the Toyotas out of the race.

That led to an hour of full-course caution.  At the end of which Nakajima in the other Toyota basically hip-checked the Deltawing into a wall, putting it into the wall and out of the race.  The Toyota then spent a fair amount of time in the pits, ran a few laps, then spent a bunch more time in the pits, ran a few laps, etc.  And then finally retired.

So, of the cars discussed in my last post, only the 4 Audis are still in it.  Now the only question is can the #3 Audi make up a few laps on the Rebellion Racing car, and make it an Audi 1-2-3-4.  The #3 went into a wall very early in the race, and went about 7 laps down.  Which is pretty damned impressive since it went about a lap down limping around the course, after tearing a bunch of body work off the front, and driving 5 or so miles with the right front suspension totally destroyed, and only hanging on by a thread.  So, basically, since a lap is about 3 and a half minutes, that means the Audi team replaced the entire front end of a car in about 20 minutes.  Pretty damned impressive.

Last year's winner, the #1 Audi in the lead, and only really relinquishing it every so often on the pit-stop rotations.

Now, I guess the most interesting battle is going to be whether it is the #1 or #2 Audi that wins.  #1 being the defending champions, #2 being the team with a combined 14 Le Mans wins among the 3 drivers.

8 and a half hours to go.  Even though it actually finished about an hour ago.