2011 LE MANS 24 HOURS
Intercontinental Le Mans Cup
Audi had lucked into a ninth Le Mans victory in 2010 courtesy of a series of Peugeot engine failures. Twelve months later it made it a nice round 10 entirely on merit in the second closest competitive finish in the history of the French enduro.
There was little to choose between the new Audi R18 TDI and the second LMP1 machine to carry the Peugeot 908 type number. But the German car looked after its tyres better and had the slightest of edges on outright performance, though the French machines were crucially going a lap further on a tank of diesel.
There was another problem for Audi: two of its three cars had crashed out before the race was even eight hours old. Everything rested on the shoulders of Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler aboard the marque’s surviving entry. The pressure was on for more than two thirds of the race.
“It was flat-out all the way,” recalls Lotterer. “I think we changed the lead more than 40 times [there were 41 changes to be exact]. It was a thriller.”
Audi ended up prevailing over the Peugeot driven by Sebastien Bourdais, Simon Pagenaud and Pedro Lamy by just 13.9s. But it could so easily have gone the other way.
Lotterer sustained a puncture soon after his penultimate pitstop. Had the Joest Audi team brought him in straight away, the race would have been lost. “We noticed a slow puncture and coming in that lap would have meant an extra stop and losing the race,” recalls Joest boss Ralf Juttner. “Normally when you have a puncture, you tell your driver to bring it carefully back to the pits, but we had to leave Andre out there and tell him to go quickly. We didn’t have a choice.
“We had a very good TPMS [tyre pressure management system] by that stage and we saw the pressure going down and then suddenly stabilise. I think he did another two laps so that we could bring the car into the pit window. That meant we didn’t have to do an extra stop.”
Lotterer came into the pits on the same lap that the chasing Pagenaud was due in. Joest opted to change all four tyres and still got its man out ahead by six seconds. The Peugeot didn’t get new Michelins, so on fresh rubber Lotterer had the weapons to make sure of another victory for Audi.