Audi wins Le Mans 24 Hours - again

More thrills, spills and Le Mans race action photos at www.motoring.com.au

Firm favourite Audi took home the silverware from the world's biggest sportscar race yet again over the weekend.

While Toyota showed glimpses of brilliance with its hybrid racecars, the German luxury brand claimed its 11th Le Mans victory by taking out all three podium positions in the 80th running of the French endurance classic, in which it now takes one step closer to Porsche’s winning record of 16 wins.

Marcel Fassler (Switzerland), Andre Lotterer (Germany) and Benoit Treluyer (France) drove their Audi R18 e-tron quattro 'hybrid' to victory, powered by an electrically assisted 3.7-litre V6 turbo-diesel engine, and were followed in second place by Audi’s other diesel-hybrid racecar.

Third place went to the 'regular' Audi R18 diesel racer, with fourth going to the Lola B12/60-Toyota driven by Nick Heidfeld, Nicolas Prost and Neel Jani. Peugeot withdrew from this year’s race.

It was a win for hybrid technology in endurance racing's most famous race and the 2012 event offered a little more spice than previous years, not least due to the return of Toyota after a 13-year hiatus with a pair of petrol-electric hybrid racecars, and the entry of Nissan's radical aerospace-inspired Deltawing racecar.

The Le Mans 24 Hour has been running since the 1920s and the key to winning the race is the reliability of the cars rather than just the skill of the drivers, of which there are normally three per car.

One of the most gruelling endurance races on the planet is hosted at France’s circuit de la Sarthe track, a 13.6km long race track with 38 turns and a massive straight several kilometres long.

The race got off to a good start with Audi's quartet of R18 diesel racers qualifying in first, second, fourth and sixth outright, while Toyota's hybrid TS030 racecars showed a good turn of speed for their first Le Mans outing, qualifying in third and fifth in the top-shelf LMP1 category.

When the race finally started, to the roar of hundreds of thousands of partially drunk spectators, Audi consolidated its place at the front of the pack for the first couple of hours of racing. But by the third hour the Toyotas had found their feet and were gaining on the Audis, providing spectators with a brilliant battle for the lead.

In the space of a minute, however, Toyota fans had run the emotional gamut, by experiencing unadulterated elation as Nicolas Lapierre's Toyota took the lead from Benoit Treluyer's Audi, then horror as the second Toyota car was clipped by a slower moving Ferrari 458 Italia at the end of the 335km/h Mulsanne straight, sending the car flipping through the air and out of the race in spectacular fashion.

Driver Anthony Davidson broke two vertebrae in his back in the horrific crash, and the Toyota driver was taken to hospital. As the saying goes, that's motor racing...

When the race resumed after 20 minutes of safety car intervention, Audi once again claimed the lead and the #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro car essentially led from start to finish.

The second Toyota TS030 ended up clipping Nissan's Deltawing prototype racear, ending both cars’ chances of completing the race during the 11th hour of racing. It was a frustrating race for both Japanese teams, but there were certainly glimpses of brilliance along the way.

Two Australian drivers competed in 2012 - David Brabham in his Honda Performance Development ARX-03a and John Martin, who drove an ORECA-Nissan.

Former winner Brabham, who drove a Peugeot to victory in 2009, put in a stellar drive to take his Honda to sixth place outright, after qualifying 11th. Meanwhile, 26-year-old Martin finished 13th after qualifying 14th.

The off-track action was almost as eye-opening at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. Once again, one of the world's greatest motor races occurred while hundreds of thousands of revellers had a giant party in the background.

Indeed, some argue that the Le Mans 24 Hours is simply a gargantuan party - there just happens to be a race going on in the background.

Le Mans is unlike any other car race. The atmosphere is jovial, with copious amounts of alcohol imbibed, flares being regularly set off and fireworks dotting the sky almost constantly. For the tens of thousands of spectators who camp - and even those who don’t – it’s very difficult to sleep with the ear-bleedingly loud cars in the background.

Watching motor racing at night is also a unique experience – not least for the drivers - and one of the most memorable periods of the race is watching the cars’ extensive lights arrays switch on during sunset (at 10:20pm!) before dominating the view as darkness descends.

More thrills, spills and Le Mans race action photos at www.motoring.com.au

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