MOTORSPORT: Webber loses F1 lead, Audi 1-2-3 at Le Mans

But it was a disappointing Le Mans for David Brabham, racing an Acura for his Honda-associated American team Highcroft this year after last year's glory with Peugeot, while Alan Simonsen shared a Ferrari that was 12th outright and second in the GT2 class.

Webber finished fifth in Montreal this morning after he qualified second to Hamilton.

He started seventh when dropped five places because of a gearbox change, but led 22 laps in what became a very tactical race because of the differing tyre strategies.

The Australian is now third in the championship, but just six points behind new leader Hamilton -- the fifth driver to head the standings this season -- and three behind Button.

Webber's Red Bull Racing teammate Sebastian Vettel finished one place ahead of him in Montreal, while Fernando Alonso was on the podium with third place for Ferrari and feeling a little unlucky not to win.

Alonso is fourth in the championship, nine points behind Webber, while Vettel is fifth and 13 points behind his teammate.

McLaren has skipped 22 points clear of Red Bull in the constructors' championship with 11 GPs remaining -- the next at Valencia, Spain, in two weeks.

The weekend's telecasts highlighted -- to this author at least -- that, for the fans, F1 is primarily about drivers, while Le Mans -- the French sports car classic -- is about manufacturers.

F1's return to Canada -- and North America, after a year's absence -- filled the street circuit in Montreal with about 100,000 fans, while at Le Mans the attendance was 238,850.

The F1 title race has narrowed to five drivers now -- and it is them rather than their machinery that is the overwhelming focus of attention.

At Le Mans it was all about Audi unexpectedly notching up its ninth win with its new R15, equaling Ferrari's tally and second only to Porsche. It was Audi's fourth 1-2-3 after Peugeot filled the first four places on the grid and led the early hours.

The German and French car makers both field diesel machines in the LMP1 category, many other manufacturers are represented in various forms and the various classes, and the sports car enduro has much greater relevance to the motor industry than F1.

All three Peugeot 908s retired with mechanical failures and the non-works Oreca sister car, the first petrol finisher, was 25 laps behind the third Audi.

While GPs are about 300km and a maximum of two hours, the victorious Audi at Le Mans completed 397 laps of the long La Sarthe circuit for a record distance in the event of 5410km -- about a third the distance from Sydney or Melbourne to Paris!

The second Audi was a lap behind and third three laps down.

The manufacturers that have quit F1 in recent times are likely to take a greater interest in the sports car event in future.

Honda already participates via its HPD arm (Honda Performance Development) in LMP2, and is set to supply a new twin-turbo V6 that could be an outright contender next year.

BMW is concentrating on the production-based category after bailing out of its Sauber F1 marriage.

And Toyota is eyeing a return to major sports car competition next year after quitting F1 without a victory.

In F1 neither McLaren-Mercedes nor Renault-powered Red Bull Racing is the primary representative of the German and French car companies with which they are associated, yet they easily head the official factory teams.
 

Ambrose still has only one top 10 finish this season from 15 rounds, although next weekend's race on the Sonoma road course in California should suit him better.

"We had a spin early on which really hurt the handling of the car and we spent the rest of the day just kind of trying to get it back, but it's a strong day for us," Ambrose said of the Michigan round.

"We've had a really tough few weeks and it just feels good to finish. It was a good strong day for us."

Denny Hamlin, who had knee surgery early in the season, scored his fifth win in the past 10 rounds in a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, ahead of Kasey Kahne in a Ford and Kurt Busch in a Dodge.

Then came five Chevrolets -- driven by Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Junior and Jeff Burton.

Ambrose remains 30th in the championship on 1314 points -- 855 points behind Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet), who is 22 points ahead of Kyle Busch (Toyota) and 47 up on Hamlin.

But in the end it was another McLaren quinella -- a repeat of the Turkish result two weeks earlier, with Lewis Hamilton again leading home Jenson Button. And they leapfrogged Webber at the top of the F1 drivers' championship standings.

"In terms of pure pace, I still think the Red Bull car is still a little bit faster than ours but, as a whole, I think our package is now stronger," he said.

For Hamilton it was a triumphant return to the circuit where he won his first GP three years ago in his debut season -- and he almost collided with his great foe and teammate from that 2007 season, Alonso, as they sped out of the pit lane together. Alonso took consolation from his Ferrari finishing within 10 seconds of the McLarens after the gap had been about 50 seconds in Turkey.

"It was good day for us, the car was very competitive," he said. "We are moving in the right direction and I think we are back in the fight. This was a race decided by small details."

The Red Bulls, which qualified and started on the harder of the two tyre compounds available to teams, got caught in heavy traffic when they made their stops to change rubber later than those that began on the softer compound and pitted earlier.

From his seventh place on the grid Webber worked his way to the front as the pitstops shuffled the order and he led for 22 laps. But his advantage vanished as his tyres deteriorated and he had to make his stop for fresh rubber.

"I wanted to get some champagne today but in the end it didn't happen," he said. "Tyres played a huge role in the race today and, in the end, we did the best we could do. I had a good few laps and I managed to get into a few people. That took its toll a little bit on the first set of tyres so I was in trouble a little bit earlier than I would have liked. In the end we were closer than we thought."

Vettel had his turn in the lead earlier as Hamilton pitted but later the German struggled with a gearbox leaking oil and backed off in the final laps to ensure he got to the finish.

Despite still sitting fifth in the championship pre-season title favourite Vettel said: "There is no reason to panic from our side."

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said that fourth and fifth represented "valuable points at a track that we always knew was going to favour the McLarens".

"We were actually more competitive than we expected to be, which I think is a very encouraging sign," he said.

Michael Schumacher had the worst race of his comeback season, getting very ragged in the Mercedes at times, and wound up out of the points in 11th at a venue where he had previously won a record seven times. His teammate Nico Rosberg finished a creditable sixth, ahead of Robert Kubica, Sebastien Buemi, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Adrian Sutil.

In the first race since the renewal of his Ferrari contract for another two years Felipe Massa had to pit at the end of the first lap for a new front wing and then needed another new nose after hitting the back of Schumacher's Mercedes when his former teammate squeezed him against a safety wall.

Earlier Kubica had been almost driven off the track by Schumacher. While Schumacher escaped sanction, Kubica was reprimanded after he cut around Sutil before darting into the pits.

The Williams cars of Nico Hulkenberg and Rubens Barrichello finished only 13th and 14th and the team has slumped to eighth in the constructors' championship -- behind Toro Rosso, the former Minardi.

However, Reuters reported that Barrichello achieved a milestone as the first F1 driver to complete 15,000 racing laps.

F1 drivers' world championship standings after 8 of 19 rounds - Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 109 points, Jenson Button (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 106, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 103, Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 94, Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 90, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 74, Robert Kubica (Poland, Renault) 73, Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 67, Michael Schumacher (Germany, Mercedes) 34, Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 23, Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy, Force India-Mercedes) 12, Rubens Barrichello (Brazil, Williams-Cosworth) 7, Vitaly Petrov (Russia, Renault) 6, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 5, Jaime Alguersuari (Spain, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 3, Kamui Kobayashi (Japan, Sauber-Ferrari) 1, Nico Huelkenberg (Germany, Williams-Cosworth) 1.

F1 constructors' championship standings - McLaren-Mercedes 215 points, Red Bull-Renault 193, Ferrari 161, Mercedes 108, Renault 79, Force India-Mercedes 35, Toro Rosso-Ferrari 8, Williams-Cosworth 8, Sauber-Ferrari 1.

It was classified 25th, but 101 laps down on the outright winner and 71 laps behind the LMP1 winner, another Acura HPD ARX 01c entered by Britain's Strakka team that finished fifth outright -- the highest ever by an LMP1 car in the famous 24-Hour.

"Obviously everyone is disappointed in the end result but we can't put our heads down too much because this is the first time the team has been to Le Mans," said Brabham, who was part of the Peugeot team that broke Audi's domination of the race last year.

"It is a very tough event but Highcroft Racing showed how serious it is. We ran in the top two (in LMP2) throughout the entire race and it was a very good effort overall. Unfortunately, we had a problem towards the end but the team has learned a hell of a lot.

"The positive aspect from everything is the team will look at the overall experience -- preparing for the race, getting here and what happened during the race. Highcroft Racing is not frightened to look at how they can improve.

"You can't gain experience at Le Mans without coming here, so I think the team will learn a lot from this week. The entire team and my teammates (Marino Franchitti and Marco Werner) did an exceptional job. Marino and Marco were outstanding through the night and we were getting set to really start putting the pressure on before the problem struck."

Nigel Mansell, the 1992 F1 world champion making his Le Mans debut at 56, crashed the Ginetta Zytek he was to share with his sons Greg and Leo, coming on to the famous 6.2 km Mulsanne straight only 20 minutes into the race.

Mansell spun, hit the safety rail and was taken to hospital for checks but escaped without serious injury.

Allan Simonsen, the Danish driver well known and experienced in Australia, fell just short of GT2 class victory in a Ferrari F430 that finished 12th outright.

The victorious LMP1 Audi was driven by Germans Timo Bernhard and Mike Rockenfeller and Frenchman Romain Dumas.

"We always concentrated on the race. Today proved that our car was bullet-proof for the race. All three cars had no problems and we could run a consistent pace, on the limit," Bernhard said.

The R15 of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Dindo Capello was easily the fastest of the Audis, but its chances were blown when Kristensen was pushed off the road inadvertently in a clash with the GT2 BMW of multiple world touring car champion Andy Priaulx. The Audi trio recovered to claim third and give the German manufacturer its clean sweep of the podium.

GT2 honours were taken by a Porsche 997 GT3 RSR after the leading Chevrolet Corvette crashed in the last third of the race in an incident with an LMP1 Peugeot.

The Porsche was classified 11th outright -- two laps ahead of Simonsen's Ferrari.

The Le Mans organisers announced during the weekend it would be the last year of the GT1 class -- and the GT1 winner, a Saleen S7R, was beaten by the top two GT2 cars and classified 13th outright.

2. Audi R15 TDI (Andre Lotterer, Germany; Marcel Faessler, Switzerland; Benoit Treluyer, France; entrant Audi Sport Team Joest) 396 laps

3. Audi R15 TDI (Tom Kristensen, Denmark; Dindo Capello, Italy; Allan McNish, Great Britain; entrant Audi Sport Team Joest) 394 laps

4. Oreca 01 AIM (Soheil Ayari, France ; Didier Andre, France ; Andrew Meyrick, England; entrant AIM Team Oreca) 369 laps

5. HPD ARX-01c (Nick Leventis, GB; Danny Watts, GB; Jonny Kane, GB; entrant Strakka Racing) 367 laps

6. Lola-Aston Martin LMP1 (Harold Primat, Switzerland; Stefan Muecke, Germany; Adrian Fernandez, Mexico; entrant Aston Martin Racing) 365 laps

7. Pescarolo LMP2 Judd (Matthieu Lahaye, France ; Guillaume Moreau, France ; Jan Charouz, Czech Republic; entrant Oak Racing) 361 laps

8. Lola B08/80 HPD (Mike Newton, GB); Thomas Erdos, Brazil; Andy Wallace, GB; entrant Ray Mallock) 358 laps

9. Pescarolo LMP2 Judd (Jacques Nicolet, France ; Richard Hein, Monaco ; Jean-Francois Yvon, France; entrant Oak Racing) 341 laps

10. Ginetta Zytek GZ09S/2 (Karim Ojjeh, Saudi Arabia; Tim Greaves, GB; Gary  Chalandon, France; entrant Team Bruichladdich) 341 laps

Autosport.com's race report, with full results, is here, the official Audi story of the event here and comments from the Audi drivers here.

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