Home » Blog » News » Le Mans 24 Hours Race Report - Podium Finish for McNish

14 June 2009 | Posted in News

Allan McNish missed out on claiming his Le Mans 24 Hour “hat trick” and a second consecutive win when the Briton steered his new diesel engined Audi home third in this year’s race today (14 Jun). The 39-year-old Scotsman driving a “factory” entered Audi R15 TDI had been aiming to repeat last year’s victory along with co-drivers Dindo Capello (44, Italy) and Tom Kristensen (41, Denmark) in the twice-around-the-clock race won by the Peugeot of Marc Gene (Sp)/Alexander Wurz (A)/David Brabham (Aus). “Overall we can be relatively happy with third place,” reflected Dumfries-born McNish who has now finished on the top-three podium at Le Mans six times from 10 starts. “Obviously it was our aim to win and retain Audi’s fantastic Le Mans record, it had to stop at some point as all good things do. The competition from Peugeot had been fierce for the past two years but we came out on top. This time they got the better of us but everyone at Audi Sport and Team Joest,as well as us drivers, will go home, regroup and rebuild and come back next year even stronger.” McNish started from second on the 55-car grid – only the R15 TDI’s second race after the same driver “combo” scored a début race win for the car in the Sebring 12 Hours (21 Mar) – but slipped to fourth before briefly leading in the opening hour and thereafter remained in the top-three for the duration. The Briton drove for a total time of 8hrs 16mins on three separate occasions – setting his car’s fastest lap (3min 26.632, an average speed of 147.54mph) at 11am today – 30mins before losing 13mins with suspension and electronics issues but still retaining third place in front of a crowd of over 250,000. Additionally the intercoolers mounted in the sidepods of the R15 TDI became so dirty and clogged with debris that they had to be cleaned repeatedly. Due to the increasing intercooler temperature the engine power had to be reduced occasionally. The 77th Le Mans 24 Hours included two other “factory” Audi R15 TDI sports-prototypes aiming to score Audi’s ninth victory from just 11 starts. Joining McNish/Capello/Kristensen in driving the latest V10 diesel-engined Audi R15 TDI – which achieved Audi’s 20th Le Mans top-three podium – were Lucas Luhr (29/Germany), Mike Rockenfeller (25/Germany) and Marco Werner (43/Germany) plus Timo Bernhard (28/Germany), Romain Dumas (31/France) and Alexandre Prémat (27/France). The Luhr/Rockenfeller/Werner R15 TDI started from sixth position but crashed out of third place after 6½hrs. Meanwhile the Bernhard/Dumas/Prémat R15 TDI lined-up seventh at the start but lost over two hours having an injection pump system replaced after five hours when ninth. The trio recovered from 47th to claim 17th.

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