100 Le Mans Moments From The DSC Era (31

Oct 21, 2023

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2 June 2023, 5:35 PM

For 10 days in the build-up to the 2023 running of the Le Mans 24 Hours, DSC is reflecting on some of the best, worst and wacky moments from its time covering the event since the turn of the century.

Today is the fourth day of DSC's 100 moments feature, the previous parts can be found below:PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3

31. Peugeot's Meltdown (2010)

Peugeot came into the 2010 Le Mans 24 Hours as red-hot favourites. Three factory cars, plus a fourth run by the crack ORECA team, and a form book that had seen race after race against Audi taken by the French team with its seemingly bulletproof, and super-fast, 908 HDI FAPs.

Peugeot though had an alarming habit of never being satisfied with the advantage it had and after its final pre-Le Mans test made changes to all of its cars, replacing the connecting rods with titanium parts.

It was to be a terrible mistake.

One car retired early on with suspension failure but there were still three bullets in the gun, and they were quick.

Early on Sunday morning though it all began to go wrong, connecting rod failures putting the remaining three cars out with smoke and flame from the exhausts signalling the team's doom.

The final retirement was ORECA's chassis and the emotion on the face of Hugues de Chaunac was there for all to see. It was Peugeot's race to lose – and it lost it in the silliest of fashions, adding uncertainty to a solid, stable and race-winning package within days of its biggest racing test.

32. JCDC almost wins! (2017)

After the dramas of the finish in 2016, surely 2017 would be an altogether quieter affair?

Err no! Successive issues for the LMP1 Hybrids left a single Porsche, and a single Toyota with work to do against a very deep, and very quick LMP2 field.

The flat fact is that we came within an hour of an LMP2 car winning overall, Porsche would rescue their Le Mans with a final trouble-free blast to the finish but hats off to the LMP2 squads, eight of which made the final overall top 10!

That would include both Jackie Chan DC Racing cars on the overall podium (after the disqualification of the initially third overall #13 Rebellion car) with Alpine completing the class podium fourth overall.

Ho Pin Ting, Ollie Jarvis and Thomas Laurent then currently hold the record of the highest finishing LMP2 car in Le Mans history!

33. "Frank Biela, what went wrong?" (2003)

2003 was Bentley's year, but there were other very high quality efforts in the race, not least of which was the Audi Sport UK effort fielded by Arena Motorsport for Frank Biela, Perry McCarthy and Mika Salo.

The #10 car qualified third and was a very well proven package with a trio of wins already in the bag.

It seemed that with luck it could be in the mix to spoil Bentley's party – That was until the end of the first hour of racing when Biela, running well up the order, was called to the pits for fuel but found his path in blocked as he was lapping a Panoz!

The lap that followed must have been agonising for the by then three time Le Mans winner, knowing that he was doomed to run out of fuel, the car did so out of Mulsanne Corner with a vain attempt to get the car back on the starter motor falling well short. The car was out!

The drama in the garage was captured beautifully in this behind the scenes documentary:

Worthy of note was a later cameo for Radio Le Mans. Audi had promised the team that Frank Biela would pop in to update fans on just what had happened.

In the commentary booth was veteran presenter Neville Hay and soon enough the studio door opened and a guest came in and sat down: "Frank Biela, What went wrong?" was the opening question, but the answer never came, because the studio guest wasn't Biela, but a senior Michelin official!

34. Porsche's surprise GTE Pro liveries (2018)

Porsche's recent factory liveries have been somewhat corporate…

The factory GTE and GTLM teams though have had significant impact by reviving some ‘old masters’ – Likely never more so than in 2018 when Porsche sprung a triple surprise at Le Mans unveiling not only two tribute liveries, but an entirely heritage-themed double garage too!

They did so with no fanfare and with the cars having arrived in standard WEC livery too!

The pair went on to score 1-2 in the race and to create a real buzz behind the merchandise for the cars – the ‘Pink Pig’ shirts sold out almost immediately and now they, and pretty much everything else around the effort, command healthy premiums in the collectors market.

35. Enge's qualifying magic (2004)

Tomas Enge was something of a legend at Le Mans, the Czech star scoring four consecutive pole positions in GTS and GT1, the first two in the Care racing Ferrari 550s, the last pair in Aston DBR9s, all run by Prodrive.

The 2004 pole position though is notable for a whole range of reasons, not least that the car, not on Pole at that point, ended the first Thursday session in the wall in the Porsche Curves and missing a rear corner after Enge had crashed on a hot lap.

Tomas told the tale of what happened next:

"It was a big off and I rattled myself a bit physically and I guess mentally too. The boys got the car back and went to work. I must have said something along the lines of "I’m not going out again" and George (Howard Chappell, team principal), asked me to come for a walk with him in the paddock as the team tried to get the car back in one piece.

"I remember the conversation very well. He said: "Tomas you are a professional factory driver and if I tell you to go back out you’ll do what you are bloody well told!

"He was right of course. I needed the jolt.

"The boys did an amazing job and we got back on track at the end of the final session. George said to me as I got into the car something along the lines of: "Find out how the car is and if it's ‘OK’ we’ll clear you for a qually lap, if not we’ll box."

"That was fine, but as it turned out two things at least were wrong, the car felt awful, something was really not ‘OK’ with it, not really a surprise bearing in mind I had ripped a corner out of it a couple of hours earlier.

"I radioed in and told the team and was amazed to get the call from George: "OK Tomas, go for a time!!"

"It was only later that I found out that the other thing that was wrong was a pretty major radio fault – whatever they heard they thought I was saying the car was ‘OK’.

"I did what I was told and went for it, it was a pretty good lap but whatever was wrong at the back, bit as I came into the Ford Chicane. The car went over the gravel full-speed and I finished the lap – Pole! Apparently Race Control didn't notice so it stood. I know a lot of the guys think I did it on purpose – I really, REALLY didn't!"

(Pic above – Tomas is congratulated by Johnny Herbert as Fiona Miler looks on.)

36. Kobayashi's lap record (2017)

When DSC ran a Le Mans quiz for drivers at scrutineering in 2019, one of the questions was ‘How fast was Kamui Kobayashi's record-setting lap?’ The fact that most drivers guessed times seconds slower than the actual 3:14.791 tells you all you need to know about how fast he and his TS050 lapped the circuit.



Quite frankly, Kobayashi's lap in Qualifying ahead of the 2017 running was one of the all-time single lap performances in the history of the race. The onboard was staggering, showcasing the LMP1 Hybrid era at its best.

Now, Toyota didn't go on to win the race that year, but Kobayashi's tour, the fastest since the chicanes were introduced, will live long in the memory. And, with the new breed of Hypercars significantly slower, it's unlikely to be challenged for a long time, if ever.

37. Bourdais waits on the line (2007)

The Peugeot LMP1 programme would become a steamroller in its later years, but for its debut in 2007 the team arrived at Le Mans expecting to fail.

As you can hear in the Marshall Pruett podcasts (above) nobody, including the drivers, remotely expected to finish, and they nearly didn't. In fact, the team decided that its ailing (and polesetting) #8 908 HDI FAP was unlikely to finish another flying lap and, after a very late pitstop for Sebastien Bourdais, the team instructed the Frenchman to complete a slow lap and wait for the leader to pass and finish the race.

Bourdais did just that, cruised across the line to finish second, still a lap ahead of the third placed Pescarolo.

The rulemakers were not amused and by the following year a minimum lap time for the final lap was introduced, it was that relatively new rule that robbed Kazuki Nakajima of a second place finish in the extraordinary 2016 race after the last minute issues for his #5 Toyota, the car unable to complete the final lap inside the now mandatory 6 minutes!

38. Rollcentre Racing leads the race (2005)

Rollcentre Racing had been British GT Championship frontrunners for a while but when the call came from Malcolm Cracknell to say "You’re never going to believe what Shorty's gone and done!"

It did take a while to get our heads around the fact that a team we were used to seeing running – and sometimes winning – in TVRs and Moslers were about to embark on a LMP900 effort with Dallaras!

And boy did they do it well!

Sebring in 2004 saw the team splitting the Audis before a problem in a pitstop dropped them back to fifth.

Le Mans saw the car running strongly in 4th until Martin Short was hit by Seb Bourdais in the factory Pescarolo and tipped into the gravel, that likely led to the subsequent suspension breakage that saw the car in the wall and out.

In 2005 astoundingly, the car led Le Mans overall for half a lap. Martin Short was at the wheel of the car he shared with Vanina Ickx and Joao Barbosa and he didn't know! "I could see helicopters overhead and presumed that the leaders were nearby!" The run at that point had been very strong and even after being passed for the lead on the same lap the Rollcentre car ran a strong second before a power steering rack seal failed and dropped the car down the order.

39. Chris Hoy makes the finish (2016)

Almost lost in the furore around the dramas for the Toyota at the head of the race was the fact that British Olympic hero Sir Chris Hoy made it to the finish in his Algarve Pro Racing Ligier.

The cycling legend had been sponsored through a rapid fire progression in the sport that included taking the very first ELMS LMP3 title in 2015 alongside Charlie Robertson and, shadowed by a film crew, raced at Le Mans the following year.

The full film of his exploits is still out there – and is well worth a watch. 12th in class and 17th overall is the official result; it was a good old-fashioned feel-good story!

40. The MG Lola breakfast (2002)

MG Lola's EX257 was the proud banner carrier for the lightweight LMP675 class, with the very pretty little cars proving to be blindingly fast but achingly unreliable in their factory outings at Le Mans and elsewhere.

In DSC's first year, 2002, the cars ran as MG factory entries, with high hopes that they could bloody the nose of the established LMP900 players. In qualifying, the two factory cars posted lap times that put them amongst the big dogs. Reliability though, would prove to be a real Achilles heel for the still very new cars.

It soon became clear that the lightweight nature of the finished product came at the expense of resilience in several key components.

Both cars were out of the race just after half distance, in a year that saw DSC funding its Le Mans efforts in part with some photographic and PR support for the team. Into the mix, came much-needed hospitality (free food!) for the DSC squad, and on Sunday morning, with both cars retired, DSC's then-deputy editor and photo editor made their way to the hospitality building just before the Ford Chicane.

They were greeted by a scene of devastation. Driver Julian Bailey was asleep face down on the bar, whilst co-driver Mark Blundell was ‘singing’ karaoke with two hostesses on the event stage, as many other team members sat bleary-eyed, staring into the middle distance. To this day, that scene is the best encapsulation of the Le Mans experience in a single tableau moment.

Tagged with: Graham Goodwin, Stephen Kilbey

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