The 24 Hours of Le Mans

They don’t call the 24 Hours of Le Mans the Great Race for nothing.   A few hours away from the end of one of the most exciting races I’ve ever seen and I’m still decompressing.  After 24 hours of intense racing the top two cars were separated by only 13 seconds. There were many highs but it was a race defined by it’s lows.  Audi fielded a three car effort, and two of those cars held driver pairings that have won the race.  Yet those two cars experienced two of the most horrific crashes I’ve ever seen in motorsport.  The Mike Rockenfeller crash was a gut-wrenching scene and the first time in all the years that I’ve been watching racing where I was sure that the driver hadn’t survived the experience.  There were virtually no recognizable parts of the race car on the track and the monocoque was nowhere in sight.  Amazingly Rockenfeller not only survived the shunt but did so with only a few cuts and bruises.  It shows just how far safety has come in the sport and is a sobering reminder of the dangers of racing at such a high level.

The lone remaining Audi, nicknamed Red Sonja for it’s paint scheme as well as the sister of it’s race engineer, went on to win against the might of Peugeot (still fielding 3 cars).  The drivers, while not inexperienced in any way, were almost an afterthought until the entire weight of Audi’s effort was put on their slim shoulders.  The fact that they managed to win illustrates the dominance of Audi’s 13 years in the sport.  It’s a dominance that Audi has been quick to capitalize upon.  Audi proved it’s direct injection technology with the R8, which they quickly named a new road-going sports car after.  When they introduced the diesel-engined R10 they were quick to point out that this technology transferred to road cars.  A documentary called Truth in 24 documented their 2008 race effort where they were the underdogs against Peugeot and proved effective advertising of their racing effort and philosophy.  You can’t walk in to an Audi showroom without seeing a picture of one of their racing cars and the majority of their commercials make a nod to it in one form or another.

The other big story of the race is that Corvettes won in both GT classes as Chevrolet celebrates it’s 100th anniversary.  It’s also Corvette Racing’s 10th anniversary at Le Mans and it’s 7th class victory in that time.  What’s truly amazing about this is that nobody in America know about it at all.  The age old motto “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” doesn’t seem to apply here because GM & Chevrolet have made almost no effort at all to capitalize on this incredible success.  Why not?  Their racing efforts have directly improved their road-going cars and have done so in a big way.  Do they not know how to advertise and capitalize on their racing effort or do they believe nobody in America knows or cares about their success?  Probably both, and it’s a symptom of a problem.  For the Circuit of the America’s to succeed the racing series that participate there need to succeed.  For these racing series to succeed there needs to be more awareness of road racing here in America.

So let’s see every possible race series that competes on a road-course at the new track in Austin, whether it’s F1, MotoGP, IRL, World GT and Touring Cars, American Le Mans, Grand-Am or yes, even NASCAR.  Of course, what I’d really like to see is a 24 Hour American Le Mans Series race that’s part of the newly formed World Endurance Championship…