A FINAL PERSONAL VIEW of LE MANS 2000 by Jock Simpson

So, that is it, the 68th running of the 24 Heures du Le Mans is over. Was it a ‘Classic’ ? Possibly not but it certainly was a memorable event .. it was one of the hottest (temperature) Le Mans on record, certainly as hot as 1976 .. it may be remembered as the year the ‘Yanks’ arrived … it maybe remembered as first time since 1960 that a Porsche powered car wasn’t in the top ten finishers, there again it maybe remembered as the year that Audi did their homework, spent their money wisely and won the race in a hugely convincing manner. In 1999 Toyota came here looking unbelievably strong but they didn’t make it .. Audi were there as well in 1999, they may have received some criticism for running all sorts of cars but they were calmly learning their trade and set about putting together their 2000 attack. It wasn’t easy .. all kinds of dramas hit the team , but they were upto it. After all they picked Team Joest to run the cars .. is there a wiser more successful team in the history of Le Mans ? We doubt it. L e Mans holds no surprises for Reinhold Joest. For example Who would have thought of the plan that involved changing the whole rear end of the car if they got a whiff of trouble. They started three cars and three cars crossed the line after 24 Hours. It allowed the team management kept several balls in the air all the time. He had strong cars and a brilliant driver line up. You have to been impressed when a team can bring their cars home in formation , 1st,2nd,3rd, It produces a publicity shot that any manufacturer would dream of.

In a way you have to give Don Panoz a bit of credit as well. He has always put his money where his mouth is and he went out to do well here at Le Mans. It was a powerful challenge but it didn’t quite work. The Americans were here in tremendous force. The Europeans had to move over to leave room for five Panoz .. four Cadillacs .. two Corvettes and six Vipers. Mario Andretti was here racing in what maybe his last appearance in an endurance race, he didn’t win but he stirred memories and emotion everywhere he went. We saw Cadillac safety cars, GM publicity was everywhere, we even had American pundits on Radio Le Mans. Maybe soon we will see an Aston Martin or Jaguar back here.

ALMS is strong, as is their relationship with the ACO and few eyebrows have been raised by the huge influx of American machinery that was allowed to start. The downside for the Europeans was that they were not well represented at all. It must be some kind of unhappy record that only seven UK drivers started the race and no UK teams ran a car. The only exception was the unique Hugh Chamberlain who was running a team for GOH.

. It was an all American affair in GTS as well, it wasn’t really a fair fight, the Corvettes came rather abruptly up against the totally sorted Oreca Viper Team. There isn’t much you can teach Oreca about endurance racing. The Corvettes tried everything and without a doubt they pushed the Vipers hard from time to time but you will have do much better than that to beat those all conquering Oreca cars ( not bad for a truck-bred engine ).

GT was always going to be a Porsche benefit Surely this wasn’t quite what Porsche wanted since all the cars to appear in the category were 911 GT3Rs. Porsche will go away with a win and happy customers. The most impressive team by far was the Dick Barbour racing team he brought the car home 13th overall .. they came with just one car and it totally dominated the category. We will never know if the Labre car would have given them a run for their money, it went out in an accident very early on.

The lasting memories of 2000 will be the apparently relaxed efficiency of the Audi , Oreca and Barbour teams, they make this sort of thing look easy. The traditions of Le Mans are intact, huge crowds, noisy campsites, mostly good humoured over consumption of alcohol, every Lotus, Morgan, Jaguar and exotic sportscar smoking their tyres through the village of Arnage and so on. OK so it wasn’t a classic but half the fans probably won’t remember that .. they will recall the sun, the fun and the noise !