Phew .. It is all over and what a weekend it was! This probably wasn't a truly classic
Le Mans; but it was without a shadow of doubt a highly memorable one that kept
everybody alert for the whole 24 hours.
We were a bit short on wheel-to-wheel racing, conditions were so bad it
simply wasn't an option, but we certainly overdosed on drama, spins, weather and
mechanical carnage. Everybody, including the fans had to work very hard for this
one! As a result the finish has been one of the most emotional I can recall.

Only 21 of the 48 starters were classified as finishers and several of them were
'walking wounded' and there were even the odd stretcher cases. I know we are biased
but Bentley have stolen the show. Audi were awesome during the race and very
generous in their victory and the two teams worked together and engineered a
traditional Le Mans finish with the two Audis leading the Bentley across the line.
LM GT went to Porsche #83 the Seikel Motorsport Rosaele-Roseinsland-
Yokohama (catchy name!) Porsche 911 GT3RS. LM GTS went to the Goodwrench
Corvette C5R #63 . None of the LM P 675 cars made it to the flag. Don't forget the
#76 PK Sport Ricardo Porsche that made it home in 16th place at their first ever
attempt! Their celebrations will run for a week or two!

Now the dust (or mud!) is settling we can spot four themes that simply ran and ran
this year. Obviously the return of Bentley to Le Mans was the big one … running that
a good second was the MG Challenge, thirdly could Audi possibly lose and finally,
and the one that had the biggest impact, the weather. I know we 'Brits' tend to talk
about little else but the weather, but this was serious weather … however if you were
a driver, team manager, mechanic, spectator or just humble scribblers like us it
certainly had an massive impact. Nobody, even Jacky Ickx, can remember a tougher
or wetter one, few people, if any, can recall a colder one. Curiously it seems that some
of the teams were unusually ill prepared for the mass of problems that vast amounts of
water can create in a sophisticated modern race car.

The media, who know very little of these matters had various ideas about who
would do what to who and when … Audi obviously winners (correct) .. Bentley
would maybe get a finish but no chance of podium (wrong!) .. MG, pretty, fast, but
frail (a bit like Hugh Chamberlain!) so it won't last (wrong!) … Ray Rowan's
Pilbeam would be out classed (wrong! .. it never showed it colours because it was
destroyed in the big rain having practiced well) .. Vipers are so well sorted and
bombproof that Corvettes and those flashy new Saleens won't stand a chance
(wrong! .. The Corvettes survived .. Vipers and Saleens did not!) .. A single Corvette
could fend off the massed ranks of Porsche ..(correct ! at last we got one right!)

Several of these topics had seemed set in stone even before we arrived here …
for example some cheery cynics wondered why Hugh Chamberlain had bothered to fit
headlights to the MG's.. after all they would never see the dark! They fooled us all ..
The #33 car ran well into the night and nearly saw dawn and they were quick setting
an astounding pace … they did a truly superb job. Bets were even being taken at one
point that they might be leading at the end of the first hour! They were besieged by a
huge range of problems and they finally succumbed, but they caused a lot of raised
eyebrows in the pit lane. MG are on their way!

There really wasn't much doubt that Audi would have to suffer from some
utterly catastrophic mechanical virus that would effect every single component with
an Audi badge or part number on it and stop them dead, or, equally unlikely, the team
management would suffer from a string of mental aberrations that would screw up the
whole project.

The general feeling last year was that the Yanks had overwhelmed the place,
this year the Brits were here in force. Talk to the die-hard Brits here and they had a
problem with Bentley … they had no choice but to support them with total
commitment.. after all Bentley is Le Mans! But looked at through a haze of French
beer, here was a car owned by Audi/VW .. powered by an Audi derived engine,
looking like a cross between an Aardvark and a GT One Toyota. But, come on, it had
that 'Flying B' on the bonnet and the team oozed style .. so , as it turned out this, and
a team of mostly GB drivers, stopped any doubt and there might have been and the
two Bentley's were a great hit.
Again serious money and good sense suggested that getting two cars, or even
one car, to the finish might be a fantasy. But a huge wave of goodwill and massive
crowd support urged them on and they exceeded everybody's (even their own!)
wildest expectations.

It was the weather, or maybe the climate that either made or broke the race this year.
It wasn't that it was just wet, there have been wet races in the past .. no ..it was the
sheer volume of the stuff and the peculiar weather patterns here at Le Mans that
meant parts of the circuit were underwater while other bits were dry. Oh yes .. and it
rained and rained … and then rained a bit more and then just to keep everybody on
their toes it rained very, very hard indeed. Miserable for the fans but hell for the
drivers and a desperate challenge for the technical staff. It was so wet that everything
became susceptible to damp .. from EC's to radios. The electronic brains that worked
gearboxes in the dry sank without trace in the deluges. Teams lost telemetry and
worse still they couldn't even talk to the drivers. To be without telemetry caught out
even the most experienced managers, leaving them flying without instruments!
Why so bad? Why were we so surprised? Maybe because most teams, except
Audi, seemed to be short of wet testing (or worse still simply short of testing of any
sort !). New teams bring new drivers to Le Mans and perhaps they were technically ill
prepared for what they had to tackle here. But apart from numerous spins and one
sizeable accident when the first deluge hit the track there were no health threatening
accidents .. plenty of spins, plenty of gravel trap visits and so on but nothing serious.
If you saw the conditions you would realise this was a great credit to the drivers,
young and not so young.

So it was pretty memorable! Maybe we will see you here in 2002, but the Club-
Arnage web site will be there to feed you the information.