Now before my review of the race I want to send my condolences to the family, friends, and teammates of Aston Martin Racing GTE Am driver Allen Simonsen, who tragically lost his life in a crash in the Tetre Rouge corner, ten minutes into the race. Motorsports has lost a champion.
This Years Le Mans proved to be a good one with an Audi winning.......again. The surprising thing is that the #1 Audi who dominated for a good portion of the opening part of the race had what turned out to be an alternator problem, which caused the defending race winner go 11 laps down opening the door for Allan McNish, Loïc Duval, and Mr. Le Mans himself: Tom Kristensen to win his 9th Overall, 3rd for McNish and 1st for Duval. Toyota was poised to get the bottom two steps on the podium until Lapierre wrecked his #7 Toyota with two hours to go.
In LMP2 it proved to be the OAK show as their Morgan-Nissans claim 1st and 2nd dominating the entire race from the drop of the tricolore with G Drive getting 3rd.
The best racing through out the whole 24 hours proved to be in the GTE Pro class with an epic battle between Aston Martin and Porcshe. The race was decided when the leading Aston wrecked coming out of the Forza Chicane (1st chicane) and gave the victory to Porsche with a 1-2 and Aston getting an emotional 3rd.
The race was plagued by a record amount of safety cars and each safety car came with Armco repair from the wreck that caused the safety car. Le Mans and the FIA need to figure something out as cars are now piercing the barriers prolonging the caution period from 5-10 minutes to 30-45 minute to even an hour. Armco may be cheap for the street portion of the track but repairing it is costing the teams and fans green flag racing and that's a problem. Hour long safety car periods are fine if it cannot be avoided for say medical or multiple car crash but for Armco repair no. Armco needs to leave in Le Mans, its time for a fix.
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