[LM24] 2003 Le Mans Dogfight?

[Garrett]

With the factory team Audi R8s being dropped for 2003 and being sold to customers to race and Bentley uping their competiton with a new EXP Speed 8, 2003 may see a good fight between the customer Audi's and the factory Bentley's. I would love to see a good "dogfight" between the two, instead of an all Audi dominaton, like the one that Porsche and Jaguar had in 1987. What are your thoughts?

[rdjones]

I would agree with that, we are going to be in for one hell of a race this year.

[Mal]

I hope that you are right with that. LeMans '03 is beginning to look pretty good. Some of the driver line ups are beginning to look rather special too.

[Aysedasi]

Absolutely Garrett, I'm with you all the way. It really is about time that we had a good (and long) battle for honours in the important class () at Le Mans. Too many races over the past few years have been dominated by one car/make. (That's why I am so anti-Audi in the same way as I'm anti-Ferrari in F1 - F1 - whats that then? )

I still think back to 95 and the battle between the Harrods and KKK McLarens with the Courage catching all the time. I was sooooo disappointed when the Harrods car hit problems, but I guess the JJ inspired Lanzante team would probably have won anyway.

[Fab]

And what about the Iroki Kato effort against the BMW in the last hours of 1999 ?

[C_g]

Kato? Dont' you mean Suzuki and Katayama? Heroic that was...

[Rhino]

The 95 race should have been won by the Courage driven by Mario but for the bad pit work of Courage. When it came in for repairs after hitting the Porche it was repaired in the pit lane resricting the amount of people working on it. They also decided to change the undamaged engine cover to one which had the company which sponsored the 2 normally aspirated cars on (one of those cars had been disqualified during practice for being underweight, the other car broke early on) In so doing broke one of the mounting points. The amount of time lost in just changing the mount cost them the race......

[Fab]

Originally posted by C_g
Kato? Dont' you mean Suzuki and Katayama? Heroic that was...

I meant Yukio Katayama indeed, sorry

[Fab]

Originally posted by Rhino
The 95 race should have been won by the Courage driven by Mario but for the bad pit work of Courage. When it came in for repairs after hitting the Porche it was repaired in the pit lane resricting the amount of people working on it. They also decided to change the undamaged engine cover to one which had the company which sponsored the 2 normally aspirated cars on (one of those cars had been disqualified during practice for being underweight, the other car broke early on) In so doing broke one of the mounting points. The amount of time lost in just changing the mount cost them the race......

Lost is lost, and there's nothing to do about it... sad for Mario hat trick and Bob 'never won Lm' Wolleck... lots of stories like that at LM : remember Pierre Levegh who lost 1952 (or is it 53 ?) because of wanting driving alone the whole 24 hours... dead three years later at... LM.