All over for another year...

[fatbloke]

Stolen from the Club Arnage Mailing List - http://www.club-arnage.com

A FINAL PERSONAL VIEW of LE MANS 2000
by Jock Simpson

So, that is it .. the 68th running of the 24 Heures du 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 wasnt 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 didnt 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 wasnt 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. Le
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 didnt 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 didnt 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 wasnt really a fair
fight, the Corvettes came rather abruptly up against the totally sorted
Oreca Viper Team. There isnt 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 wasnt 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 wasnt a classic but half the fans probably wont remember
that .. they will recall the sun, the fun and the noise!