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Le Mans 24 Hours. Race Review. The Peugeot team finally secured victory over rivals Audi at the third time of asking, with a 1-2 finish after 24 gruelling hours at the La Sarthe track. The French crowd didn't get the drivers they wanted on the top step, but they did get the car.

This time, it was different for Peugeot. The team seemed galvanised by an incident in the first hour of the race, which saw their #7 car collide with the #17 Pescarolo Sport-entered Peugeot 908 in the pit lane. Once again, it looked like they would play the role of the bungling Frenchmen, comedically throwing away their shot at victory in the face of the irresistible might of Audi's teutonic efficiency.

But instead, it was Audi that struggled with their new R15 TDi, while Peugeot found themselves with the edge on reliability, pace and tactics, and controlled every lap of the famous race to take the chequered flag with their #9 908 HDi car driven by Alexander Wurz, Marc Gene and David Brabham, the Australian repeating the feat of his brother Geoff, who won the 24 Hours, again in a Peugeot, back in 1993.

The French manufacturer dominated proceedings, and the three works cars survived to the end to complete a formation finish in front of a rapturous local crowd. The #9 car moved into the lead towards the end of the sixth hour, after the early leader, the #8 Peugeot, pitted with transmission problems. Sebastien Bourdais got the all-French car back out in third place, and they retook second from the #1 Audi fairly easily, but it was never able to realistically challenge the sister car. The French team may have wanted the Bourdais/Sarrazin/Montagny car to take the win, but it was not to be.

The #7 car, which suffered massive rear-end damage caused by a flailing tyre from their pit misdemeanour, battled back through to take sixth place at the flag, though the Minassian/Lamy/Klien trio ended the race rather frustrated. They had seemed capable of beating their fellow 908s on pace, but were never really in with a chance after the lengthy stop for repairs. Still, they came home in the photo finish as the works Peugeot team got all three of their cars to the finish.

The only blot on Peugeot's copybook was an awful crash suffered by the Pescarolo privateer entry during the night time running. Having worked it's way back into contention after also needing bodywork repairs following the pit incident, the car was running in 4th place when it left the track at high speed at the Esses following the Dunlop Bridge. With the car a write-off, there followed a worrying period of safety crews, stretchers and improvised blanket screens as driver Benoit Treluyer was extracted from the shattered car, but thankfully the whole exercise was just a precaution and Treluyer suffered no serious injuries. It was, however, another sickener for Henri Pescarolo, the four-time winner as a driver must wait another year to break his duck as a team owner.

The works Peugeots, though, had no such dramas. In contrast, the Audi challenge wilted in the warm Le Mans summer as their decision to prefer a series of intensive test sessions rather than racing with their new R15 was called into question. Right from the start they had problems, with the #3 car out of the running within the first hour after Alexandre Premat hit the barriers and then pitted for repairs. That car remain plagued by issues all race-long and finished well out of contention. Into the evening, and the situation became worse, Lucas Luhr suffering a high-speed crash at the Porsche Curves just before the seven hour mark. Despite Luhr's best efforts, the race stewards prevented him from affecting a recovery to the pits on safety grounds as the whole rear of the car lay in pieces, and suddenly the R15 challenge was down to a single car.

Not just any single car, mind you, the car if 2008 race winners Allan McNish, Rinaldo Capello and eight-time Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen. If Audi's Wolfgang Ullrich had considered the possibility of only having one car to work with before dusk on Saturday as a scenario, he would have wanted it to be his #1. But with the drivers starting from the handicap of using most of the first half of the race to perfect setup, coupled with the fact that the revolutionary front of the new car seemed more proficient at sucking up debris than anything else, necessitating lengthy pit stop clean-outs, hindered the bid of the three Audi stalwarts.

By the morning on Sunday, their pace was good, better than the Peugeots in fact, although there was an element of cruising about the #9 and #8 cars by then. Sadly for the German car, now it had the pace, the drivers were two laps adrift, and were always going to need Peugeot to throw them a hand with poor reliability or mistakes. Neither came, and in fact a long trip to the garage with three hours to go saw the #1 car slip to six laps behind the leader. Audi's vice-like grip on the Le Mans crown was over.

So Peugeot got their photo finish, while Audi had to be content with a single podium (their worst result as a works team since they first entered the endurance classic in 1999 - the Bentley win in 2003 was a race where Audis competed as customer cars only). Aston Martin Racing, whose Lola chassis and Aston petrol power never looked good enough to live with the speed or frugality of the diesel cars, gave themselves something to cheer with 4th place for Jan Charouz, Tomas Enge and Stefan Mucke, in the Hollywood-pleasing #007 car, no less, while the Oreca Matmut team secured fifth place in the hands of Olivier Panis, Nicolas Lapierre and Soheil Ayari. The sister, Bruno Senna-shared #10 car suffered a number of crashes in the hands of Senna and Stephane Ortelli, and retired on Sunday morning.

The recovering #7 Peugeot took 6th, while performance of the race arguably went to the #14 Kolles Racing pairing of Charles Zwolsman and Andre Lotterer, who were forced to complete the full 24 hours by themselves after third driver Narain Karthikeyan clumsily broke his shoulder climbing over the pit wall, and the team failed to qualify a reserve driver on the Thursday qualifying day. The two eventually brought their privateer Audi R10 home in a hugely creditable 7th place, one spot ahead of the self-built Pescarolo Judd, which gave Henri something to smile about with a top ten finish.

Other big names to hit trouble included the #15 Kolles car, which Christian Bakkerud crashed behind a safety car, necessitating lengthy repairs, and the #009 Lola Aston which suffered a huge crash in the hands of Harold Primat after he and Peter Kox had been forced to share the driving following the decision to exclude Stuart Hall for forcing off the #26 LMP2 Radical in a clumsy collision. Dave Richards, the Aston team boss was unhappy at the "pressure" put on his remaining two drivers following the stewards decision.

If Peugeot dominated in the main LMP1 class, so another manufacturer had the smaller classes to themselves. The Porsche Spyders, as expected, ruled the roost in LMP2, with the #31 Team Essex car and the #5 Navi Team Goh entry enjoying a private, race-long battle for supremacy. The race was decided in the early hours of the morning when the Japanese #5 car pitted for lengthy repair work, giving the #31 a three lap lead. The fight was finally decided with an hour to go, when Seiji Ara had an enormous shunt in his Goh Porsche on the approach to the first Mulsanne chicane. Another write-off, another shattered Le Mans dream. The #31 car of Casper Elgaard, Kristian Poulsen and Emmanuel Collard took class honours, and tenth overall, by a margin of some 14 laps from the #33 Speedy Racing Lola-Judd, which inherited second place.

GT1 was the private battlefield of the works Corvettes, but what a battle it was. Approaching the final two hours, the two cars were nose-to-tail after twenty two hours of breathtaking battling. The #64 car had lost out in an early safety car period by being picked up by the second pace car and losing half a lap to the sister car, but benefited from getting behind the same pace car later on, and took the lead midway through the final morning. But it wasn't to be for the #64, as it cruised to a standstill at the entrance to the pit lane with transmission problems within metaphorical touching distance of a finish. The #63 of Antonio Garcia, Jan Magnussen and Johnny O'Connell re-took the lead, and comfortably won the class in Chevrolet's last appearance at Le Mans with their GT1 C6Rs. The privateer Alphand Aventures #73 Corvette inherited second in class after the demise of the second works car, while the Jetalliance Aston Martin was the only other finisher in the sadly threadbare class.

The massed GT2 ranks put on a fine show for the first half of the race, with any number of Ferrari and Porsche entries challenging for the lead. But by the time dawn broke, the #82 Risi Competizione Ferrari F430 of Mika Salo, Jaime Melo and Pierre Kaffer was in a two lap lead that it would never relinquish, as each of the five Porsche cars hit trouble and dropped out of the running. Ferraris were left to perform a clean sweep of the top four positions, with the plucky sole Spyker picking up fifth place thanks to reliability over outright speed.

But the day, and the weekend, belonged to Peugeot. Whether this is the start of an Audi-esque dynasty or just a blip on the German manufacturers still-incredible record books remains to be seen. If the French team comes back next year, they will surely need a new design, with the 908 now in it's third year of competition, and Audi will have had twelve months to iron out the obvious teething problems with their R15.

Then again, on the evidence of today, there is nothing much wrong with the 908 at all.