LE MANS, France — For the past three years, Peugeot has brought the fastest turbodiesel-powered sports cars to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but not until this year did the speed of the 908 HDi FAP prototype pay off in victory.
David Brabham, Alexander Wurz and Marc Gene dominated the event in the No. 9 machine and led a 1-2 finish Sunday, with Gene at the wheel of the winning entry at the end. The winners covered 382 laps around the 8.5-mile Sarthe circuit. Sebastien Bourdais, Franck Montagny and St�phane Sarrazin drove the runner-up machine, one lap down in their formation finish to the 77th edition of the iconic sports-car endurance race.
It was the first win for Peugeot at Le Mans since 1993 and ended a streak of eight victories in the past nine races for Audi, which had won the past five in a row.
Audi's No. 1 car, driven by defending champions Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello, completed the LMP1 podium. The car was six laps off the pace of the winners, losing ground in the final three hours with mechanical problems.
Audi's R10 TDI suffered its first loss since its introduction in 2006. Peugeot, which created the 908 to battle Audi's diesel, had superior speed in 2007 and last year, but reliability and strategy proved to be their undoing.
A pit-road collision between the third factory 908 and an independent Peugeot entry from Pescarolo Sport snuffed the chances of a podium sweep. The No. 7 entry suffered considerable damage and ended up sixth overall, 13 laps behind its teammates.
The Pescarolo entry crashed the factory Audi-versus-Peugeot party, holding fourth place through much of the race, but the car was eliminated in a major shunt as the race moved into Sunday morning. Driver Benoit Treluyer was not seriously hurt.
The Team Essex Porsche RS Spyder driven by Casper Elgaard, Emmanuel Collard and Kristian Poulsen won class honors in LMP2 and was 10th overall.
Corvette Racing, in its final outing, won in GT1 and placed 15th overall with Jan Magnussen, Johnny O'Connell and Antonio Garcia sharing driving duties.
Risi Competizione won for the second year in a row in GT2, with Mika Salo, Jaime Melo and Pierre Kaffer driving a Ferrari F430 to an 18th-place overall finish.
Another serious crash took out the second-place Team Goh Porsche in LMP2, and Corvette was denied a 1-2 finish by its works cars when the No. 64, driven by Marcel Fassler, Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta, rolled to a stop on the track with an hour remaining. The famous American brand got second place, thanks to the privateer entry of Luc Alphand Adventures, driven by Xavier Massen, Yann Clairay and Julien Jousse.
Inside Line says: A highly anticipated battle between the turbodiesel giants turned into a rout. Now, we wait to see how Audi will respond to the victorious challenger. — David Green, Correspondent
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