Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Le Mans, in a a way, is what drives us all.
That's the name of the game.
It's the hardest race.
Night, day, hot, dirty.
It's one race, one year and one winner.
And the Le Mans 24 Hours has now begun.
The push is on, every car surges forward looking for
an opening, straight out of the starting line !
The preparation for a race like the Le Mans 24 Hours,
is a whole year of work.
My role within the Audi team,
is to provide my technical experience
to enable their cars to win races.
We always wanted Serge to become a part of our team.
Because for me, if people have a personal relationship
beside the working relationship, the result is always better.
This morning, as you turned the wheel, as you turned
it made a "whap" sound, turning incredibly sharply
in a single movement.
And that was what we found at Atlanta
with the BB....Yes, with the BB
and with the GG, you turn, and it goes progressively,
you go exactly where you want, it is precise. And that's great.
The reason we come here to Le Castellet
is to run the car for around 30 hours,
to have enough development margins for the 24 hours.
24 hours is nice but it's not enough.
We run through the day, through the night, into the next day
When you're driving a car, you use all of your senses,
obviously your eyes, you use your smell, you use your ears,
you smell when the car rubs over the curbs, it's feedback.
When you go out of the pits,
how quickly it gives you confidence to push
and that means how quickly the tyre is activating,
how quickly the compounds are working
and you can lean on it.
There can be two or three seconds in one lap
that you can gain,
if the driver just has the feeling:
"Yep, the tyre is ready. I can go."
And these 30 hours in June, they're very, very important
to all the engineers, to know the car is ready.
What makes tyres suffer,
is the way we stress them.
Turning, accelerating and braking …
Tyres need to be efficient, long-lasting
which reduces the number of pit stops.
I've been round to Michelin, I've seen tyres being built.
And, to be honest, I still think it's black magic.
They are the defining factor, mostly,
whether we win or lose.
In 2012, Michelin's technicians decided to bring out
a new tyre: the intermediate slick without grooving.
Nowadays, when the ground is a bit wet,
we can use a slick,
which was impossible until now.
It really is a revolution for motorsport.
These new products will be used for the first time
at the Spa-Francorchamps race.
The next WEC race, the last one before we go to Le Mans,
is the 6 Hours of Spa.
This is a great chance to train people
together, as close as possible.
We always use Spa because
it is a nice racetrack to use in preparation for Le Mans.
The Spa circuit's special feature is the "Raidillon".
That's the corner where we have good sensations
because there is a huge downforce,
and some drivers have said that some years
they've even blacked out for a few seconds.
There is huge vertical force over 2G
and the tyres are working very, very hard.
To be honest with you,
I don't want to see a video of what our tyre does.
Because I'm sure it's deflecting and deforming
in such ways that it defies physics.
And the race is now over,
it’s the Audi No 1 driven by the team Tréluyer, Fässler
and Lotterer that win the 6 Hours of Spa 2013.
We had to fight back, fight back and
fight back again throughout the race.
But that's what we love, and the spectators too.
You have to go like crazy
and these are the best moments.
I leave in four days and now everything is ready,
the only thing to do is relax.
I was always told that when you are about to have a child,
you lose a second a lap.
This does not work for me. It gave me greater maturity.
Now, I could say that having a child helped me!
The 3 Audis are leading the pack in all first 3 positions,
followed very, very closely by the 2 Toyotas.
Toyota No 7 is fighting for 3rd place,
and yes, the Audi No 3 is been overtaken!
The Audi number 1 that’s currently leading the race
has been the outright winner of Le Mans for the last year.
This year, the team is still the favourite.
Audi No 1 is getting ready to change drivers
to make way for the Frenchman Benoît Tréluyer.
Le Mans is not a normal race,
it's the most difficult one in the world.
Everyone wants to win it.
It's a title that we like to grab in our ranking.
When the car arrives in the pitlane,
we are 100% focused on what we do.
You check your radio, if the headset is well hooked up,
if everything is ready.
You try to keep calm, you just want
to be as fast as possible during the driver change.
You stay focused on the automatics
and try not to make mistakes.
Once you're sitting in the car securely,
you look for the mechanic's signal to go.
You're in the zone, nothing can disturb you.
The Le Mans race is a particularly unusual race.
I think we overtake at least 4 or 5 cars a lap.
Overtaking cars creates risks.
We fight for tenths, hundredths of a second.
One of my favourite parts of the race
is the ''Porsche Curves''.
We are almost at 300km/h,
the walls are at less than one metre from the car,
there is no space for manoeuvre
so we can't make mistakes.
It looks like Audi No 1 has a problem?
What’s going on?
The Audi is forced to go back to the stand…
A little problem on car n°1 which was leading the race.
We had a small mechanical problem,
which might be the alternator.
That meant a 45 minute delay,
and it's pretty hard to be on the podium with such a delay.
Luck ran out, it had to happen.
I guess I'm a bit tired, emotional and disappointed.
Le Mans is a pretty hard race, it's an intense week.
When something like that happens,
you have trouble getting to sleep.
Benoît is a hard competitor, a great champion.
Obviously, he'll win other races,
and even if he's been disappointed on this one,
there will be other ones.
Now that the Audi No.1 is out of the race,
it’s the Audi No.2 of McNish, Kristensen and Duval,
driven by Allan McNish that’s holding the lead.
The chase is on for the Scot,
with the 2 Toyotas right in his shadow.
One mistake and it could cost Audi their victory this year.
It’s the middle of the night and
Allan McNish is playing for high stakes!
Even though I've been doing this for 15 years,
that first lap in the dark, it feels like the car is doing 400 km/h.
Because you're going down your small tunnel of light
and you just see buildings and trees
and everything go past so quickly, it's like "woah!"
Mentally you've got to really concentrate.
It's difficult for the tyres because
we've had sunshine, we've had rain, we've got cold.
And it's so critical to get the right tyre at the right time.
And for Michelin, it's not an easy job.
We had some mechanical issues with the cars,
but we still have one car leading the race,
in front of the two Toyotas.
The early morning is always the hardest moment.
We are really tired but we try
to keep going on, to overcome tiredness.
In 15 years, this race is definitely
the hardest one I've ever lived!
The weather forecasts weren't reliable,
which has made the race very complicated.
Tom Kristensen now takes the wheel of Audi No.2.
But the fight isn’t over because those Toyotas
are hanging in there with everything they’ve got!
Surely the competition is with Toyota now,
obviously they have made evolutions like we have done.
I always expect a very close fight where the attention
to any detail on the car is really important.
If it starts to rain at this very moment,
you have to decide if it's right to continue with slicks,
because the rain could finish in two minutes ,
and we'll have survived it
or is it better to go on intermediates or even onto rain tyres
because it may continue to rain.
We have to take decisions,
but we very quickly get a response:
was it right or was it wrong?
It’s one almighty mess out there…
You've got to finish Le Mans before you can win Le Mans.
Tom Kristensen is still in the lead
for the last stint in the Audi No 2,
but just behind him the two Toyotas are still hoping
he’ll make the slightest mistake
so they can take their place on the podium.
Nooo, I don’t believe it !
Toyota No.7, was fighting so hard for a place
during the last 13 hours, is off the track!
That heavy rain caught them out at the other end
of the circuit in the Hunaudières,
and they didn’t have time to change for rain tyres.
The big question is always;
how does a driver turn his feelings,
his senses and instantaneous reactions in the car,
into words, that engineers can translate into numbers.
Because engineers work in numbers,
we work in feelings and there is a common language.
Now Audi No.2 is leading alone,
one lap ahead of Toyota No 8.
And that’s it !
Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Loïc Duval
have done it for Team Audi,
this year’s winners of the Le Mans 24 Hours.
And it’s a also a victory for Porsche in the GT Pro category.
We like that competition because that's why we are here.
We are in motorsport to compete,
to prove that we, the car and the tyres, are the best,
we're there to race and we're there to push.
And that's an important fact to be honest
because unless you're really pushing at the limits,
you don't know where the limit is, so you don't develop.
Michelin is learning with this tyre development,
that they can definitely develop top tyres
for road cars as well as Audi.