The first Peugeot vs Audi duel of 2010 has been won by Peugeot in the 1000 km of Spa endurance race. Starting from pole position, the no. 3 Peugeot driven by Pedro Lamy, Sebastien Bourdais and Simon Pagenaud took the chequered flag after a rather messy race.Even though the victorious Peugeot squad crossed the finish line with a gap of more than a minute, it certainly wasn't an easy task for its drivers. Pedro Lamy threw the advantage of starting from pole position away already in the first corner when he braked too late and spun his car in La Source hairpin, dropping him back into ninth position. In the following three hours, the Peugeot fought its way back to the lead, and score a very crucial victory on the road to Le Mans.
Pedro Lamy commented:
"In the warm-up lap we had a problem with getting the tires up to temperature and going into the first corner I thought I would have more grip and I lost the car," said Lamy about the first lap incident. "I was able to continue and found a good rhythm. I knew we had a good car for the race and I'm very happy with the victory."
The race got off with a messy start. Just a couple of minutes before the warm-up lap it started to rain on the back of the track, while it was still dry at the start/finish line. These treacherous conditions resulted in carnage during the opening laps of the 6-hour race.
Already in the warm-up lap Andre Lotterer was caught by surprise when he entered the wet part of the track in Malmedy and spun into the tire wall. This damaged the right rear of the Audi Sport Team Joest car, which cost the team more than four laps for repairs.
Apart from Lamy's spin, more problems occurred during the start of the race as Filippo Francioni lost rear grip at Eau Rouge and made hard contact with the wall. This caused the first full-course caution of the race. At the restart, Eau Rouge caused more problems as Jean Christophe Boullion tipped the rear of the Team Oreca Matmut Peugeot driven by Olivier Panis, who lost control and crashed heavily into the tire wall.
After first rainy 15 minutes of the race, the track dried very quickly, but this wasn't the end of all the chaos. Two hours into the race the red flag was suddenly waved as the circuit venue lost all its power supply and timing & scoring systems were down. After a half-hour break, electricity was restored and the race could be restarted, but due to noise regulations it would cut the length of the race back to 5.5 hours.
In the final hour the rain clouds returned to Spa-Francorchamps. Even though it was just a drizzle, it was enough for Tom Kristensen to make the gamble to put cut slicks under the second placed Audi Sport Team Joest car during his final pit stop.
But as the weather cleared up again, though, Stephane Sarrazin with the no. 2 Peugeot took the opportunity to close the gap. With only four minutes on the clock the Peugeot had closed the gap with Kristensen's Audi and finally it wouldn't take long before Sarrazin had passed the Audi in the Bus Stop for second place.
Kristensen commented about the incident:
"At the end of the race my car was really twisting on slicks because of the low-downforce configuration and we decided to make the aggressive call to use the slicks. Of course we're disappointed to finish third, but at least we've shown we're not afraid to take risks. It just didn't work out today."
