2009 24 Hours of Le Mans

The 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans ( French : 24 Heures du Mans 2009 ) was the 77th Grand Prix of Endurance , an endurance auto race run over 24 hours. It took place at the Circuit de la Sarthe , Le Mans , France , and was organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) over 13–14 June 2009 and was started by Fiat and Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo at 15:00 local time (13:00 UTC). A test day was initially scheduled for 31 May that year, but was canceled by the ACO due to economic conc...

Events for the 24 Hours of Le Mans began on 8 June with technical inspections, before initial practice began on 10 June. Due to the cancellation of the May test session, the Wednesday track session has been altered to free practice only, with no qualification times being recorded in the mostly wet session. Qualifying therefore only took place on Thursday, which remained dry.

Automatic entry to the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans was granted to teams that had performed well in the previous year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, as well as the 2008 seasons of the American Le Mans Series , Le Mans Series , FIA GT Championship , and the Petit Le Mans . [ 4 ] New for 2009 was an automatic invitation awarded to the team which accumulated the most points in the Michelin Energy Endurance Challenge, as part of the Le Mans Series. The award was based on fuel economy of competitors during each ...

The GT1 category was fought amongst three manufacturers, as Corvette Racing and Luc Alphand Aventures attempted to overcome the two private Aston Martin and Lamborghini entries. GT2 was once again dominated by the Ferrari and Porsche battle, although Ferrari had the power of numbers with its ten entries compared to Porsche's five. Sole entries from Spyker and the Drayson Aston Martin completed the GT2 field. [ 8 ]

The LMP2 category was led by the Porsche RS Spyders , with Team Essex's 3:46.426 ahead of the Navi Team Goh entry. Quifel ASM Team's Ginetta - Zytek was a distant third, ten seconds behind Team Essex. Corvette Racing were at the front of GT1, with the No. 63's 3:57.876 lap time ahead of the No. 64 car. Jetalliance Racing were third while the two Luc Alphand Corvettes did few laps after fixing an incorrectly installed rollcage and the JLOC Lamborghini did not complete a lap after breaking a drive...

The only major incident of the practice session was an accident by KSM's driver Jean de Pourtales. The driver spun approaching the Dunlop Chicane, impacting a concrete barrier before sliding into a tire barrier. The second impact ripped much of the rear of the car off. [ 14 ]

Stéphane Sarrazin claimed his third consecutive pole position at Le Mans, [ 15 ] planting the No. 8 Peugeot at the front of the field with a lap time of 3:22.888. He set the lap on the third of his flying laps during a run near the end of the four-hour qualifying session, bettering Allan McNish 's lap time by 0.8 seconds. McNish's lap was set on the final lap of the first two-hour qualifying session, [ 16 ] beating the Peugeot of Franck Montagny who led much of the first session. [ 17 ] McNish's...

The Porsche RS Spyders continued their dominance in the LMP2 category, with Casper Elgaard of Team Essex ahead of Team Goh with a lap time of 3:37.720. Third in the category was the No. 33 Speedy Racing Team Sebah Lola - Judd which was over three seconds behind the Porsches. Corvette Racing secured the front row in the GT1 category, with Jan Magnussen 's No. 63 entry half a second ahead of the No. 64 sister car. Jetalliance Racing 's privately entered Aston Martin was under two seconds behind, a...

The GT2 category was led by Porsche who bested their rivals Ferrari with two cars. Pole winner Flying Lizard Motorsports ' 4:03.202 was less than a tenth of a second ahead of the No. 77 Felbermayr-Proton car. Risi Competizione led the Ferrari fight with a third place qualifying time, joined by JMB Racing and BMS Scuderia Italia . The Aston Martin of Drayson Racing was ninth in the category, while the Spyker was eleventh.

Class leaders are in bold . [ 21 ]

New rules have caused the diesels to become considerably slower than the previous year. Peugeot qualified 4 seconds slower than 2008 but still maintained the speed advantage over the new Audi R15. Audi's lack of testing meant that the cars struggled to get any sort of a good setup. All works drivers complained about understeer in the Le Mans aero package on the R15. Tom Kristensen commented that the high-downforce package like the one used at Sebring were much better. The R15 also struggled to g...

In the LMP1 class, the Peugeots showed they could maintain a pace that the Audis struggled to maintain over the full run. The #7 Peugeot was released too early and hit from the side by the Pescarolo Peugeot. The initial damage was a small puncture but the resulting damage destroyed the whole left rear end of the car. Two of the three Audis had off-track excursions in the first 12 hours; one resulting in the #2 car being out of the race on lap 104. During the early evening, the #1 Audi lost a la...

In GT1, the final outing of the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R as a factory team at Le Mans ended well, with the #63 car driven by O'Connell, Magnussen and García sitting on the pole and finishing first in class. Magnussen was sick early on, which left O'Connell and Garcia to finish the race as a two-driver team. Several other teams were stricken with the loss of a driver, most notable being the LMP1 #009 Lola-Aston, whose driver Stuart Hall was excluded when he collided with the LMP2 #26 Radical, an...

In GT2, Ferrari celebrated their 60th Anniversary win with Ferraris taking the first 4 spots, the Risi Competizione #82 Ferrari F430 GT2 heading the class.

New rules requiring only one man with one airgun in the pits were aimed to lower the overall costs of the event by causing teams to double or triple stint tires due to the time needed to replace them.

Class winners are marked in bold . Cars running at the finish but failing to complete 70% of the winner's distance are marked as Not Classified. [ 23 ]

On Monday, 8 June, following scrutineering and approval of the Audi R15 TDI by the ACO, Peugeot Sport director Olivier Quesnel stated that the team may file a protest over the legality of certain elements of the R15 TDI's design. This protest was officially filed two days later, immediately before the start of practice. Peugeot believes that the R15 features aerodynamic elements on the front of the car which violate the ACO's regulations about devices which may increase the amount of front dow...

Later that night, Peugeot received a response from the ACO stating that it would not uphold the protest. The ACO stated that they have the ability through their own regulations to determine if an aerodynamic element's sole purpose is to create downforce. Peugeot responded within an hour by appealing this decision. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] A decision on this appeal however would not be made until after the race had taken place, thus allowing Audi to continue to compete. [ 29 ] Audi stated that they believ...