ALMS » Rain, Peugeot win at Petit Le Mans

Rubbish. There was no winner today but the weather.

Three cars on the lead lap, the two Pugs and the Audi of McNish and Capello...it would have made for a great battle.

Looks like the R15s just arent quick enough... Cant wait till next year sebring and lemans.
Audis used to be strong in the adverse weather (the reason why they won 08 lemans) but now the Pugs seems to be keeping up with them.
I wonder if audi made a mistake in the development of the R15? Should they went the close cockpit route? They seems to be losing all their advantages. In exception of the acuras, all the fast cars in LMS such as astons, lolas and pugs seems to be coupes.

Sorry, which part of McNish a lap ahead did you not see? He span and hence lost the race under yellow. The Audi needs some work agreed, but to claim this particular race as evidence of its pace is wrong. To claim Le Mans 09 as evidence of a lack of pace no argument.

GP One, McNish set the fast lap of the race so the R15 did have speed but McNish spun out twice which hurt him badly before the red flag. Audi has had an open cockpit since the R8 which was absolutely dominant, no need to go to coupes. The R15 may just be a dud... the R10 was fantastic against the 908. The Oreca won in LMS also and it has an open cockpit.

There is no doubt the Peugeot 908 is fast, they wiped out Audi at Le Mans in June (I was there!). In fact if the no 17 Pescarolo 908 and the no 7 908 hadn't collided in the pits and lost so much time on repairs it probably would have been Peugeot 1st, 2nd 3rd and 4th.
At Road Atlanta, Peugeot were fastest in all four practice sessions and 1st and 2nd on the grid. Admittedly McNish had one lap faster than Montagny by 0.273 of a second in the race Think Peugeot messed up on tyre choice to begin with.
The race was completely spoiled by the bad weather. Audi have improved since Le Mans no doubt and the scene is set for Le Mans 2010. Think Peugeot's biggest problem is McNish not Audi

The start was all to do with initial race set ups, the cars were running with different downforce configurations.
Montagny and Sarrazin staged a comeback reminiscent of McNish's in the same race 12 months ago. They dropped two laps off of the lead in little more than an hour, but had the pace to fight back onto the lead lap over the next two hours.
Sarrazin reeled in the leaders through the fourth hour and overtook teammate Pedro Lamy after the fifth pace-car period of an incident-packed race. He was just 10 seconds behind when the pace car that would be McNish's undoing came out.
So yes I think the Peugeots are still faster.

R10 was fantastic against the 908? Didnt you watch the audi "documentary" for the 2008 race? They were hemorrhaging time horribly to the 908. They manage to won that because of TK stunning night pace and rain at the final hour of the race.

I dint see this petit LM race (ZERO coverage for the rest of the world) but to see two pugs manage to snatch a 1-2 from mcnish just show how close they are to the audi wet pace (which is staggering since previously 908 sucks in the wet). And mcnish spinning out (twice you said) must be the case buckling under pressure. He must be pushing real hard to keep the 908s at bay. Thats pretty much sums up of how much of a threat the pugs are to audi.

GP One, the R10 was fantastic. The 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans was just one race. The R10s and 908s battled on many different occasions including Petit Le Mans last year, the LMS, and of course Sebring.

The torrential rain in Georgia is the worst they've had in like 100 years. Flooding levels are above houses, etc. McNish got caught out on wet tires that hadn't come to temp. yet and spun out first when he had a 20 second lead and then again when in second place.