Harold Primat admitted he was disappointed to fail to make it to the finish of his first Le Mans 24 Hours with the Aston Martin Racing team after crashing the #009 Lola Aston Martin out of the event.

Primat, Peter Kox and Stuart Hall had endured a troubled run in the event having lost time in the opening hour when Primat was forced to pit for an alternator change. The car was then handed a one minute stop-go penalty for work carried out on the grid prior to the start.

Things got worse when Hall had to pit with a water leak, and the Briton was then excluded from the race for his part in the accident that saw the Bruichladdich Radical crash into the barriers at the entry to the pit lane.

That left Primat and Kox to run alone in the car for the remainder of the race, and after more issues during the night, the car was rising up the order as morning arrived at La Sarthe.

However, whilst busy continuing the car's fight back, a warning light appeared on the dash before the temperature inside the cockpit began to noticeably increase, with Primat informing the team immediately.

Before he had a chance to pit, fluid spilled out onto the rear tyres on entry to the Porsche Curves, with Primat going off into the barriers at the same point as Lucas Luhr earlier in the race.

The impact with the tyre wall destroyed the rear of the car, although Primat was able to climb unaided from the wreckage at the end of a tough race for the #009 crew.

"I am a bit stiff and I will take it easy for the next couple of days but I am fine," he said. "I had an alarm on the dash for the cooling system and then I experienced some heat in the cockpit so I radioed the team to let them know. My initial suspicions of a water leak were confirmed when we studied the data afterwards.

"It was a shame for Peter and I. We were moving up the field after our earlier problems and we are both frustrated at not finishing. At Le Mans what you want first is to finish but sometimes you have a car which has most of the trouble in the team and unfortunately at this race it was our car.

"I have mixed feelings, it would have been great to bring all three cars home but at least the #007 car finished in the top four and the best of the petrol runners, beating several of the diesel cars, which was a great result for the team."