Stephane Sarrazin and Pedro Lamy have maintained Peugeot's winning form in the fourth round of the Le Mans Series at Spa-Francorchamps, although only one 908 HDI would reach the chequered flag.
An exciting race full of incidents typical of a six-hour race around the legendary Belgian circuit, only a mechanical problem looked to get in the way of the Peugeots, which spent the majority of the race at least two seconds a lap faster than any other car in the field.
Nonetheless, mechanical failure did afflict one of the cars, Nicolas Minassian and Marc Gene – who led the early laps from pole position – having to park up within just an hour after a wheel-bearing failure, similar to that that put them out of the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Sarrazin and Lamy were easy up front though, the Franco-Portuguese duo rounding off their third win of the season to extend their championship over now Jean-Christophe Boullion, who once again – together with Emmanuel Collard – showed how reliable the new Pescarolo-Judd is proving. The second entry of Harold Primat and Christophe Tinseau were the only other LMP1 entries in the top ten in fourth overall.
Their cause was helped early on by the elimination of the Charouz Lola, which was hit hard by the Courage of Jonathan Cochet and Alex Frei on the first lap. Neither car would recover and would eventually have retired not long into the race. It was a dismal race for Courage Competition in all, both cars out by just lap 23.
Indeed, the attrition rate was high, few teams getting away with no problems, allowing lesser fancied named into the reckoning, perhaps most notably RML, who claimed a superb third overall and first in the LMP2 class after a steady drive by Tommy Erdos and Mike Newton.
Sixth overall meanwhile fell to the Team Oreca Saleen, Soheil Ayari and Stephane Ortelli getting their heads down and simply pulling away from the field, despite a brief fight with the Larbre Aston Martin.
