Introducing the - Peugeot

OASTER
Photos: Direction Peugeot Communication
was concerned everything was under control.
When Sébastien left the pits to complete the
final few minutes of the race, I was confident
he would make it across the finishing line.
The fact he stopped by the side of the track
– as a last-minute precaution – added to the
suspense, but it made our second place all
the sweeter.
“We hadn’t dared to imagine a
result like this”
Serge Saulnier, head of the Le
Mans programme
If someone had told me that we’d qualify
on pole position and finish second when
the 908 made its Le Mans 24 Hours debut,
I wouldn’t have believed them. The result
was a fantastic reward for everyone who
had worked relentlessly on the project for
so long. When you look at the ground we’ve
covered during the past four months…
we simply hadn’t dared to imagine a result
like this. I thought we’d finish the race,
but suspected we’d encounter quite a few
problems along the way. It’s important to
note that we didn’t go into the event with
the kind of attitude that prevailed in 1991,
when the 905s absolutely flew for three or
four hours but then broke… Our target was
to run for as long as possible, no matter what
happened, and to accumulate the maximum
amount of data. Consequently, when we
weren’t able to run at the Audis’ pace in the
early stages, we let them go and focused on
looking after our cars. When the sun rises
on Sunday morning and you are sitting on
the pit counter, with about 20 coffee cups
in front of you and two cars still running, it’s
a great feeling. That marked the beginning of
a critical phase of the race for us, because
we were now in a zone we hadn’t explored
during pre-race testing. We were entering
the unknown and waiting for problems to
arise, but they weren’t occurring. It wasn’t
until two hours from the end that car n°7 ran
into trouble and n°8 encountered difficulties
shortly afterwards, when its oil pressure
dipped to zero. A safety car allowed us to
maintain our advantage over the next car,
but even that wasn’t enough. Towards the
end we had to ask Sébastien (Bourdais) to
stop by the edge of the track to avoid having
to begin another lap before the chequered
flag came out. Without that, we can’t be sure
whether the engine would have lasted.