Press Release N° 7
16.00 to 17.00

A wetter start than expected
Saturday, June 16th, 2001
By lap three, the menacing sky had kept its promise and heavy rain began to fall upon the slick-equipped cars. The consequences were dramatic for many teams and incidents began to accumulate on the track.

Before this 69th race had even began, things were already quite hectic during the warm up lap : both the Porsche n°82 and Saleen n°62 went into spins on the track. Next, Callaway n°70, the only non-Porsche GT, arrived too late for starting grid procedure and lost the benefit of its pole position in the GT class - it had to start from the pit-lane.
A sample of the events to follow. This 2001 edition was soon to become a nightmare, due to the tough weather conditions that ruled over half of the circuit (Hunaudières). Almost all the cars were equipped with slicks and so had to stop at the pits very early on to change to wet tyres. All in all, in one hour's race, there were three changes of leader. Laurent Aiello in Audi n°2 took the fastest start, but his stop at the pits enabled Jan Lammers in the Dome / Racing for Holland to take the lead. But not for long, though, since the Dutch driver was in the pits on several occasions. Moreover, Lammers was hit on the rear spoiler, which made him lose some precious time.
This offered a good opportunity for Martin Brundle to lead his Bentley into the first position of the race in front of the amazing Panoz n°11, which was ready for the rain as it had chosen to start off with intermediate tyres. On lap 10, Klaus Graf even took the luxury of overtaking Audi n°1, which was the only car remaining afloat at that point in the race.
As feared by the Audis, the rain made things slightly difficult. The n°2 was in 13th position after 10 laps, while Champion Racing was close behind. Johansson's Audi Gulf n°4, which had lost some bits off its front bodywork and damaged its air inlets, was in 39th position. The Swedes spent 12 minutes in the pits.
In such extreme conditions, multiple crashes were hardly avoidable and one withdrawal was even reported - Pilbeam n°30 - following a multiple collision on the Porsche bend. Viper n°57 from FFSA / David Terrien was one of the cars involved: despite a badly damaged front axle, he was able to make it back to the pits, after 45 minutes of hard effort and a few short trips through the gravel traps.