Tom Kristensen wins 8th Le Mans title

DTM driver Tom Kristensen has taken a historic win at the 24 hour of Le Mans. The Dane took his 8th win in the prestigious French race. Kristensen won the race together with former DTM drivers Allan McNish and Dindo Capello. The race itself was one with many changing weather conditions, which made the challenge extra hard.

The Audi victory was another success for a diesel powered car in motorsport. It was the third time the Audi R10 TDI was entered, and now has won as many times.

The widely anticipated duel between Audi and Peugeot definitely kept its promise: in front of a record crowd of 258,500 spectators, the two car manufacturers entered into a thrilling battle with their diesel sportscars which Audi finally won by a margin of 4m 31s.

Understandably, Tom Kristensen was thrilled with the result. “Wow! What a race. This was the extension of Allan (McNish), Dindo (Capello) and myself from last year”, He said. “We just grew into the race getting better and more confident all the time. We forgot all that talking that we can’t win together or can’t win with the ‘yellow’ car. Thanks to Audi! They trust in us. They prepared us a race car which we could race and really push hard through 24 hours to win against great opposition from Peugeot.”

“We did a perfect race thanks to our engineer Howden (Haynes) and all the people in the background including Ralf Jüttner and Dr Wolfgang Ullrich. They all made the right calls in terms of the right tyre choices during this crazy showers. Allan deserved to finally win Le Mans with Audi. Dindo is a fantastic Italian gentleman and very fast. I hope we can do many more Le Mans races together.”

Other DTM drivers that raced in Le Mans were Alexandre Premat and Mike Rockenfeller (both Audi), who finished in fourth. “I’m very happy about my first finish at Le Mans. We just missed the podium by finishing fourth”, Premat said. “This is a really good result because the fight between the six diesel-powered cars from Audi and Peugeot was very tough. I think Lucas (Luhr), Mike (Rockenfeller) and I did a very good job. We can only be happy. We get a lot of experience this year for the future.”

Mike Rockenfeller commented: “We knew before it would be a great and extremely difficult race. We three gave everything, but unfortunately it was not enough for Alex (Prémat), Lucas (Luhr) and me to make it onto the rostrum. We had some minor problems, and in such a strong field this means you can’t be at the top. But we three learnt a lot and now we hope that we can attack again next year and maybe make it onto the podium.”

Audi motorsport chef Ullrich was thrilled with the win. “The 2008 Le Mans 24 Hour race will become part of history as a unique race. It was a tense race for the whole duration of 24 hours. We didn’t enter the race as the favourite, but our success was the result of good performances and a faultless showing – and we achieved that against strong opponent. I think you couldn’t imagine a better race for the spectators. Audi once again showed that its slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik” is true.”