If you read my column last week, you know that I was extremely excited about the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an international endurance race held in France. Whether you follow the series or not, my thoughts on the results and my experience viewing the race cannot be contained.
For a while there, you didn’t want to miss a second of this race because of the intense competition between the three Porsche 919 Hybrids and the three Audi R18s. Audi led for an early portion of the race, but in the end Porsche took first and second on the podium. The win effectively ended Audi’s five-year winning streak at Le Mans. It is Porsche’s first Le Mans win since 1998, and its 17th to date.
Nissan’s highly anticipated return to Le Mans was rather bumpy, though not entirely unexpected as most new teams are lucky to finish Le Mans.
Nissan entered the race with three of the new GTR LM NISMOs and finished with one.
The team’s problems ranged from suspension failure, burning through brakes, a cockpit door being stuck open and clutch issues. The No. 22 car managed to finish the race, even after it was impacted by debris. It was able to limp back to the pits sans its hood and headlights. No. 22 unfortunately did not classify as it was 153 laps down from the leading Porsche.
In general the team was unsure how the cars would do, but it seemed to want to use Le Mans as the ultimate testing grounds. Nissan went through a lot during the 24 Hours, and the team and fans alike seem very proud of the finish.
Although the factory team had some setbacks, the winning three LMP2 cars were all Nissan-powered. Actually, more than half of the LMP2 class was powered by Nissan engines, so one would hope they were the winning cars. The No. 47 KC Motorsports took first, followed by the No. 38 Jota Sport and the No. 26 G-Drive Racing.
The GTE classes saw the most crashes of the 24 Hours beginning with the early retirement of the No. 63 Corvette during qualifying. Aston Martin saw possibly the worst crashes, which unfortunately caused them to lose the lead in both classes.
The No. 64 Corvette won in the GTE-pro class, followed by the No. 71 and 51 AF Corse Ferrari. In GTE-am the No. 72 AF Corse Ferrari placed in first. The retirement of the No. 98 Aston Martin led to the No. 77 Dempsey-Proton Racing (Patrick Dempsey is not the new Steve McQueen) Porsche 911 placing in second and the No. 62 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari in third.
I didn’t stay up for all 24 Hours, as you can probably tell from my Twitter feed, but with the exception of about six hours, I was pretty glued to the race.
Fox was the official broadcast partner of the 24 Hours, but I honestly didn’t even bother with it. I’m not a cable subscriber and all the friends I asked merely had basic cable, which apparently doesn’t come with Fox Sports 2.
From there I had to take some less-than-desirable routes to properly stream the race, but when I did check into Fox 1 and 2, Le Mans was not on.
Usually trying to keep up with an endurance race is a nightmare. But it seemed like both the Le Mans governing body and the teams wanted to put forward a best effort to involve the fans this year.
An extremely helpful 24 Hours app was provided by the governing body and both Nissan and Porsche had some amazing ways for fans at home (and maybe even at the race) to keep up.
Nissan provided Nismo.tv, which directed to their YouTube channel, and Porsche added a page to their global website. Both provided live streams from inside the cars and current standings in addition to some other really cool features.
For almost 24 hours I watched the race on my laptop with five windows open. It was the first time I had such an inclusive experience with the in-car streams, commentary from radiolemans.com, EuroSport Live and the live Tweeting from the teams.
I would say Audi now has a pretty good incentive to come back to Le Mans again next year to try to win back their title. And with Toyota, Nissan and now Ford returning to motorsports, the competition just keeps getting better and better. In addition, the opportunities for fan involvement and experience from this year has been amazing. The way things are going we may get to see another golden era of racing (Where are you Steve McQueen?)
Erika Canfijn is a UF public relations senior. Her columns appears on Thursdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 6/18/15]
