2009: Peugeot wins at Le Mans to end Audi domination

March 14th 2023

Peugeot's 908 HDi won the 2009 Le Mans 24 Hours after rectifying strategic errors of the previous year, with rival Audi's R15 TDI struggling.

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Peugeot wasn’t ready to win the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2008, but that changed the following season. The 908 HDi was again the faster car, but crucially for the French manufacturer that was the case in all conditions in 2009. And the tactical and strategic errors that blunted the previous year’s challenge had been erased.

Peugeot went to Le Mans for a third time with its LMP1 turbodiesel and brimmed with confidence. Audi had beaten the French cars at the Sebring 12 Hours, by now part of the Le Mans warm-up routine for both marques, but Peugeot Sport wasn’t worried.

“That year we were ready to win Le Mans,” says Peugeot Sport team manager Serge Saulnier, who endured a torrid lead-up to the race in ’08. “We knew why we hadn’t won Sebring and felt Le Mans would be different.”

Things weren’t quite as simple. Audi had a nightmare in 2009, just one year on from its against-the-odds victory with the ageing R10. The new R15 TDI had high-downforce and controversial front-end aerodynamics protested by its rival during Le Mans week. The R15 had worked at Sebring, but at Le Mans it wasn’t in the ballpark. “With the higher speed at Le Mans, we couldn’t run the car in the window it was designed for,” recalls Ralf Jüttner, technical director at Joest Audi. “Our front tyre couldn’t take the loads and we ran nose-up at stages, which meant using a ride height for which the suspension hadn’t been designed.”

Audi was never truly in the frame. The lead car, shared by 2009 winners Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello, went a lap down as early as the fourth hour, and only briefly in the small hours did it look like anything approaching a match for the flying Peugeots. Then another problem, also the result of its trick aero. Sand began to clog the intercoolers, resulting in a series of unscheduled stops and a reduction in pace. It was, says Jüttner, “a very fine sand that glued together”.

Peugeot could coast to a 1-2 and end an Audi domination that stretched right through the decade, if you include Bentley’s 2003 win with one of the German brand’s engines and the Joest team in the pits.

The only win of the five-year 908 programme went to what was really its third-string car driven by Alex Wurz, David Brabham and Marc Gené. They were effectively declared winners after 14 hours when Peugeot’s top brass invoked team orders believing (erroneously) that there were brake wear problems on the leading car and so called time. GW

2009: Peugeot wins at Le Mans to end Audi domination

Peugeot's 908 HDi won the 2009 Le Mans 24 Hours after rectifying strategic errors of the previous year, with rival Audi's R15 TDI struggling.

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2009

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