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01 July 2010

As one of the earliest retirees from the 2010 Le Mans 24 Hours – and as such inarguably one of the race’s unluckiest competitors – Pedro Lamy was left to reflect that perhaps Peugeot had pushed just ‘too much to the limit’ in its quest to monopolise the podium on home turf.

Pace-wise, the four 908 HDi FAPs – including the privately-run Oreca entry – were comfortably the class of the field at La Sarthe, but one-by-one, the quartet dropped out of contention, two of them agonisingly with only a couple of hours or so left to the chequered flag.

The pole-setting #3 machine of Lamy, Sébastien Bourdais and Simon Pagenaud, by contrast, would barely even make it two hours into the race after leading early on – and looking back over what was ultimately a crushingly disappointing event for the fans’ favourites, the Portuguese ace pondered just what had gone so dramatically wrong.

“We had many problems and didn’t finish with any cars,” the 38-year-old former Lotus and Minardi F1 star summarised, speaking to Crash.net Radio. “We (the #3 entry) were going okay. My car was the first one to stop, near to the beginning of the race when we had a problem with the suspension. It just started to get a bit loose, and then in the end it broke completely.

“To be outside and watching the others is difficult, but that’s racing. It was a shame for Peugeot, because the team all did a good job and tried hard to have a very fast car – but maybe we were too much to the limit of its possibilities regarding the engine and everything.”

TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW IN FULL: CLICK HERE