Only 21 of the 48 starters were classified as finishers and several of them were 'walking wounded' and there were even the odd stretcher cases. I know we are biased but Bentley have stolen the show. Audi were awesome during the race and very generous in their victory and the two teams worked together and engineered a traditional Le Mans finish with the two Audis leading the Bentley across the line. LM GT went to Porsche #83 the Seikel Motorsport Rosaele-Roseinsland-Yokohama (catchy name!) Porsche 911 GT3RS. LM GTS went to the Goodwrench Corvette C5R #63 . None of the LM P 675 cars made it to the flag. Don't forget the #76 PK Sport Ricardo Porsche that made it home in 16th place at their first ever attempt! Their celebrations will run for a week or two!

Now the dust (or mud!) is settling we can spot four themes that simply ran and ran this year. Obviously the return of Bentley to Le Mans was the big one … running that a good second was the MG Challenge, thirdly could Audi possibly lose and finally, and the one that had the biggest impact, the weather. I know we 'Brits' tend to talk about little else but the weather, but this was serious weather … however if you were a driver, team manager, mechanic, spectator or just humble scribblers like us it certainly had an massive impact. Nobody, even Jacky Ickx, can remember a tougher or wetter one, few people, if any, can recall a colder one. Curiously it seems that some of the teams were unusually ill prepared for the mass of problems that vast amounts of water can create in a sophisticated modern race car.

The media, who know very little of these matters had various ideas about who would do what to who and when … Audi obviously winners (correct) .. Bentley would maybe get a finish but no chance of podium (wrong!) .. MG, pretty, fast, but frail (a bit like Hugh Chamberlain!) so it won't last (wrong!) … Ray Rowan's Pilbeam would be out classed (wrong! .. it never showed it colours because it was destroyed in the big rain having practiced well) .. Vipers are so well sorted and bombproof that Corvettes and those flashy new Saleens won't stand a chance (wrong! .. The Corvettes survived .. Vipers and Saleens did not!) .. A single Corvette could fend off the massed ranks of Porsche ..(correct ! at last we got one right!)

Several of these topics had seemed set in stone even before we arrived here … for example some cheery cynics wondered why Hugh Chamberlain had bothered to fit headlights to the MG's.. after all they would never see the dark! They fooled us all .. The #33 car ran well into the night and nearly saw dawn and they were quick setting an astounding pace … they did a truly superb job. Bets were even being taken at one point that they might be leading at the end of the first hour! They were besieged by a huge range of problems and they finally succumbed, but they caused a lot of raised eyebrows in the pit lane. MG are on their way!

There really wasn't much doubt that Audi would have to suffer from some utterly catastrophic mechanical virus that would effect every single component with an Audi badge or part number on it and stop them dead, or, equally unlikely, the team management would suffer from a string of mental aberrations that would screw up the whole project.

The general feeling last year was that the Yanks had overwhelmed the place, this year the Brits were here in force. Talk to the die-hard Brits here and they had a problem with Bentley … they had no choice but to support them with total commitment.. after all Bentley is Le Mans! But looked at through a haze of French beer, here was a car owned by Audi/VW .. powered by an Audi derived engine, looking like a cross between an Aardvark and a GT One Toyota. But, come on, it had that 'Flying B' on the bonnet and the team oozed style .. so , as it turned out this, and a team of mostly GB drivers, stopped any doubt and there might have been and the two Bentley's were a great hit.

Again serious money and good sense suggested that getting two cars, or even one car, to the finish might be a fantasy. But a huge wave of goodwill and massive crowd support urged them on and they exceeded everybody's (even their own!) wildest expectations.

It was the weather, or maybe the climate that either made or broke the race this year. It wasn't that it was just wet, there have been wet races in the past .. no ..it was the sheer volume of the stuff and the peculiar weather patterns here at Le Mans that meant parts of the circuit were underwater while other bits were dry. Oh yes .. and it rained and rained … and then rained a bit more and then just to keep everybody on their toes it rained very, very hard indeed. Miserable for the fans but hell for the drivers and a desperate challenge for the technical staff. It was so wet that everything became susceptible to damp .. from EC's to radios. The electronic brains that worked gearboxes in the dry sank without trace in the deluges. Teams lost telemetry and worse still they couldn't even talk to the drivers. To be without telemetry caught out even the most experienced managers, leaving them flying without instruments! Why so bad? Why were we so surprised? Maybe because most teams, except Audi, seemed