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Comments about the retirement of Audi R15 TDI #2 - Sunday, June 14, 2009
at 02:36
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2009/06/13
Comments about the retirement of Audi R15 TDI #2
Ingolstadt/Le Mans – At 9:30 p.m. the race at Le Mans for the Audi R15 TDI with start number two ended. Lucas Luhr left the track entering the Porsche Curves and slammed heavily backwards into the tire wall. Although the German still tried to bring the car back to the pits, the stewards, however, prohibited Luhr, who shared the cockpit of the diesel sportscar with Mike Rockenfeller and Marco Werner, to return to the track for safety reasons because the car was losing oil. A technical defect can be excluded.
Lucas Luhr: "I still can’t exactly explain the reason for the accident. I braked normally for the Porsche Curves when the rear suddenly stepped out of line. I tried to correct and collect the car, but the sector is simply too fast for this. The car spun around before slamming into the tire barrier very hard. Even though the Audi was still running the corner workers didn’t allow me to return to the track. We now have to analyze just exactly what happened there. I’m bitterly sorry for everybody who has worked so hard for this race, and of course especially my team mates.”
Mike Rockenfeller: "First and foremost it is important that Lucas (Luhr) is okay. I couldn’t believe it at first when I saw the pictures of the accident on the screen. After losing a car myself in difficult conditions during my first Le Mans race for Audi I had hoped that such a thing would never happen to us again. I was just getting ready for my next stint. We are all extremely disappointed since not reaching the finish at Le Mans is the worst possible scenario for a racing driver.”
Marco Werner: "Le Mans is the world’s toughest race – as many people have unfortunately found out today. Le Mans has given me a great deal, but sometimes it makes you pay a high price. Just like today. The guys from Audi and the team have worked incredibly hard throughout the whole week, they never got to bed early once and have invested so much passion in this project. It hurts now to just see how many mechanics are standing here with tears in their eyes. For Lucas (Luhr) and I Le Mans was the race of the year since we no longer race in the American Le Mans Series. We’ve had some fantastic years here and had as good as assumed that all the cars would reach the finish in one piece. Today showed us painfully that you just simply shouldn’t think like this.”
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