Like most cats, 'The Lion' wanted nothing to do with Le Mans once their 908's got wet. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos

Le Mans is a thinking man’s game, but somehow Peugeot thought they could change the paradigm of how the race has been won by showing up to an endurance race with a car in sprint race configuration. Audi, realizing that their R10’s were no match for the 908’s, didn’t bother with overhauling their entire car for 2008—they opted for a ‘brains over brawn’ approach to best Peugeot.

Had Peugeot invested their time in improving their chess game—just what they’d said they needed to do, Audi would likely be lamenting a loss right now. As it turns out, the R10 engineers only had only two tricks to try and beat the 908’s. The first was to minimize their time spent on pit lane.

The second was to compromise on their car’s setup to perform in wet or dry conditions. The R10’s would give up some time each lap in the dry, but would suffer less when it rained.

With those two plans in place, they’d make up some of that lost time on track by giving up less on pit lane, and they’d used the forecasted rain to completely neutralize Peugeot’s efforts if the conditions changed.

The opposite was true for Audi. A perfect setup for all conditions was maximized by Tom Kristensen--especially so at night in the downpour that visited Le Mans. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos

As Peugeot continued to throw money at the 908’s to make them faster, Le Mans began to look like an opportunity for them to inflate their egos. Peugeot, like Forman, would only accept a knockout. Audi kept things simple--brilliantly simple--they kept touch with Peugeot while it was dry, and waited until the rain began to fall. Audi didn’t need their ego stroked for 24 hours as Peugeot did; they were only interested in leading across the finish line. Not only did they know that preparing for rain offered their best chances, they also knew Peugeot wanted to show the world how fast their toys were in the dry.

And when the rain began to fall just after midnight, the Audi Sport team must have been shaking their heads in disbelief as they watched Peugeot Sport play right into their hands, making every strategical and egotistical mistake they should have avoided. Lacking the setup to survive the rain, Villeneuve’s leading #7 908 looked like it deployed parachutes once the circuit became slick. Kristensen coolly passed him and motored toward his 8th win.

“I would call it more setup than strategy, because this way was the only one we could go,” said Jo Hausner, Audi’s Head of Vehicle Engineering. “Hope for rain and prepare the cars for this. That's the only thing we did and luckily it worked.

“All other options where not logical because we where nowhere near to be in a position to beat them on the track. So, as I said, this was the only way to go - quite simple. We were not allowed a mistake, and we were all aware and prepared.”

So it would be an oversimplification to state that Audi’s race strategy was to simply pray for rain, but monitoring and planning their race with the forecasted rain in mind was lass a masterstroke of genius than just a dose of common sense.

The weather forecast was pulled up on Friday and said that rain would be upon us sometime Saturday night, and it looked to be more than a brief shower. This wasn’t a secret, yet Peugeot didn’t seem motivated to alter their plans.

Which begs the question: if common sense is indeed common, why was it completely lacking from Peugeot’s own race strategy? There was no excuse for Peugeot to fail to properly account for wet weather; a 908 could have won if the team had chosen to improve their tactical plans rather than pumping their 908’s full of steroids over winter.

With the massive speed differential Peugeot enjoyed over Audi, the practical choice would have been to mimic Audi and set their 908’s up for wet/dry conditions. With their enormous speed superiority in hand, adding more downforce and adjusting the alignment to maximize wet and dry tires would have surely reduced their comfort margin to the R10’s, but Peugeot still would have found themselves with faster, ‘all-weather’ cars that were easier to drive.

Instead of a five second advantage, they’d maybe only enjoy half of that, but they’d be able to run for 24 hours unchallenged no matter what the track surface looked like. While opting for a wet/dry setup would have been Peugeot’s salvation, Audi doesn’t expect them to make the same mistake again in ‘09.

“We all knew the way to handle the 24 hours was to go flat out and to make no mistakes,” Hausner said. “That's what we expected from drivers and the whole team. This has been like a big win in a lottery--nothing else. Something like that will not happen again.”

Which begs another question: why did Peugeot feel the need to gamble on race strategy when the path to victory was so easy, and so well illuminated?