PEUGEOT’S big pace advantage was keeping the French team’s number seven car, driven by Marc Gene, Jacques Villeneuve and Nicolas Minassian, in the lead as the Le Mans 24-Hour race went into its eighth hour last night, but it was only a minute ahead of the Audi R10 driven by Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello.

The three Audi drivers were doing double stints behind the wheel and making their tyres last twice as long to cut down on the number of pit stops and keep in touch with the faster Peugeot in a race that concludes at 2pm today.

Earlier, McNish had taken advantage of a series of mechanical problems that affected all three Peugeot cars to lead the classic race. The Scot handed over to teammate Capello at the head of the field after a two-and-three-quarter-hour opening stint, ahead of the Peugeot number seven. Peugeot controlled the early stages of the race, quickly establishing a comfortable cushion ahead of McNish. The Scot, who acknowledged beforehand that the race was Peugeot’s to lose, made a defiant passing move around the Dunlop Curve on the first lap, nosing past Minassian, but was quickly re-passed as the trio of French cars, initially headed by Pedro Lamy, began to build a lead.

By lap 27, around an hour and a half into the race, the leading Peugeot was almost a minute and a half ahead of McNish — but then Stephane Sarrazin had to go into the pits with gearbox problems that took the French team 20 minutes to fix, dropping it seven laps behind the leaders. Soon afterwards, the third Peugeot, being driven by Franck Montagny, Ricardo Zonta and Christian Klien, was ordered into the pits by the stewards because its headlights were not working. Although the pit crew replaced the entire front section, it took more than two minutes — and then the Peugeot seven, with Villeneuve now at the wheel, was forced into the pits with a puncture, enabling McNish to lead.

Minassian retook the lead when a shorter pit stop enabled him to jump ahead, and he increased the lead to about 30 seconds before handing over to former F1 driver Villeneuve — but Audi, with Capello still at the wheel, gradually began to claw back the gap. Capello was then passed by the Peugeot number nine car, and once Montagny, Zonta and Klien had worked their way back in touch with the leader, Peugeot ordered Villeneuve to let Montagny through — only for Klien to spin in a gravel trap. It took about two minutes for a rescue vehicle to extract the Austrian, by which time both Gene and Kristensen had gone past.

Peugeot had dominated qualifying, taking the three top slots on the grid, with the fastest Audi back in fourth, five seconds slower than the pole-time set by Sarrazin. To put Peugeot’s improvement on the previous year in further context, Sarrazin’s lap of 3min 18.513sec was eight seconds faster than last year’s pole time.

However, the Audi team, while accepting their rivals had the edge on them for speed, remained calm, knowing that their quicker pit stops, superior reliability and fuel consumption would ensure they did not fall too far behind the French team — and that pressure, along with the knowledge their home crowd is expecting them to win easily, could lead to Peugeot making mistakes.

The hopes of McNish supporters first rose briefly when Lamy’s race-leading Peugeot came in for its first pit stop after only nine laps, suggesting it had been fuelled light and driven aggressively. However it was quickly followed in by Frank Biela in the Audi number one, confirming the teams’ strategies may not have been as different as many had presumed.

McNish, who made his first pit stop from fourth position two laps later, is desperate to record his second victory in this classic race. He won with Porsche in 1998, and this year was looking to become the first Briton to drive a diesel-engined sportscar to victory.

In the run-up to the race, he tried to add to any doubts in the minds of the opposition, implying Peugeot were not as united as Audi.

“In sheer pace terms they have the edge, but it’s about what’s going on in their heads,” said McNish. He said he and teammates Kristensen and Capello could “pick up the pieces” when the Peugeot team drivers, mostly former F1 drivers, slip up — and as of 10 o’clock last night, that is exactly what they were doing.

If they are successful, it would be a third consecutive Le Mans win for Audi, though not for McNish. Last year he, Capello and Kristensen were more than three laps clear when, 17 hours into the race, a wheel nut problem caused Capello to crash, enabling one of the other Audi cars, being driven by Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner, to take the victory. Given the speed advantage enjoyed by the Peugeot, victory would be a truly remarkable effort on the part of McNish and his Danish and Italian teammates.

- Le Mans, today, British Eurosport, 10am, 1pm

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