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Mansell crashes at Le Mans, Peugeot on top

Nigel Mansell crashed on his Le Mans 24 Hours debut on Saturday while race favourites Peugeot led despite losing their pole position car.

After nine hours the diesel-engined Peugeot 908 held the first two places. The new Audi R15 filled the next three spots ahead of a Lola Aston Martin and a third Peugeot.

Mansell, 56, competing in a Ginetta Zytek with sons Greg and Leo, spun and hit the guardrail 20 minutes after the 55 cars had left the grid.

“He’s having some extra checks. He took a bit of a knock but he should be fine,” son Greg, 22, told Eurosport television after the 1992 F1 champion was seen being extracted from the car and helped to an ambulance.

“With the adrenalin it’s better to be safe than sorry. At the moment it looks like something happened on the rear going down the straight but we don’t yet know what it was.”

Some trepidation

Mansell Snr said before the race he had always wanted to compete here but did so with some trepidation.

“I have got butterflies ... anyone without them wouldn’t do the best job,” he said.

“To finish the race would be a massive achievement and if you can compete, that is something else.”

The safety cars were deployed after the crash on the damp and slippery 13.4-km Sarthe circuit.

Peugeot appeared race favourites after sweeping the front two rows of the starting grid in qualifying and then initially holding their positions in the event proper.

The French team, however, suffered a setback after three hours when their pacesetting number three car, which ex-Formula One driver Sebastien Bourdais had put on pole, withdrew due to a front suspension failure.

After nine hours the Peugeot number two was in the lead with Frenchman Franck Montagny at the wheel.

The non-works Oreca Peugeot driven by Frenchman Nicolas Lapierre was second and the first Audi R15 driven by Swiss Marcel Faessler in third, one and two laps off the pace respectively.