LM24: David Brabham's Le Mans Race Win Blog

Le Mans / ALMS

LM24: David Brabham’s Le Mans Race Win Blog

SPEEDtv.com’s David Brabham tells his tale of winning the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans with Peugeot.

David Brabham | Posted June 15, 2009 Le Mans (FRA)

David Brabham followed sixteen years behind older brother Geoff to claim the overall win for Peugeot at Le Mans. (LAT)

David Brabham, along with Marc Gene and Alex Wurz took top honors in Sunday’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Brabs, who has been blogging all week long in the run-up the twice-around-the-clock classic, files his final entry, reflecting on his first overall win in the famed French endurance race.

It’s still going to take a while for it to sink in that I’m actually the 2009 Le Mans 24 Hours winner! I woke up this morning and had a deep sense of gratitude that I’ve had such an amazing race and amazing result. It’s something I’ve worked towards for a long time. I’ve not always had an opportunity to win outright, though. Of course I’ve had opportunities in GT and taken the last two GT1 wins with Aston Martin Racing, but winning for Peugeot overall is something in a different league.

I’ve really only had one other chance to win overall, and that was at Bentley where we finished second. I look at it as it’s been an amazing journey, and sometimes when the journey takes a while to get there it’s more rewarding. That’s how I feel.

Today is filled with traveling to Peugeot and meeting with the employees, the directors, and everyone else that’s put their heart and soul into turning this program into a Le Mans winner. The race started off with Stephane Sarrazin in our sister car streaking into the lead and we were happy to follow suit.

My first stint was filled with traffic, which was a little frustrating. Being to Le Mans before, you end up being faced with things like that. At that stage, all you’re trying to do is get into the rhythm of the race. When I got out of the car, I thought it wasn’t one of my better stints, but it would come.

Of course when I got into my second run, we were already starting to see a high wear on our front brakes, which was a bit of a concern. So we ended up having to adjust our driving to actually help protect the braking. We couldn’t attack like some of the others, but that may have been a blessing in disguise. It allowed us to drive in a sensible way, which helped us win the race.

We also had some clutch issues and had to adapt to a different way coming out of the pits. Obviously car 7 had a problem right away and car 7 and 8 both had to change front splitters a couple of times because of collisions or the new curbing, which we mainly avoided. I think some of the other guys didn't because you would lose a lot of time avoiding them on the track but then lose way more time in the pits making repairs to the car.

Looking back at the whole week, everything pretty much went according to plan. Our whole strategy was different to the other cars, as we never thought about qualifying, really. Our entire focus was on the race and it’s great to see it pay off for us.

The No. 9 Peugeot had a near-flawless race, other than clutch and brake worries. (LAT)

It was a very impressive operation to watch all week with Peugeot executing everything perfectly. It was impressive, yet quite dramatic actually! The preparation that these guys did particularly this year was incredible. You don’t walk up to Le Mans and do a job like that just by luck. You make your own luck. They certainly did that.

After having two trouble-filled Le Mans races, it was nice to see Peugeot come away with what was a fairly routine race for our car. I can’t say it was boring; blasting around Le Mans in an LMP1 prototype is never boring, but the whole race week just went smoothly for us.

Looking at how things went for us and then how things went for Audi, I’d say we almost had an “Audi-like” race. It was like clockwork and the organization and effort within the team is something I think really showed.

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David Brabham

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