Le Mans 24 hours

The closing stages

The final 90 minutes of this amazing race have possibly been some of the most tense and exciting moments the Team have ever experienced.

Of course, every race entered brings it’s own excitement and nail-biting moments for a motorsport team. There’s something about Le Mans that just makes it that ‘extra special’. Could it be the fact that it’s arguably the most prestigious race in the world?

As you will probably be aware, the #83 Seikel Motorsport Porsche 911 has been leading the GT2 category for some time now and in a comfortable lead.

At 3.30pm, a message appears on the pit screen reading “#83 stopped on circuit” and the big screens around the 13.650 km circuit showed images of a stationary 911.

The atmosphere in the Team garage becomes one of anxiety. Could it be possible that reliability has got the better of the Seikel car?

It takes around thirty minutes for the Porsche to get to its garage. Richard Dean driving the Panoz had reduced the gap and takes the lead as the Seikel team work to repair their car.

This they do and it returns to the track 2.54 minutes behind the Team LNT car. However, the Sheffield-based team still have one more pit stop to do.

Dean’s lap times are back to former racing form as the race for the win builds while the clock counts down to the finale.

A little over 30 minutes of the race remains. Dean pits for fuel only (to save time) and soon returns to the track – 1.55 minute ahead. Could the Porsche catch the Panoz?

Twenty minutes to go. The Porsche hits a barrier pushing too hard and bodywork is seen hanging loose from the rear of the car.

Everybody in the Team LNT garage anxiously looks at the race times on the pit monitor and counting down the minutes to the end of the race. Fingers were crossed that there would be an incident-free end.

Alas the chequered flag waves and Dean takes the win in the GT2 category at Le Mans. Overall (including cars from the other three categories in the race) the Panoz classified 15th place.

And so it finished 1st #81 Panoz, 2nd #83 Porsche, 3rd #87 Ferrari

There will be a multitude of photos on this site and full race classification in due course from the event here on TeamLNT.com