Le Mans 24 hour – 12/13 June, 2004 - June 13th 2004

Minassian and Pescarolo 2004

Nicolas Minassian, who finished the 2003 event in ninth position, teamed up with Champ Car driver Sebastien Bourdais and Emanuel Collard for this year's Le Mans challenge, driving the Judd powered Pescarolo Sport C60 entry.

A fine qualifying performance saw the team start from fifth position and Bourdais was able to keep the Audi R8 runners in his sights during the early stages of the race.

“It was Murphy’s Law, whatever could go wrong, did go wrong. We as a team had such high expectations this year, three good drivers and an improved aero package on the car…we were going to be more competitive and qualifying in fifth proved our point. We (no sorry I) had everything in hand,” Minassian joked. “In warmup we lost the engine cover and then suffered gearbox failure, not a great start.”

“Once into the race we were competitive on track until an electrical problem brought us into the pits and lost us some time to the leaders.” The C60 lost some 12 laps during the pitstop to recitfy the electrical fault.

Back on track the team continued to experience alternator problems, but worked their way back up the order to fifth position. After running strongly for no less than 282 laps, an engine failure brought an end to Minassian’s Le Mans hopes for 2004.

“I had finished LeMans two years in a row so it was disappointing that the confidence shown in me by both Playstation and Pescarolo in inviting me back for a third time, in the end came to nothing. There was a lot of effort put in by a team with a small budget to compete alongside the giants of LeMans and they responded well to our problems but what can you do, if the engine has had enough and wants to go back to England then you can’t stop it…”

Audi runners took the top three positions and without reliability problems, Minassian believes he would have been able to give the all-conquering R8’s a run for their money.

Winner: Rinaldo Capello / Seiji Ara / Tom Kristensen – Audi Sport Japan Team Goh. 379 laps.

Results