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Enge: we would have won easily

Tomas Enge has rued the bad luck that he reckons cost Aston Martin the GT1 class victory in this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans

The Prodrive-run DBR9s hit trouble at opposite ends of the race, with the no.58 car driven by Enge, Darren Turner and Andrea Piccini losing six laps with a broken oil reservoir in the first hour, and then their teammates Pedro Lamy, Stephane Sarrazin and Stephane Ortelli suffering clutch failure while leading with three hours to go.

These disasters allowed arch-rivals Chevrolet to snatch the GT1 class again.

"The problem is that we were unlucky," Enge said after recovering to second in class. "We had a few small issues, especially at the beginning of the race. Our sister car had issues at the end of the race.

"We should have won with both cars easily without these problems but these things happen.

"It's a very long race and that's why people think it's one of the hardest races of the year. So we need to to keep working and next year come back to try to beat them at last."

Turner accepted responsibility for the incident that initially delayed his car.

"Last year it was me (to blame), and a little bit this year as well," said Turner.

"Obviously last year I caught a few penalties and that made it a little bit difficult for us and the result got away.

"And this year at the start of the race I had a late call for the pit stop and damaged the car - the oil reservoir - so it cost us six laps and then we were always playing catch up to the rest of the field.

"But I think both Tomas and Andrea did a great job during the race to make us come back up the field and finish on the podium, which is my best result as well, so I'm pleased for the team that we managed to get the car back up."

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