The 10 greatest LMP1 races ranked

This weekend's final round of the World Endurance Championship in Bahrain will bring down the curtain on one of endurance racing's most exciting eras.

The LMP1 category has been in a steady decline since the departure of Porsche in 2017 left Toyota as its only manufacturer, while privateer numbers have gradually dwindled to the point where Toyota's two cars will run unopposed in Bahrain.

But at its peak, the category produced some true classics, as Audi and Peugeot went toe-to-toe during the turbodiesel years before Toyota and Porsche joined Audi for the WEC hybrid era.

Autosport picks out the best contests from a category that has helped define endurance racing this century.

10. 2004 Monza 1000Km (Le Mans Endurance Series)

A stunning opportunist manoeuvre decided an amazing race between the two Veloqx Audis in the inaugural Le Mans Endurance Series race at Monza in May 2004. The difference between the two factory-backed R8s over the course of the four-hour race was Johnny Herbert's overtaking move on the grass on the exit of the Ascari Chicane.

Herbert, who co-drove his R8 with Jamie Davies, was chasing Pierre Kaffer, in the car started by Allan McNish, through the third hour. The Brit knew he was quicker, but was concerned about finding an opportunity to make it past an identical car (the evenly matched Audis were rarely separated by much more than 20 seconds). He saw that chance coming when he spied a Ferrari GT1 car 200 or so metres up the road as they exited the second Lesmo.

"The grass, as I expected, was like a bowling green and my momentum allowed me to pass" Johnny Herbert

"I knew Pierre was going to catch the Ferrari on the exit of the chicane and I needed to keep my momentum so I could get a run down to the Parabolica," recalls Herbert. "It was more or less planned and I thought I might have to put a couple of wheels on the grass as I went around the Ferrari."

Herbert had to go much wider than he anticipated: "I knew the grass was flat and there was no drop from the kerb, so I changed up early to avoid spinning the wheels and just kept my foot in and put all four wheels off track. The grass, as I expected, was like a bowling green and my momentum allowed me to pass."

The race was far from over, however. A late rain storm allowed McNish to come back at Herbert. He caught the leader, despite two offs at the first chicane, and ended up just six tenths behind at the finish.

9. 2000 Grand Prix of Mosport (American Le Mans Series)

Joest Audi drivers Allan McNish and Dindo Capello pretty much dominated the rain-affected Mosport round of the American Le Mans Series in the summer of 2000. That was until the track surface of the majestic former home of the Canadian Grand Prix started to dry up.

Jorg Muller, aboard the Schnitzer BMW V12 LMR he shared with JJ Lehto, had ducked into the pits with 20 minutes of the race to go to take on slick tyres. Audi reacted by bringing in the delayed second car, shared by Emanuele Pirro and Frank Biela, for dries two laps later, but chose to leave the race leader out on wet-weather Michelins.

As the clock ticked down at the end of a race lasting two hours and 45 minutes, Muller started to take giant chunks of time out of the Audi R8 at the head of the field. The BMW gained seven seconds on the penultimate lap, leaving him just four behind with one lap to go. The odds were now firmly in favour of the previous year's Le Mans-winning machine.

Muller caught Capello through Turn 8 at the end of the long back straight, but the Audi driver somehow kept his nose in front through the final two corners to hang on to take victory by 0.148s. It was generally reckoned to be the closest competitive finish in the history of top-line international sportscar racing up to that time.

"I thought I had no chance because the car was all over the place," says Capello. "I drove those last two corners as though I was on slicks."

McNish reckoned it was question of bottle at the end.

"Dindo proved his nerve," he says. "It was about who wanted it the most."

8. 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours

It was arguably the high-water mark in manufacturer participation at the sharp end of the grid in the history of Le Mans. BMW, Audi, Nissan and Panoz with LMP machinery went up against Toyota, Mercedes and Audi (again) with GTP coupes. An open-top prototype prevailed, but only just.

BMW claimed the win over Toyota in a dramatic final encounter. It was far from clear who was going to come out in top in the battle between the Schnitzer BMW V12 LMR shared by Pierluigi Martini, Yannick Dalmas and Joachim Winkelhock and the Toyota GT-One with the all-Japanese crew of Ukyo Katayama, Toshio Suzuki and Keiichi Tsuchiya as the race entered the last hour.

My favourite race: When BMW was the last team standing at Le Mans

As exciting as it was, the 'wrong' Toyota was battling with the 'wrong' BMW as the race drew to a conclusion

Katayama was going hell for leather in the Japanese car built and run from the same Cologne factory where today's Toyota LMP1 programme is run. His pursuit of the BMW came to an end when he was forced across the kerb at the first chicane on the Mulsanne Straight by a year-old privateer BMW driven by Thomas Bscher. The puncture that followed ripped another chance of Le Mans victory from Toyota's grasp.

As exciting as it was, the 'wrong' Toyota was battling with the 'wrong' BMW as the race drew to a conclusion. The event was shaping up into an all-out war between the GT-One of Thierry Boutsen, Ralf Kelleners and Allan McNish and the V12 LMR shared by Tom Kristensen, JJ Lehto and Jorg Muller.

Both crews will tell you they had the pace to win, but they never got to prove it. Neither finished the race. Boutsen was punted off by a GT2 car at the Dunlop Chicane. Kristensen and co nearly looked home and dry on Sunday morning until a freak series of failures put Lehto in the wall at the Porsche Curves.

7. 2002 Grand Prix of Washington (ALMS)

The tiny Panoz team really had no business beating the megabuck Audi squad in the American Le Mans Series in the early 2000s. Yet five times from 2000-02 its quirky front-engined prototypes overcame the Audi R8 in the rough and tumble of what was at the time the world's top sportscar series. The best of those victories - and the last - came at the Washington DC city circuit in 2002.

The track suited the torquey Roush-Yates motor mounted ahead of Jan Magnussen and David Brabham in what had become known as the Panoz LMP-01 Evo after a winter makeover. There was little to choose between the two Joest-run factory Audis and the best of the Panoz entries on a 1.66-mile track laid out in a car park in the shadow of a sports stadium. All three cars spent time in the lead over the course of a topsy-turvy race lasting two hours and 45 minutes.

Audi looked to have gained the upper hand at the final round of pitstops under a safety car when Tom Kristensen and Emanuele Pirro stayed aboard the two Audis and didn't take tyres. Magnussen took over from Brabham and got a new set of Michelins.

That left Magnussen nine seconds back for the run to the flag. Yet on fresh rubber the Dane stormed into the lead in the space of just five laps. And he managed to stay there, despite the close attentions of Kristensen over the closing stages.

"There was a ton of pick-up on that track and the other guys had problems cleaning off their tyres after the final safety car," explains Magnussen. "That gave me a huge advantage for five or six laps. The stop-start circuit suited us, but I was pretty determined. We didn't have a championship to worry about, so it was win or wreck."

6. 2009 Sebring 12 Hours (ALMS)

This was another classic Audi-versus-Peugeot confrontation (see #1, 2, 3 and 4), and no apologies for picking another one in which Audi came out on top. The French manufacturer's 908 HDi FAP looked to have the measure of the new Audi R15 TDI for the majority of the 2009 Sebring 12 Hours, but when push came to shove in the deep of the Florida night it was the German make that triumphed in yet another thriller.

Peugeot had the upper hand in the heat of the day: the 908 was the quicker car, and it could do two stints on a set of Michelins to the R15's one. But when the sun went down and the track surface cooled off, Audi came back into the game on the soft-compound Michelin with the lead car shared by Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello.

"The team worked with things like tyre pressures and the traction control and I ended up with the best-balanced sportscar I had in my career" Allan McNish

The tables started to turn in its battle with the Peugeot driven by Sebastien Bourdais, Franck Montagny and Stephane Sarrazin. Albeit slowly.

"I got in for my final stint and 'H' [engineer Howden Haynes] came on the radio and said, 'Allan, Bourdais has just done a 43.5,'" recalls McNish. "Until that point the best I'd done was a 45.2s or something.

"The team worked with things like tyre pressures and the traction control, to maximise what we had," says McNish. "I ended up with the best-balanced sportscar I had in my career."

McNish moved into the lead when Bourdais made his final stop, but the 36s advantage he found himself with wasn't going to be enough to get into and out of the pits for his own last stop. A series of laps below the pole time allowed him to build enough of a gap to get in and out in front after the late splash-and-dash.

5. 2015 Silverstone 6 Hours (World Endurance Championship)

Audi had the fastest car at Silverstone for the opening round of the 2015 World Endurance Championship in its heavily revised R18 e-tron quattro. Porsche, however, had one key advantage that made life very difficult for its rival: the 919 Hybrid had more grunt out of the corners.

Porsche had moved up to the eight-megajoule hybrid class with the second-generation 919, while Audi was running in the 4MJ class. It made for an intriguing and exciting race.
The battle between the two German manufacturers came to a head leading up to the halfway point. Audi driver Marcel Fassler had latched onto the tail of race leader Neel Jani's Porsche. He passed him on multiple occasions, but could never make it stick.

Each time he was repassed by the Porsche rocketship down the Wellington Straight. Andre Lotterer then came up against Romain Dumas after the round of pitstops that followed.
He caught the Porsche on its second lap out of the pits and hung him out wide at the Village right-hander. His rival had to come off the gas and that gave the Audi driver the chance he needed.

Lotterer was ahead by the time he got to Brooklands and, at Copse and through Becketts, he was able to exploit the higher levels of downforce that the Audi was running.

"It was a little bit cheeky, but I had to make him lose momentum," remembers Lotterer. "I knew that if I was still in front by the time we got to Copse and then Becketts, I would be away."

The battle between Lotterer and Jani was actually for third place. The two Toyotas, which hadn't changed tyres at the previous pitstop, were ahead at this point. Lotterer was quickly into the lead, and even a late stop/go for Fassler failed to prevent an Audi victory.

4. 2005 Sebring 12 Hours (ALMS)

A battle between the two best sportscar drivers of their generation driving equal machinery produced one of the best ever editions of the Sebring 12 Hours. Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish battled right to the end aboard their respective Champion Racing Audi R8s in a race that could have gone either way.

Kristensen, JJ Lehto and Marco Werner ended up winning that year's American Le Mans Series opener courtesy of a tactical coup from the men on their pitstand - engineer Brad Kettler and Champion team manager Mike Peters - at the penultimate round of stops.
Kristensen was on course to lose the lead to McNish, who shared with Emanuele Pirro and Frank Biela, because he would need fresh Michelin rubber and McNish wouldn't.

With his Michelins now up to temperature, Kristensen pulled enough of a gap to see him through the final pitstop and on to a six-second victory

The crew of the #1 Audi opted to short-fuel their man, and combined with a split-second delay for McNish leaving the pits when he was blocked by an inattentive cameraman, the time gained allowed the leader to just hang on in front.

The Dane pushed like hell on cold rubber - there were no tyre warmers in the ALMS - and was still ahead when the two Audis got to the final corner on his out-lap. McNish was right with him, but not quite close enough to try to pass. With his Michelins now up to temperature, Kristensen pulled enough of a gap to see him through the final pitstop and on to a six-second victory.

McNish still believes that the events at the second-to-last round of stops cost him and his team-mates the race.

"If I'd got ahead I would have been able to take the edge off his new-tyre run," he says today. "Short-fuelling Tom was crucial. Without that I'm 99.9% sure I would have done him."

3. 2011 Le Mans 24 Hours (Intercontinental Le Mans Cup)

Audi had lucked into a ninth Le Mans victory in 2010 courtesy of a series of Peugeot engine failures. Twelve months later it made it a nice round 10 entirely on merit in the second closest competitive finish in the history of the French enduro.

There was little to choose between the new Audi R18 TDI and the second LMP1 machine to carry the Peugeot 908 type number. But the German car looked after its tyres better and had the slightest of edges on outright performance, though the French machines were crucially going a lap further on a tank of diesel.

My favourite race: When Audi's last car standing pipped Peugeot in a Le Mans classic

There was another problem for Audi: two of its three cars had crashed out before the race was even eight hours old. Everything rested on the shoulders of Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler aboard the marque's surviving entry. The pressure was on for more than two thirds of the race.

"It was flat-out all the way," recalls Lotterer. "I think we changed the lead more than 40 times [there were 41 changes to be exact]. It was a thriller."

Audi ended up prevailing over the Peugeot driven by Sebastien Bourdais, Simon Pagenaud and Pedro Lamy by just 13.9s. But it could so easily have gone the other way.

Lotterer sustained a puncture soon after his penultimate pitstop. Had the Joest Audi team brought him in straight away, the race would have been lost.

"We noticed a slow puncture and coming in that lap would have meant an extra stop and losing the race," recalls Joest boss Ralf Juttner. "Normally when you have a puncture, you tell your driver to bring it carefully back to the pits, but we had to leave Andre out there and tell him to go quickly. We didn't have a choice.

"We had a very good TPMS [tyre pressure management system] by that stage and we saw the pressure going down and then suddenly stabilise. I think he did another two laps so that we could bring the car into the pit window. That meant we didn't have to do an extra stop."

Lotterer came into the pits on the same lap that the chasing Pagenaud was due in. Joest opted to change all four tyres and still got its man out ahead by six seconds. The Peugeot didn't get new Michelins, so on fresh rubber Lotterer had the weapons to make sure of another victory for Audi.

2. 2008 Petit Le Mans (ALMS)

Allan McNish doesn't know whether to laugh or cry when he thinks back to Petit Le Mans
at Road Atlanta in 2008. The 1000-mile round of the American Le Mans Series was the scene of one of his greatest performances, but also one of his biggest gaffes.

McNish claimed a thrilling victory aboard the factory Champion Audi R10 TDI he shared with Dindo Capello and Emanuele Pirro. Yet part of the reason it was quite so dramatic was that he started the race two laps behind after spinning into the wall on the way to the grid.

"It's one I still smile about, but also one I still cringe at," says McNish. "It was a very embarrassing mistake, but it all came down to duking it out in the dark at the end."

Two crews' worth of Champion mechanics descended on the Audi after its driver had managed to haul the damaged car back to the pits. Despite the loss of two laps, the repaired car was back on the lead lap in the space of two hours and 20 minutes.

An aggressive move at Turn 6 got the Audi into the lead, and then some defensive driving down the back straight kept it ahead before he could get out of range

That was the first comeback by the winning entry in the 11th edition of Petit. A series of problems mid race delayed the car and dropped it a lap back again: there was an issue with Capello's seat insert, then a tyre glitch rectified by an additional stop, and finally an overheating problem solved by air-hosing the radiators.

It didn't look like McNish had the pace to get back on terms with the leading Peugeot 908 HDi driven by Nicolas Minassian, Stephane Sarrazin and Christian Klien, but Champion managed to haul the car onto the lead lap once more by stopping twice under the same safety car, once for fuel and once for tyres.

McNish was given new soft rubber with 36 laps left. He stormed past one of the LMP2 Penske Porsches, then the sister Audi, and finally caught Klien in the Peugeot. An aggressive move at Turn 6 got the Audi into the lead, and then some defensive driving down the back straight kept it ahead before he could get out of range of a car that enjoyed a straightline speed advantage.

McNish eked out some breathing space, but this thriller of a race still had one final twist. One last safety car, the 11th of the proceedings, meant he had to fight a rearguard action to the flag.

1. 2008 Le Mans 24 Hours

Dindo Capello summed up his triumph together with Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish at Le Mans in 2008 with the words "when the men beat the machines".

Audi's R10 TDI was no match for the Peugeot 908 HDi around the Circuit de la Sarthe, yet
three ultra-determined drivers pulled off an against-the-odds victory that stands in the minds of many as the greatest ever in the long history of the French enduro.

PLUS: The top 10 Le Mans races of all time

Stephane Sarrazin whirled the pole-winning 908 around the 8.47-mile track more than five seconds faster than the best of the German cars. But Audi knew that its ageing R10, outgunned on the straights as it was, still had a chance. But that chance would only come if it rained: the R10 had been more than a match for its French rivals when the track was wet at the Le Mans Test Day two weeks previously.

Rain was forecast, which gave Kristensen, McNish and Capello both hope and a simple task: to stay in the hunt until the weather deteriorated. That's exactly what they did courtesy of a herculean effort on the part of everyone involved.

"We were on the limit in every way to try to hang onto the Peugeots," recalls McNish. "We drove every lap like a qualifying lap. We were going to the safety car map from the end of the Porsche Curves to try to stretch the fuel and make sure we went a lap longer than we should have done. I remember coming down the pitlane at the end of my first stint right on the limit of the fuel. It was the only way if we were going to hang on in there.

"We had to keep them under pressure, or rather somehow stay in the game - that's the more appropriate term. We knew our car was competitive in the wet and theirs wasn't."

The rain came as predicted shortly after half-distance. The Audi was nearly a lap back at this point, yet an hour and a half later Kristensen was in the lead. On 18 hours, Capello put the car one lap up on the Peugeot shared by Jacques Villeneuve, Nicolas Minassian and Marc Gene. The Audi now had the edge as the cars changed back and forth from wet-weather tyres to intermediates as conditions changed.

"No one left anything on the table, the drivers, the team, the mechanics. We took risks all the time, because it was the only way we were going to beat Peugeot" Tom Kristensen

Audi's cause was aided by a cooling problem for Peugeot. Its radiators were being clogged by a mixture of soggy track debris that the team likened to paté. There looked no way back for the chasing 908. Only the race wasn't quite over.

Kristensen was tagged into a spin by an LMP2 car at the Dunlop Chicane with two hours to go and then the rain returned in the final hour. Peugeot gambled, as it had to do, on leaving Minassian on slicks whereas Kristensen was given intermediates.

Kristensen brought the Audi home to the good by the better part of a full lap. One of the biggest heists in sportscar racing history was complete.

"We smacked it," says Kristensen. "No one left anything on the table, the drivers, the team, the mechanics. We took risks all the time, because it was the only way we were going to beat Peugeot. On paper we should never have won it."