BMW wins at Le Mans

The car that qualified in sixth spent much of the closing hours of the race holding off the Toyota GT-One of Ukyo Katayama until the Japanese team suffered a puncture with less than 45 minutes to go.

The BMW survived the 24 hours while potentially faster competition from Toyota and Mercedes suffered accidents and mechanical failure.

Thierry Boutsen and Martin Brundle crashed out two of the Toyotas while Mercedes withdrew their remaining entry when Peter Dumbreck suffered an enormous and controversial accident in the troubled Mercedes CLR.

The leading BMW of JJ Letho crashed on lap 305 promoting the Martini car to the lead. The Letho car had led for ten hours with the eventual winners shadowing them in second. The two BMW's succeeded in holding their own throughout the night while Katayama's Toyota gained ground slowly.

Letho's retirement meant the No 15 BMW was fighting for the lead instead of supporting the No 17 car which had had a safety margin of two laps.

The Audi R8Rs finished third and fourth despite having qualified badly. The No 8 car of Emanuele Pirro, Frank Biela and Didier Theys finished ahead of the Michele Alboreto, Rinaldo Capello and Laurent Aiello car.

The second Audi spent the final hours of the race trading fourth place with the No 13 Courage-Nissan C52 of Andrea Montermini, Alex Caffi and Mimmo Schiattarella which finally finished in fifth.

Sixth place was taken by the No 12 Panoz of David Brabham, Eric Barnard and Butch Leitzinger. Both Panoz's suffered a number of problems throughout the race with the number No 11 car of Magnussen, O'Connell and Agnelli doing well to finish in 11th.

In 10th place overall, the winner of the GTS category was the No 51 Team ORECA Chrysler Viper of Olivier Beretta, Karl Wendlinger and Dominique Dupuy. The team's number 52 car, driver by Tommy Archer, Justin Bell and Marc Duez, finished 12th overall to take second in the class after they suffered a number of gearbox related problems.

Third place in the GTS category was taken by another Viper, the No 56 car of Chamberlain Engineering driven by Ni Amorin, John Hugenholtz and Toni Seiler.

Final results from 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours: