Privateers Beat the Factory Corvettes
Le Mans, June 14, 2003

By Erik Nielsen

Pictures copyright and courtesy Ferrari Media

The Prodrive Ferrari has been fast in the last couple of years in sport car racing, but in this year's Le Mans, it was also reliable. The small British team managed to pull off a coup at le Sarthe, by dominating the GTS class and lead the entire race, much to the disappointment of the factory sponsored Corvettes. This result was the first win for a GT Ferrari since 1974 at the biggest race of them all.

At the end of the 24 hours, the number 88 car of Jamie Davies, Tomas Enge, and Peter Kox was 10 laps ahead of last year's GTS winning Corvette of Gavin, Pilgrim and Collins. So far ahead, in fact, that the car was actually detailed in the pits during the last hour to look good for the photographs.

Jamie Davies: "I think the best memory I will take away with me today will be the podium, standing there and seeing everyone below and all around us enjoying it as much as we were. We have a fantastic team, a really fast car which ran beautifully all day and did it all at the home of the most famous sports car race in the world. What more can you want?"

Tomas Enge: "I wanted to take everything this weekend, but Peter stopped me when he got the GTS fastest lap this morning! But starting from the pole and leading the class all the way through the race is more than I could have dreamed of. After last year's race, which was very disappointing for us, we have worked very hard on reliability, doing many, many tests, and this has paid us today."

Peter Kox: "It's been a fantastic day, and I can't quite believe it at the moment. The car ran perfectly all day, the gearbox was fantastic and we didn't have any problems with our pit stops. Perhaps we were a bit lucky that the Corvettes had more problems than usual, as we weren't challenged on the track as hard as we might have been, but that shouldn't take away from our victory which is really deserved by the whole team."