Although in recent years Audi have made a habit of winning at Le Mans, repeatedly fending off determined challenges from formidable adversaries like Toyota and Peugeot and placing first overall no fewer than 12 times since 2000, in 2014 an Audi victory was by no means a foregone conclusion. This was in view of excellent performances by Toyota in races earlier in the year, as well as the reappearance of a Porsche works team.

Porsche, which has a long history of participation and wins at Le Mans, entered two of their new 919 hybrid models in the LMP1 class.

However, in motor sport many factors influence results, and nothing is predictable with certainty. Audi ended up not only winning for the thirteenth time, but also taking second place.

The Le Mans 24 Hours, held this year for the 82nd time, takes place every year on a weekend in June on a 13.629 km circuit, starting on Saturday afternoon and ending on Sunday afternoon.

This year saw a record attendance of 263,300 spectators. Entries are limited to a total of 55 cars in four classes: Le Mans Prototype (LMP)1 and LMP2, which are pure racing cars built to Le Mans specifications, and GTE Pro and GTE Am, respectively for professional and amateur drivers in cars that started their life as production models.

Fastest are the LMP1s, whose performance equals that of Formula 1 cars. They reach 330 km/h on the straights and can lap the circuit at an average of 240 km/h.

The Le Mans 24 Hours is the high point of the World Endurance Championship (WEC), which differs from races held under other regulations, including Formula 1, in that while the latter have a relatively short duration of an hour or two, WEC events are all about endurance as well as speed and run for six, 12 or 24 hours at a stretch during which the cars are continually pushed to their limits - and beyond!

The Le Mans 24 Hours is generally considered the toughest, most demanding test in motor racing for both cars and drivers and in fact 16 entrants - over a quarter of the field - did not finish. All cars are driven by a team of three drivers.

Expectations rose when Toyota No. 7 (Alexander Wurz, Stephane Sarrazin, Kazuki Nakajima) captured pole position on the starting grid and the second Toyota took third place (No. 8 - Anthony Davidson, Nicolas Lapierre, Sebastien Buemi). Furthermore the two Porsches placed second (No. 14 - Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, Marc Lieb) and fourth (No. 20 - Timo Bernhard, Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley) relegating the three Audis to fifth (No. 3 - Marco Bonanomi, Filipe Albuquerque, Oliver Jarvis), sixth (No. 2 - Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler, Benoit Treluyer - a trio who won in 2011 and 2012) and seventh (No. 1 - Tom Kristensen, Lucas di Grassi, Loic Duval). Wurz, Buemi and Webber are former F1 drivers. Kristensen won at Le Mans nine times and was hoping for a record tenth win.

Pole-holder Toyota 7 took the lead from the start, but after 90 minutes it rained heavily on part of the circuit including most of the 6 km long Mulsanne Straight where, despite two evenly spaced chicanes, cars reach their highest speed. Not unusually at Le Mans, the rain did not extend to other parts of the circuit, which remained completely dry.

This created serious problems regarding choice of tyres, and led to several accidents, including a collision between a Ferrari 458 Italia and Audi No. 3 being driven by Bonanomi which forced both to retire.

Toyota 7 led the pack for the first two hours, but in the third hour Porsche 20 took and held the lead, causing quite a stir.

A Porsche in the lead! Porsche hold the record for the greatest number of wins, 16 between 1970 and 1998. Though remaining always well represented in the GT classes, they had now returned in the LMP1 class and the question on everyone’s lips was, will they be successful again at their first attempt? Porsche 20 stayed first for two hours but hopes waned when in the fifth hour Toyota 7 again took the lead and held it for hour after hour until at the 13th hour, halfway through the race, it was nearly a lap ahead of Audi 2 and third-placed Porsche 20.

After several years of near misses, a deserved Toyota win was at last increasingly looking likely. Then disaster struck: an electrical fault immobilised the Toyota.

Technical director Vasselon said the Toyota engineers had identified a wiring problem, had monitored its development and were just about to call the car to the pits on its next passage to effect a simple repair which would have taken a mere two or three minutes.

Heartbreakingly, seconds later a short circuit put the whole electrical system out of action with the car still far from the pits. Retirement was unavoidable and driver Nakajima was inconsolable.

Meanwhile Porsche 20, which had been steadily holding fourth, then third place behind Toyota 7 and one or both of the Audis, moved up to second place on the Toyota’s retirement.

For several hours Audi 1 kept the lead, raising hopes for a tenth win by Dane Tom Kristensen, but with three hours to go the Audi pitted with turbo troubles and dropped several laps behind.

Porsche 20 took first place with Audi 2 second, and once more a Porsche victory looked possible. An absorbing, hotly contested battle lasting many laps took place between Webber in Porsche 20 and Treluyer in Audi 2, until two hours before the finish mechanical problems forced Webber’s retirement, enabling Audi 2 to win the race with Audi 1 second and Toyota 8 third.

Understandably, attention is focused mainly on potential overall winners from the LMP1 class, but a great deal happens further back and competition among the 19 LMP2 entrants was intense, with the lead changing many times.

The eventual class winner was the Zytec Z11SN-Nissan No 38, also a very good fifth overall 23 laps behind the winning Audi. Second (sixth overall) was the Ligier JS P2-Nissan 46 and third (seventh overall) the Alpine A450b-Nissan 36.

The GT classes are also invariably fiercely contested. There were nine GTE Pro entrants: three Ferrari 458 Italias, two Chevrolet Corvettes, three Porsche 911 RSRs and one Aston Martin Vantage V8 (two were entered but one withdrew at the last minute after ­qualifying).

Best placed on the starting grid was Ferrari 51, one of whose drivers was Giancarlo Fisichella, who raced in F1 till 2009. For the first 12 hours the lead was held in turn by Ferrari, Corvette, Porsche and particularly Aston Martin, but after the 13th hour Ferrari 51 began to dominate and went on to win the class. Second was Corvette 73 and third Porsche 92.

The GTE Am class had 18 entries: 11 Ferrari 458 Italias, five Porsche 911 RSRs and 911 GT3 RSRs, and two Aston Martin Vantage V8s. In the first couple of hours a Ferrari, then a Porsche led, but very soon the Astons asserted themselves, No 98 leading until the tenth hour, when No 95 took over and held the lead till the end, with Porsche 88 second and Ferrari 61 third.