It felt like a privilege to follow the tyre tracks of such an epic battle

So far this millennium an Audi has been pretty much the car in which to drive back from Le Mans. You might have wanted to be in a Bentley in 2003, but otherwise it’s been pretty much four rings all the way.

This year, however, as my sister, her boyfriend Clive and I cruised towards la Sarthe at a gendarme-enforced 130 clicks (resulting in an acceptable 26.2mpg average), there was the unappealing possibility that we might have to endure the smug looks of people in 207 GTIs on the return trip. Yes, it would have been some compensation to know that they were in just about the worst hot hatch on sale and we were in an achingly cool V8 super-coupe with a four-wheel-drive system split 40/60 front to rear, but it would have irritated like a smeary windscreen nonetheless.

So praise be to Allan McNish. It was a truly awesome sight as the three diesel-powered Peugeot 908 HDis swept up the main straight at 3 o’clock on the Saturday afternoon. Their times in qualifying and practice had been stunning, besting the equally diesely Audi R10s by nearly four seconds a lap in some cases, and as they set off in formation it seemed inevitable that at least one of the three would have covered the greatest distance in 24 hours’ time. Yet even from the first lap the small Scotsman was like a terrier, ignoring the formbook, harrying the weakest of the Peugeots and refusing to let them get away.

Audi needed to make fewer pit-stops and, come midnight, McNish was back in the car doing a quadruple stint so that the team didn’t have to waste time changing drivers. It was McNish again who put in three hours of consistently stunning times during the rain that had started when Clive and I were out dodging gendarmes to get a glimpse of the cars charging headlong down Les Hunaudieres at four in the morning (we weren’t entirely successful, but I did somehow manage to get the men in blue to give us a lift back to the S5).

The whole of the pit straight seemed tense during the last hour. People hardly spoke a word as they watched Minassian in his 908 trying valiantly to grapple back the two and a half minutes that the no.2 Audi had eked out with the aid of a soaking track, but when a left-rear puncture left him with a car that wanted to swap ends every time he touched the brakes or turned the wheel, the game was up.

It had to be the best of Audi’s eight victories at Le Mans, because this year they were the underdogs. It certainly felt like a privilege to be following in the tyre tracks of such an epic battle when we drove the public road sections of the circuit on the Sunday evening.

And as we cruised back in great comfort on the Monday morning, V8 gently woofling, it was nice not having to worry about small, smug French hatchbacks.