Lena Gade, 35, from South Harrow near London, became the first female Le Mans winning engineer

Editor’s Blog: British race engineer, Lena Gade, becomes first female to engineer winning car at Le Mans

IT’S BEEN a while since I last visited Le Mans, the 24 hour classic in La Sarthe, France.

It remains a fascinating race for a number of reasons – the sheer human and engineering willpower to make it through the 24 hours is the first; the skill of the drivers and the dangers of the race the second. The latter was dramatically demonstrated by Audi.

I watched in horror when Alan McNish clipped a Ferrari backmarker and spun wildly into the barriers; and then there was Mike Rockenfeller’s even more potentially dangerous accident during the night when he touched a backmarker and speared into the barriers (Yahoo has a video here: Another Audi in a big crash) – at full chat down the Mulsanne. Fortunately both Audi drivers escaped unharmed.

With two down, that left one Audi versus four Peugeots hotfoot in pursuit.

So it says much for the cool head of a British engineer – Leena Gade – who was in charge of the remaining diesel-engined Audi R18 TDI, driven by Beno