I can't resist commenting on two great races over the weekend - Peugeot's victory at 24 Hour Endurance Race at Le Mans, France, and 50-year-old Mark Martin's victory at NASCAR's LifeLock 400 at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich.

Speed Channel carried 18 hours of the Le Mans race, starting at 8:30 am Eastern time on Saturday. I watched the beginning and bits and pieces through the day and night until it ended Sunday morning.

Audi has dominated this race since the Millennium, losing only to a Bentley Speed 8 in 2003. Its gasoline-powered Audi R8s won five times - 2000-2002 and 2004-2005 - and its diesel-powered Audi R10s won three times - 2006-2008.

But this year, its new diesel-powered Audi R15 could not match the diesel Peugeot 908s which came in first and second, with an Audi R15 coming in thrid.

The winning Peugeot team including David Brabham of the famed Brabham racing family. His father, Sir Jack Brabham, was Formula One World Champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966, and his brother Geoff Brabham was part of the Peugeot team that won Le Mans in 1993.

Some measure of the extreme pressure Le Mans puts on both cars and drivers - each car is driven by a rotating crew of three - is reflected in the figures: The winning car was driven a total of 3,235 miles over a windy course at an average speed of 135 mph!

While Audi's loss was partly attributed to insufficient testing of the new car, the victory for Peugeot was sweet. It first raced its diesel racers at Le Mans in 2007 only to be swept away each year by the dominant Audi team.

Meanwhile, NASCAR's LifeLock 400 was a thriller with leaders Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle miscalculating their fuel reserves and running out of gas in the final two laps.

That left an astonished Mark Martin, who said he ran out of gas in the final turn, standing tall on the podium. He was joined by Hendricks Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon who came in second, and Denny Hamlin, who came in third.

The win was Martin's third this year and jumped him five places to the eighth spot in the Sprint Cup standings.

"Old man, you snookered us again," Gordon said he told Martin, according to Sporting News Wire Service. "He's like a 21-year-old with a lot of experience under his belt, and that's tough to beat."

Certainly, at the ripe old age of 50, Martin is a shining example to us all that you are only as old as you feel.

- Peter C.T. Elsworth