The 24 Hours of Le Mans is littered with tales of wins against all odds. Australian David Brabham has one of those stories.
By 2009, the then 44-year-old had established himself in sports car racing.
The memories of Formula 1 in the early 1990s had long gone and his focus was firmly on endurance racing.
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Not a spring chicken by any means, but endurance racing has always favoured experience.
Around that time, the global financial crisis was hitting hard. His racing plans in the United States were rocky at best and halted multiple times over before eventually being greenlit.
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That year, Brabham was competing with Acura and Highcroft Racing. The morning of a test at Sebring he received an email from Peugeot inquiring about his availability for Le Mans.
"I wasn't expecting it so it was a really nice surprise to get that," Brabham told Wide World of Sports.
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"Obviously, I had to get permission from Honda and Highcroft Racing, but within a few days they were all very happy for me to do it.
"Before I knew it, I was heading to Le Mans with Peugeot.
"It was the third year of their programme and there was a lot of testing involved as well as part of the deal," he explained.
"I think I did three of the four 30-hour tests between February and June as well as racing in America, so I remember being knackered before I got there (to Le Mans) because there were so many miles in a car and travelling from America to Europe doing these tests."
At that time, Peugeot was in an all-out war with Audi for victory at Le Mans and the French manufacturer wanted to field three cars for the second year in a row.
Peugeot won the 2007 edition in a triumphant return to Le Mans with the 908 but were beaten by Audi and their R10 in 2008.
For 2009, Peugeot returned with a three-pronged attack.
The No.8 entry was an all-French line-up with Franck Montagny, Sebastien Bourdais, and Stephane Sarrazin while the No.7 was shared between Frenchman Nicolas Minassian, Portugal's Pedro Lamy, and Austrian Christian Klien.
Brabham joined Marc Gene of Spain and Austria's Alex Wurz, all ex-Formula 1 drivers.
A test day all but cemented Brabham's belief very early on that he could win the race.
"When I got in the car for the very first time for the first test, which was at Barcelona, I remember accelerating out of the pits," he recounted.
"Out of the pits, I just felt the incredible amount of torque and power from the diesel motor that we had.
"By the time I got to the first corner, the first thing that came into my mind was 'I can win Le Mans with this car' – so I knew I had a good chance."
The race went as well as it could have. With so much pressure on the all-French entry, there was little attention paid to the rear gunners in the No.9 car.
"We were the third car in the organisation. There was a priority car and a second priority car and a third priority car, and the three experienced drivers were in one car and obviously the others were probably a little bit more focused on speed and so forth," said Brabham.
"It kind of left us to do our own thing, which was really good, because you could see there was way too much tension and pressure on the other side of the pit garage, particularly on the drivers, because they felt they were monitored every lap time. Are they quick? Are they not quick? They had to be the quickest to keep their jobs and such.
"That was the kind of culture that they had which someone looking at that with experienced eyes like we had, it was like, 'Well, OK, they're gonna make mistakes, let's just focus on what we need to do'. And we were able to do that.
"We had the least amount of time in the pits compared to anyone else in the race and we were quick enough to win on track, so it worked out in our favour."
The untold side story in their win was that they did it all with very little top-level engineering support from Peugeot.
"The funny story about all of this is our engineer (Pierre Genon) that got put towards our car had never done sports cars before, he'd only done rally," said Brabham.
"So he was on a massive catch up, and then when we got to Le Mans he wasn't there. The reason he wasn't there was he had chickenpox.
"We got through the week without him and then on the Friday he turns up with spots all over him, obviously just the remaining scars as such and it looked bloody horrible.
"Then we literally went straight into the race – so for him, what a journey because he'd never done Le Mans, he got thrown in the deep end, got chicken pox, turned up on Friday, won the race and went home."
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The Brabham name is one steeped in Australian motorsport folklore.
The late Sir Jack Brabham remains a household name for his success in Formula 1 as a driver and car manufacturer.
He won three F1 drivers' championships, one in a car of his own making in 1966.
For David, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans cemented his own legendary status.
"I guess for me, it's slightly different because of how successful and famous my father was," said Brabham.
"You move from 'the son of' to then 'David Brabham' and then obviously I won Le Mans and all most of the references were Le Mans winner.
"For me, it changed over the period of my life from one thing to another – but it's finally sat on that.
"I think as time has passed… There's been different winners and different things and although it's still mentioned, it's not mentioned as much obviously as it was after I won Le Mans. It does change."
Brabham couldn't help but laugh, recounting his first class wins at Le Mans and wondering what it would be like to win outright.
"Two years in a row I won with Aston Martin and I'm thinking, 'Jesus, this feels good'. You're on the podium. You're seeing thousands of people in front of you all waving flags on the podium," he said.
"The team was jubilant, we're jubilant with the team, and all the people that were on that journey. You walk off and you see the (outright) winners go up there and you go, 'Man, what's it feel like when you've won overall because this feels awesome just winning in class'.
"Of course, the following year, I did have that opportunity to stand up there on the podium and the feeling was exactly the same. There was no difference as far as you winning an event whether it was overall or not, the only difference was Monday – that's when it changed because you become the focus of the topics of conversations around Le Mans. You're the winner."
Peugeot returned to Le Mans in 2010 without Brabham. In hindsight, it perhaps was for the best. Three of the four 908s suffered engine failures.
Brabham instead returned to the Acura program in the United States with Highcroft Racing and contested Le Mans with them instead.
His last start at Le Mans came in 2012.
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