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Look Both Ways Before You Cross The Track As a preview to this year’s Le Mans, Marcus Potts takes a look back down the track into the history of this remarkable annual event; in particular, at two significant anniversaries. The whole concept of the classic “Le Mans Start” is so engrained in the legend of the 24 Hours that it’s almost hard to credit that it is exactly forty years since that mad dash across the track last took place.
Ickx’s concerns were well founded, and the risks proven later on the opening lap, when John Woolfe’s Porsche 917 was involved in an accident at the old Maison Blanche kink. It was, by today’s standards, a relatively modest impact. Unfortunately, Woolfe’s eagerness to get ahead at the start had meant he’d devoted less time to securing himself into the cockpit than perhaps he should. Opinions differ. Some believe he hadn’t fitted his harness at all, while others say he’d not even closed the door properly. Either way, he was thrown from the car and died from his injuries. The point where Woolfe’s Porsche struck the crash barriers was immortalised by Steve McQueen in a poignant moment during the opening minutes of the film Le Mans, when McQueen contemplates the repaired steelwork beside the track. The filming was done during the year following Woolfe’s accident, and released in 1971. That race in 1969 is peppered with the names of drivers who are remembered to this day – the likes of Mike Hailwood, Helmut Kelleners, Reinhold Joest, Gérard Larousse, Vic Elford, Bob Wollek, David Piper, Jo Siffert and Chris Amon, to pick out just a few. One name you might expect to see in that list, but is conspicuously absent, is that of Henri Pescarolo. The Frenchman, who remains to this day a cult hero in French motorsport, should have been taking part in the race, but had crashed during the April test when the long-tailed Matra 640 he was driving took off along the Mulsanne. At that time the Straight was without the two chicanes and significantly the fastest part of the circuit. The car disintegrated on impact and erupted into a ball of fire. Although Henri was seriously burned, he did return to racing a few months later, but missed out on the Le Mans 24 Hours and has sported a beard ever since. If it is forty years since the last time the drivers were made to run across the track to start the race, it is fifty since the one and only victory recorded by Aston Martin.
For a marque so strongly associated with motorsport in general, and Le Mans in particular, it is hard to believe that the factory has won Le Mans just once from 32 starts, but in 1959 the DBR1 shared by American Carroll Shelby and Briton Roy Savadori beat the sister car co-driven by Paul Frère and Maurice Trintignant by one lap. That winning Aston Martin will compete in this year’s Legends event, and is also scheduled to lead off the Driver’s Parade through the streets of Le Mans on the Friday evening. Marcus Potts |
It was the 14th June, just a day later in the calendar
than this year’s start, when one man refused to take part in that headlong
sprint towards his waiting car. In defiance of convention, and as a deliberate
protest against what he believed to be a dangerous and unnecessary risk, Jacky
Ickx walked sedately across the track, carefully tightening the binding on his
gloves as he paced the tarmac. He climbed into his Ford GT40 and methodically
fitted and adjusted the straps on his harness before firing up the car’s
thunderous V8. By the time he pulled away from the herringbone formation, he was
the last driver to head off up the rise towards the Dunlop Curve. He and his
co-driver Jackie Oliver would, of course, go on to win the race. It would be the
first of six such victories for the Belgian, but the last time anyone else
sprinted for the start of a Le Mans 24 Hours race.