1995 - Winning in the rain

Browse pages
Current page

1

Current page

2

Current page

3

Current page

4

Current page

5

Current page

6

Current page

7

Current page

8

Current page

9

Current page

10

Current page

11

Current page

12

Current page

13

Current page

14

Current page

15

Current page

16

Current page

17

Current page

18

Current page

19

Current page

20

Current page

21

Current page

22

Current page

23

Current page

24

Current page

25

Current page

26

Current page

27

Current page

28

Current page

29

Current page

30

Current page

31

Current page

32

Current page

33

Current page

34

Current page

35

Current page

36

Current page

37

Current page

38

Current page

39

Current page

40

Current page

41

Current page

42

Current page

43

Current page

44

Current page

45

Current page

46

Current page

47

Current page

48

Current page

49

Current page

50

Current page

51

Current page

52

Current page

53

Current page

54

Current page

55

Current page

56

Current page

57

Current page

58

Current page

59

Current page

60

Current page

61

Current page

62

Current page

63

Current page

64

Current page

65

Current page

66

Current page

67

Current page

68

Current page

69

Current page

70

Current page

71

Current page

72

Current page

73

Current page

74

Current page

75

Current page

76

Current page

77

Current page

78

Current page

79

Current page

80

Current page

81

Current page

82

Current page

83

Current page

84

Current page

85

Current page

86

Current page

87

Current page

88

Current page

89

Current page

90

Current page

91

Current page

92

Current page

93

Current page

94

Current page

95

Current page

96

Current page

97

Current page

98

Current page

99

Current page

100

Current page

101

Current page

102

Current page

103

Current page

104

Current page

105

Current page

106

Current page

107

Current page

108

Current page

109

Current page

110

Current page

111

Current page

112

Current page

113

Current page

114

Current page

115

Current page

116

Current page

117

Current page

118

Current page

119

Current page

120

Current page

121

Current page

122

Current page

123

Current page

124

Current page

125

Current page

126

Current page

127

Current page

128

Current page

129

Current page

130

Current page

131

Current page

132

Current page

133

Current page

134

Current page

135

Current page

136

Current page

137

Current page

138

Current page

139

Current page

140

Current page

141

Current page

142

Current page

143

Current page

144

Current page

145

Current page

146

Current page

147

Current page

148

Everyone knew McLaren’s F1 GTRs were quick enough to win Le Mans but few thought they had a chance of surviving 24 Hours. Adam Cooper reports on how 18 hours of rain upset the form book

One of the great unwritten laws of Le Mans is that it’s impossible for a marque to win first time out; tradition dictates that it takes at least three years to find both the pace and reliability with which to master the world’s toughest motor race.

Before the 1995 race, it had been done just once if you omit the very first race. Ferrari managed it in 1949, in the first Vingt Quatre Heures after the war when Luigi Chinetti drove Lord Selsdon’s car for all bar two hours. And in 1995, McLaren followed suit. It remains the only success for a genuine GT car in the modem era.

That statement has to be qualified by the fact that the ’94 race was also won by a car running in the GT class, but even Porsche’s most ardent supporters would have to admit that the so-called ‘Dauer 962LM’ was but a mildy detuned version of the marque’s evergreen Group C machine. By way of contrast the McLaren F1 was conceived as a road car pure and simple and never intended as a racer. But once its designer, Gordon Murray, had accepted the challenge to convert it into a racer, the car not only blitzed all other entries in its class, but also overcame the challenge from an all-new breed of prototypes, known as World Sports Cars.

The failure of one such machine to turn up was one of the talking points of that year’s event. The previous autumn Porsche had given the green light to an ambitious WSC project, involving a once unimaginable partnership with erstwhile arch rivals TWR. It was arranged by a former Sauber-Mercedes team manager.

The car was a clever mix of proven parts, with Porsche’s V6 turbo motor mated to a chassis based on an open version of the 1991 Championship winning Jaguar XJR14. Porsche duly committed to Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans, and hired a stellar driver lineup including Hans Stuck, Bob Wollek, Thierry Boutsen and Mario Andretti.

From the start of testing the car was clearly very good, and worried about a walkover at Daytona, IMSA rushed in last minute rule changes. The reaction was no surprise. Extra ballast and a strangled turbo did not appeal; the German marque canned the whole WSC programme in exasperation, leaving its contracted drivers to scratch around for other rides.

Here’s where I claim a little part in the story. During a lull in proceedings at Indianapolis qualifying in May, I had a long chat with Andretti, who’d recently retired from single-seaters. He was bitterly disappointed about the demise of the Porsche effort, but unlike his stranded colleagues had not looked seriously for alternative employment. I suggested that the Courage team might be a good bet, something that Wollek had already decided. Hitherto unaware that there might still be a vacancy in the French equipe’s Porsche-engined WSC car, Mario was intrigued. I offered to test the water, rang the team, and gave them his number.

A few weeks later Mario was all present and correct at La Sarthe, where he would share with Wollek and French youngster Eric Helary, a winner with Peugeot in 1993. The combination would prove the most potent threat to the numerically dominant McLarens.

Before the race, however, few gave the McLarens much chance of outright victory. No-one doubted their pace but the races that preceded Le Mans, all sprints by comparison, clearly suggested the F1 GTRs would have trouble lasting the first few hours, let alone all night and the following day. Their six speed gearboxes, specifically, had shown signs of weakness.

There were seven GTRs in the field, led by two entries apiece from the David Price and Gulf Racing teams usually seen in the BPR four-hour races. They were joined by the factory prototype chassis, race-prepared and leased to a Japanese sponsor and run by Lanzante Motorsport, a team normally associated with a humble GT2 Porsche. This car had a considerable amount of works support, which created a degree of animosity among McLaren’s genuine customers. It also came with a storming driver line-up, led by former winner Yannick Dalmas and JJ Lehto, a Benetton driver the year before. They were backed up by Japanese Masanori Sekiya, a steady veteran of umpteen starts with Toyota.

Against expectations it was this car which would ultimately humble both McLaren’s BPR regulars and the rest of the opposition. It may have overcome the rule about winning first time out, but the grey number 59 McLaren steadfastly followed the other maxim; to win Le Mans you need to run flat out and avoid unscheduled delays at all costs.

The weather played a massive part in the outcome of the race. It started to rain barely an hour into the event, and it was still soggy on Sunday morning. With the pace of the race slowed, the unproven McLarens had fewer reliability problems and crucially eased the strain on their gearboxes. At the same time, the more nimble WSC cars were unable to take full advantage of their superior cornering ability. Even so, the rain also contributed to a rash of accidents among potential frontrunners; three McLarens hit the barriers, forcing one of the Price cars to retire.

Mario skated off too. In the opening hours he crashed in the Porsche Curves when wrong-footed behind a slower car, and six laps were lost while repairs were made. Thereafter with Helary and an inspired Wollek, they could only play catch up, their remarkable progress accelerating rapidly when the track finally dried.

The closing hours of the race were sensational. The lead had been taken and held by the Harrods McLaren but, in the worst of the weather, JJ Lehto in the Lanzante car started to reel it in at a simply astonishing rate. In the pits Andy Wallace and Derek Bell could only watch the monitor as Lehto chopped dozens of seconds a lap out of Justin Bell’s increasingly slender lead. Justin then spun approaching a chicane on the straight. Lehto took the lead but was by now being caught by the flying Andretti Courage. No one knew if the GT car would hold together with the furious pace required of it. The Bell McLaren certainly could not, losing its gears arid finally coming home third with just one ratio left to Andy Wallace, a fault which denied Derek Bell his record-equalling sixth Le Mans win.

The Courage closed in relentlessly, but at the flag Dalmas was still in the lead by less than a lap. Watching in the pits as McLarens filled four of the first five places, Gordon Murray could barely believe it.

Despite a massive development programme, McLaren failed to repeat its debut victory. A year later Porsche was back at Le Mans with a heavyweight works GT effort, which owed much to the letter of the regulations and clearly nothing whatever to their spirit. It very nearly did the job. But victory went instead to the marque’s own WSC car, which had been rescued from obscurity by the canny privateer Reinhold Joest. And, quite remarkably the very same chassis would win again in 1997.

Mario never did get to race it…