1985: a golden year for sports car racing

Privateers (still) on parade

Porsche, or rather the factory team, had stayed away from the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1984. A late change in the rules resulted in the withdrawal of its Rothmans-sponsored 956s from the big one in June. Yet the German manufacturer continued its winning ways on the Circuit de la Sarthe, the privateers running the ubiquitous Group C design stepping up to the plate. Leading was Joest Racing, which headed home a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Porsche block-out with Klaus Ludwig and Henri Pescarolo.

Fast-forward 12 months, and the works was back and the result was the same. Victory for Joest, this time with Ludwig sharing with Paolo Barilla and ‘John Winter’. Joest’s 1985 triumph against the factory has long gone down in endurance racing folklore, an example of what just might be possible for an independent. It is a key chapter in the story of the Porsche privateer, one recalled by the German manufacturer in the modern era as it made its 963 LMDh available to customer teams from the get-go.

How Joest did it

Central to the tale was Joest’s use of the 956 — the same chassis, 117, as the year before. The factory had introduced the 962C, effectively a long-wheelbase version of its original Group C design: the monocoque was increased in length to get the driver’s feet behind the centre line of the front wheels, resulting in a stubbier nose and a more understeery car. The 956 just had better efficiency around the eight and half miles of the Le Mans circuit, while Joest also undertook modifications to Porsche’s pride and joy. It built its own engines, tweaked the electronics and produced a revised one-piece underfloor. Combined they were enough for Joest to trounce the factory, which could do no better than claim the final place on the podium behind Richard Lloyd’s second-placed 956.

Kremer’s early Christmas gift

Joest wasn’t the first Porsche privateer to beat the Rothmans cars over the course of the 1985 World Endurance Championship. But the factory’s first defeat came in the most bizarre circumstances. Kremer triumphed with its 962C at Monza in April when the race was red-flagged 200km short of its 1000km duration. A tree had fallen in the prevailing gale and blocked the track ahead of the first Lesmo right-hander.

Out of synch on pitstops and leading, the 956 of Marc Surer and Manfred Winkelhock was declared winner. The duo had been in the mix but were gifted the victory. No wonder the timber was dubbed a “Christmas tree” by Surer. Despite the privateer success, it was the factory that took the drivers’ title with Derek Bell and Hans Stuck.

Jaguar gets serious

Jaguar had returned to frontline sports car racing in the North American IMSA GT Championship in 1982 with Bob Tullius’s Group 44 squad. Its GTP prototype campaigns were part of a Stateside sales push by the British manufacturer, but Jaguar always had an eye on Le Mans. Company chairman John Egan told Tullius as much the moment their partnership was sealed. And that he would eventually lose the programme. “One day we will do it ourselves,” Egan declared.

Group 44 did get to take Jaguar back to the French enduro with the XJR-5 in 1984, the first push by the marque for outright victory since the D-type, and returned in 1985. By then, the Virginia-based operation had lost the programme. Not to some kind of in-house operation at Browns Lane, but to Tom Walkinshaw Racing. Little more than two months after the two XJR-5s had again failed to impress at Le Mans, a new Jaguar prototype designed by former ex-F1 man Tony Southgate pitched up at Mosport. By the season’s end in Malaysia, the carbon-tubbed XJR-6 was challenging Porsche. And two races into ’86, it was a race winner.

An ‘Aston Martin’ leading Le Mans

The British EMKA team knew its home-brewed Aston Martin-engined Group C car was never going to win Le Mans, but it reckoned it might be able to lead the race for a while. That was the plan anyway.

Tiff Needell had made good progress up the order in the opening hour driving the EMKA-Aston C83B with a preordained disregard for the fuel numbers. A quick pitstop when he was short-fuelled meant he would hit the front when everyone else made their regular stops. The pity for the team was that David Hobbs went an hour and three minutes on his first tank of gas in his John Fitzpatrick Racing Porsche, which meant the EMKA was only second on the hour-one results sheet. But it still got its five laps of glory.

Mercedes’ back-door return 

From little acorns… The tiny Sauber sports car team had been receiving help from Mercedes since the early ’80s: a group of engineers had undertaken the suspension geometry calculations on its early Group C designs. So when the team realised that it was getting nowhere with its straight-six BMW engines, it already had an entrée into a manufacturer still sitting on the sidelines 30 years on from its circuit racing withdrawal in the wake of the Le Mans 1955 disaster.

When the new Sauber C8 pitched up for the first time at Le Mans, the Mercedes V8 in the back was said to have been developed by Swiss tuner Heini Mader. But it was just a ruse. The powerplants were built at the Mercedes engine facility on its Untertürkheim campus in Stuttgart. The first Sauber-Mercedes didn’t get to race at Le Mans in ’85. The underfloor came loose on John Nielsen as he sped over the hump on the Mulsanne Straight. The car performed a double somersault, the resulting damage forcing the team to scratch from the event. But Sauber and Mercedes would be back…

Toyota’s Le Mans quest begins

Toyota made no bones about its involvement at Le Mans in ’85: two Dome-built Group C cars proudly displayed its name on their flanks and the cam covers of the 2.1-litre turbo engines. The entry of the Dome-Toyota 85Cs ended up being an advance party for a full-factory assault two years later. This was ground zero in the Japanese maker’s odyssey to win the big race, one that would remain unfulfilled for more than 30 years.

A 12th-place finish for the car shared by Satoru Nakajima, Masanori Sekiya and Kaoru Hoshino was an important moment for Dome and TOM’S, the two partners in the project, as they sought to persuade Toyota to jump in with both feet.

First life for Spice

Top of the class in Group C2 at Le Mans in ’85 was a car dubbed the Spice-Tiga GC85. Gordon Spice’s team, left high and dry by Ford’s Group C withdrawal early in 1983, had started racing with Tiga’s very first Group C car in ’84, putting a lookalike 956 nose on the front and a Cosworth in the back. The next step was a new tub, built by the RAM F1 team, for a car that secured its Le Mans victory in the hands of Spice, Ray Bellm and Mark Galvin by 13 laps. The first ground-up Spice design was already on the drawing board and more than 50 Group C and IMSA Camel Lights/GTP chassis would follow.

What we don’t love about sports cars in 1985

• The tragic loss of German talent: Manfred Winkelhock, and Stefan Bellof, perished at the wheel of privateer Porsche 956s within the space of a couple of weeks at the end of the summer. Winkelhock, killed driving a Kremer car at Mosport, was an established F1 driver, while Bellof, who died at Spa in a Brun entry, was earning his spurs with Tyrrell. Many who worked with Bellof believe he was an F1 world champion in the making.

  

• Arrivederci, Lancia: Lancia’s LC2, the big underachiever of the early years of Group C, undertook its final full race programme with the factory in ’85. It was only due to compete sporadically the following year, but the programme was abandoned after the deaths of Henri Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto in a Delta S4 Group B car on the Tour de Corse and test driver Giacomo Maggi during development work aboard one of the LC2s.
  
• Farewell to a legend: Jean Rondeau, below, was a French hero after winning at Le Mans – his home-town race – in 1980. The first driver to triumph at the enduro in a car bearing his own name was soon feted by president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing at the Élysée Palace. Rondeau’s life came to an end when his road car was hit by a train on a level-crossing near Le Mans in December.