For 10 days in the build-up to the 2023 running of the Le Mans 24 Hours, DSC is reflecting on some of the best, worst and wacky moments from its time covering the event since the turn of the century.
Today is the fifth day of DSC’s 100 moments feature, the previous parts can be found below:
PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4
41. Wynns Ford loses its win (2019)
After a popular win on the road for the Wynns-liveried #85 Ford GT of Keating Motorsports there was drama of a very unwelcome sort as word spread on the Monday that the win was in doubt.
The FIA imposed a penalty of 55.2 seconds on the team for consistently short fuel stops, the minimum time dictated to be 45 seconds – the Ford was taking 44.4 seconds.
That was bad enough but a further penalty was significantly worse. The car was disqualified for having a fuel tank 0.1 litres larger than the mandated 96-litre maximum. A distraught Keating would later reveal that the rubber bladder inside the tank, which had been constructed to the regulatory size, had apparently expanded during the race by 0.4 litres!
42. Glickenhaus makes the podium (2022)
The Le Mans fan base loves an underdog, and there has seldom been one more proud of telling them just what an underdog they were than Glickenhaus Racing!
The US-owned, Italian based and Team Joest-supported Hypercar squad will start their third Le Mans in 2023 after what can only be described as one of the greatest privateer achievements in the history of the race in 2022 when the pair of SCG007s finished the race fourth, and an astonishing third overall! The #709 having run faultlessly throughout
It was the #709 that put Richard Westbrook, Franck Mailleux and Ryan Briscoe on the famous Le mans podium, joined by an elated, but perhaps somewhat shell-shocked Jim Glickenhaus! Truly a dream come true!
43. The Corvette vs AMR push races (2005-2008)
One of the regular annual tableaus that played out in the more than decade-long rivalry between Corvette and Aston Martin was the inevitability that as the teams brought their cars to the grid a race would break out – but not V8 to V12, or even later V8 to V8 – but with muscle power the two crews went head-to-head to push their car further and faster.
Real rivalry, played out with real spirit. Needle of the very nicest sort!
44. Gene’s Test Day crash (2008)
Test Day has, historically been a sometimes interesting, sometimes frustrating, but not very often dramatic occasion, the first time seeing all of the cars and usually most of the drivers on track gets the blood pumping and there’s an opportunity to assess the general level of form, countered by the knowledge that the best of the best will seldom show their very best to their opposition.
2008 was one of those frustrating ones. The weather was changeable and the action was interrupted several times with Red Flags (another Test Day staple!) and midway through the afternoon session though there was a big one. Marc Gene in the Porsche Curves, following an Audi R10, ran wide in his Peugeot, brushing the wet grass. His correction put the car sideways from where it lifted off and flew, broadside across the track to impact the concrete wall with the top of the cockpit.
The impact shattered the concrete and pitched the car down the road, its safety cell intact and Gene remarkably, was more or less unhurt, a sore toe the only physical manifestation aside from some bumps and bruises!
The ACO released the CCTV footage of the incident later in the evening and the images were horrifying, another accident that led to changes in the aero regulations, and later to the circuit environs.
45. Bentley wins! (2003)
Bentley was a massive part of the emergence of the 24 Hours of Le Mans from national to international significance with the ‘Bentley Boys’ and their four consecutive overall wins from 1927 – 1930.
Thereafter though the brand’s Le Mans history came to a stop, until the revived company, by now in VAG ownership, looked to launch a breakthrough product, the Continental GT at the start of the 21st century. And, glory be, part of the launch strategy for a car that was to be built in numbers previously unimaginable for the company, was to go back to racing at Le Mans.
Whilst the cars have been criticised as ‘green Bentleys’ that’s a rather lazy conclusion drawn principally from the origins of its engine. As the previous head of motorsport, Brian Gush, was fond of saying “There’s more that’s British in the Audi R8 than there is German in the Bentley!.
The programme hit the track in 2001 with a podium on the car’s debut. The following year saw Bentley finish fourth and then regroup to think about what would be required to do better.
That process saw the 2003 car emerge, with an early year outing at Sebring that saw the two cars run well, 3rd and 4th a fine result in the team’s first crack at the race.
Then came Le Mans and one of the most error-free efforts this writer can ever recall. The pair of Speed 8s dominated the race, seconds clear in qualifying and laps clear in the result from the somewhat hampered Audi opposition.
Either way, it was a historic result, giving a previously rather tarnished brand a massive fillip and launched the Continental GT in fine fashion. Rule Britannia!
46. Farnbacher fixes his gearbox (2006)
The closing stages of the 2006 Le mans 24 Hours saw real drama in GT2, the Seikel/ Franbacher Porsche, shared that year by Lars-Erik (father of Christina) Nielsen, Pierre Ehret and Dominik Farnbacher. The car had a lap lead over the LNT Panoz, of which more later in this series of articles, util it ground to a halt at Mulsanne Corner, broken gear linkage, with Farnbacher at the wheel.
The race win was gone, but the team did salvage second place. How? Because Farnbacher managed to repurpose parts of the driver cooling box in the car to repair the gearshift! Heroic stuff!
47. The end of the road for Henri Pescarolo (2013)
Henri Pescarolo is one of THE heroes of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A fearless driver, with huge success at the race – four overall wins, two further class wins and two further class podiums in a Le Mans career that started in 1966 – continued as a driver until 1999 with Henri missing the race just once, in 1969 when his Matra suffered a huge accident in testing at Le Mans, Henri’s face still bears the marks of the burns he suffered as a result.
He stepped down from driving for 2000 but was far from done, returning as a team owner, and later as a constructor, initially heavily modifying his Courage chassis but later building his own Pescarolo 01 tubs which had significant success in his own team’s hands, and those of privateer Rollcentre Racing.
Financial pressures were growing though and an adventure with a privately entered Peugeot ended badly leaving Pescarolo on the ropes – That led to planned Le Mans entries in 2010 being withdrawn, Henri would attend Le Mans as a Eurosport TV pundit but it was clearly not a happy event for him.
The assets of the team were liquidated in October and, in a call that the DSC Editor will forever remember, news broke that Jacques Nicolet and Joël Rivière had swooped in to buy all of the available lots – and then had handed them back to Henri!
It was a relatively brief return. The 01 returned to and won the Le Mans Series, but for 2012, after the old car had raced to a class podium at the very first WEC race at Sebring, the team switched to a two-car effort for Le Mans. One was the Dome S103 and the other a new Pescarolo 03, based on the Aston Martin AMR One, but with a development curve that was way, WAY too steep for comfort.
The car was a disaster and was out very early. The Dome meanwhile, took the finish as a distant and non-classified runner. It was the end of the road for the team and a proud link with the race lasting over 40 years was done.
48. Replacement car for Tracy Krohn (2009)
In DSC’s time at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it has not been unusual for teams to require a rebuilt car and/or a replacement chassis after Test Day or even in race week.
It has though only happened twice for one squad – so stand up and be recognised Krohn Racing!
Whilst more used to being cast in the role of some sort of pantomime villain in recent years, it should not be forgotten that the Texan is a three-time podium finisher at Le Mans. His later career form though, alongside his ever-present co-driver Nic Jonsson, has been peppered with misadventure with the effort requiring replacement chassis in both 2008 and 2013 after Practice/qualifying shunts.
The pair hold a more welcome Le Mans record, as the driver pairing with the longest consecutive starting streak: 13 between 2006 and 2018. That would have been extended by a further start in 2019, but Tracy shunted again, the Proton Competition team rebuilding a car around a spare chassis, before the effort was withdrawn on medical advice.
49. Lammers takes it to the Audis (2001-2007)
Le Mans stories are dominated by the dominant teams and the plucky underdogs, and one of the latter that is perhaps under-appreciated is the effort that for several years took the fight to the Audis.
Jan Lammers took an overall race win in 1988 with Jaguar and was still banging heads and taking names a decade and a half later, by then in his own Racing Team Holland with the Judd-powered Dome S101 where year after year he went out to do battle head to head in qualifying and the race against top class factory opposition.
There was precious little in terms of significant overall finishes for the effort before the financial realities overwhelmed it. But for more than half a decade whenever the little Dutchman took to the track, we looked to the timing screens and expected something special – and we were seldom disappointed!
50. Accident and injury (most years!)
DSC has long taken a substantial crew to the Le Mans 24 Hours and, inevitably, there have been notable incidents galore when a group of like-minded fellows are away and outside spousal influence for a week or more.
In several cases, though those incidents have been of the injurious type. Paul Slinger came down with an eye infection so bad one year that small children would faint at the sight of his face (NB – important to note that this was not the case before the infection). That required the intervention of a passing paramedic.
Next up Martin Little, who suffered a horrible back problem in 2010 (anyone who has suffered from back pain will know that this is NOT funny) the nearest intervention available was a local fire brigade medical crew and Peugeot Sport’s on-site medical team.
Martin would, sometime later need Police assistance after a thief entered his tent at Le Mans (while he was asleep in it!) taking his money and other valuables. Much was eventually recovered after rapid intervention from ‘Les Flics’, but with the third emergency service then having been called upon it did leave the door open to wondering just what could happen to involve the Coastguard at a later date?
Another incident befell the DSC Editor, on race morning in 2007, as the (very) late replacement JLOC Lamborghini arrived following Marco Appicella’s practice accident which totaled the original race car, and left the Italian injured.
In his haste to get a picture of the car being unloaded, the stairs down to the paddock on a streaming wet morning became something of a ‘Slip ‘n Slide’. GG lost his footing and hit the steel stair with his back – mercifully with no lasting damage (though the stair was marked by the impact!), the fall hitting the stair just below the last one backed with concrete!
