11. 2003 Le Mans 24 Hours
With a radical new car, and a heavyweight effort in the cockpit and in the garage, 2003 was finally Bentley’s year – a faultless run gave them the famous marque’s first Le Mans win since 1930, aided and abetted by a ruleset that certainly favoured the big green coupes – it ended the three race winning streak for the factory Audi R8s.
The R8s did provide one moment for this writer though, the photo below from Regis Lefebure is still my very favourite image from the DSC archive.
The Bentleys dominated Qualifying too, with Tomas Enge starting a run in GTS/GT1 that would see a seamless transition from a Viper vs Corvette era to a Corvette vs Prodrive 550 spell.
The arrival of the short lived BAM Porsche squad saw the equally short-lived appearance of Peter Baron’s T-Shirt catapult – a hit with the fans in the stands, not so much with the race officials!
There were two very distinct moments of this race for me – One came very early as, of all people, Frank Biela made a huge error going to pit, missing pit in and having to go around again in his Audi UK R8 – it left the car running out of fuel and out of the race, a huge shock and the subject of one of the funniest Radio Le Mans Stories ever!
The moment of the race for me though came very late in proceedings as the now ageing Panoz Roadster, in the hands of Gunnar Jeannette, was closed down by Jean Marc Gounon’s Judd V10 powered factory Courage. It was an epic defence from Gunnar – The Panoz would come home a fine fifth – there are a couple of moments from that battle in the video below from 5:30 in.
It was an epic defence from Gunnar – The Panoz would come home a fine fifth – there are a couple of moments from that battle in the video below from 5:30 in.
12. 2003 Spa 24 Hours
2003 saw an extraordinary Spa 24 Hours, weather played a major part in proceedings as a GT2 spec Porsche run by the crack Freisinger squad took on and beat a high quality GT1 field.
It happened with a spectacular display from the all star line up of Marc Lieb, Romain Dumas and Stephane Ortelli – all three showed amazing wet weather pace.
Earlier this year Sm Smith uncovered a further part to the 2003 story from Stephane Ortelli – The little Frenchman, running under a lengthy Safety Car, realised that he could save fuel, a LOT of fuel, by switching off the engine at the highest point on the circuit, lap after lap he did it, to the initial consternation of Norbert Singer on the pit wall – But when he explained to the Porsche strategic wizard what he was up to the good Doctor replied “Not that is very clever.” High praise indeed.
It saved the team a pit stop, and made the gap to their already impressive lead insurmountable.
That would be a good enough moment for this race, an historic win, the second of the year against the odds in a 24 Hour race by a junior class Porsche after The Racers Group won at Daytona as the new DPs hit trouble.
The moment for me though was the aftermath of a potentially very nasty accident – Neil Cunningham was in electrical trouble in the factory Morgan Aero 8 and the engine cut out in the very worse place, the car hit at high speed in the rear by a Porsche – The moment came as Neil, always a favourite of the DSC crew, came back to the pits to explain what had happened:
“It was a biggie, a real beauty. We had a fault with the engine as it kept cutting out but it fired up again as soon as you pressed the button. The real problem was bad aquaplaning on the straight, it was weaving from side to side so I decided to bring it in and get some changes made. I was coming down the back straight, on the radio about the changes we needed when it cut out again. So I went to press the button and then BANG! A car behind mustn’t have seen me because of the spray. The car went sailing down the straight spinning sideways and the doors flew open, so I was sat there looking sideways out of the open doorway thinking ‘I’m not going to walk away from this’ but fortunately the impact with the barrier wasn’t too hard.
“I got the car running again but because I took my helmet off the officials told me I had effectively retired.” The damage to the car was in all probability terminal in any event.”
Neil delivered all of this with his customary broad grin – It meant no race mileage for Jacques Lafitte who was sharing the car with the affable Kiwi.
