1961 24 Hours of Le Mans
A privately entered Ferrari GT 250 was third with an American-run Maserati Tipo 63 fighting it way back up to fourth, a full 22 laps behind the winning car.
The controversial windscreen rules regarding minimum height and width were also updated with a maximum slope, which closed the loophole that Maserati had cleverly worked around in the previous year.
[1] For its part, race-organisers, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) increased the maximum continuous driving stint up from 52 to 60 laps, given the faster speeds the cars were running at.
The time to complete the final lap time-limit was shortened from 30 to 20 minutes to reduce the incidents of slow or stationary cars out on the circuit trying to run down the clock to finish.
Finally, this year the ACO trialled a new IBM race-timing computer system (which had a few teething problems[2]) and opened the first French automobile museum.
[4] Official ‘works’ entries numbered 26, although Maserati and Aston Martin both gave support to their customer teams.
The racing division of the company was now entitled Societa Esercizio Fabbriche Automobili e Corse (SEFAC) and it arrived with four cars.
Two were the latest iteration of the proven Testarossa race-winner, for their best endurance-racing partnership: Phil Hill / Olivier Gendebien as well as Willy Mairesse with Ferrari-debutante Mike Parkes.
It still had the 3-litre V12 engine used in the Testarossa and was driven by Giancarlo Baghetti and Fernand Tavano (who had won the GT-division in the 1960 race as a Ferrari privateer).
[5] It would be driven by the very fast, young, Rodriguez brothers, Pedro and Ricardo Maserati arrived with a new model, the Tipo 63, with a mid-mounted, 3-litre variant of the famous 250F V12 Grand Prix engine.
The two coupés were driven by the Porsche F1 team drivers Hans Herrmann / Edgar Barth and Jo Bonnier/Dan Gurney.
[13] The smaller-engined classes were well supported once again, with Abarth, Austin Healey and OSCA taking on the dominant Deutsch et Bonnet cars.
A special 850cc-variant (developing 73 bhp and doing 120 mph on the Mulsanne straight) was in the reserves to be driven by New Zealanders Denis Hulme/Angus Hyslop.
[15] OSCA arrived with one of their successful 750 Sport cars as a works entry and an up-engined 988cc entered by NART for the Index prizes.
This year, their main competition would come from the Aston Martin DB4s of John Ogier's new Essex Racing Team (who also ran a DBR1/300 in the Sports division) and French privateer Jean Kerguen.
A pair of French AC Aces were the only entries in the 2-litre class, Lotus had the 1.3-litre category to itself with five Elites entered including two works cars.
There was competition in the 1.6-litre class though, with Porsche up against Sunbeam returning to Le Mans after over 30 years away[3] Curiously, Chris Lawrence's Morgan 4+4 entry was rejected by the ACO because it looked, essentially, too old-fashioned and not meeting the ‘spirit of the race’.
[19][8] Moss, as always, was quick but by dint of starting further up the grid, Jim Clark's Aston Martin was first car under the Dunlop bridge.
[5] But at the end of the first lap, Ginther in the 246 SP led Hill's Testarossa, Hansgen's Maserati then Pedro Rodriguez in the NART Ferrari, Clark, Moss & Salvadori.
[22] Bill Halford, running 7th in the Ecosse Cooper soon after taking the wheel, went off at the Dunlop Curve, hitting the embankment at nearly 200 km/h (120 mph).
[23] However, at 1.30am the Walker Ferrari was nobbled by a dislodged fan blade slicing a radiator hose, ending its fine run.
But then at 8am, another bad miscalculation by the Ferrari team ran von Trips out of fuel in consecutive Le Mans.
Porsche had a better race this year, with the all-American Gregory/Holbert works car finishing an excellent 5th, after consistently running in the top-10 from Saturday night.
The Foitek/Condrillier Abarth had the great misfortune to break an oil-pipe on the penultimate lap preventing the Italian marque claiming a 1-2 class finish.
The special Sunbeam coupé won the Index of Thermal Efficiency, and the company promptly produced a short run of the “Harrington Le Mans” model to capitalise on its success.
[30] Results taken from Quentin Spurring's book, officially licensed by the ACO[31] Class winners are in Bold text.
