1969 24 Hours of Le Mans
During the 1969 start, eventual winner Jacky Ickx famously staged his own one-man protest by walking to his car, and taking his time doing up his belts.
In the end, the Ford GT40 – the same chassis that had won the previous year – took the chequered flag just 120 metres ahead of the Porsche after 24 hours of racing.
Heeding the calls of race promoters worried about diminishing fields, the FIA sought to fix things by reducing the minimum production figure to run in Group 4 from 50 to 25.
[1] This year the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) brought the start-time forward to 2pm, to allow time for the largely French crowd to still be able to get to vote in the Presidential Elections on the Sunday afternoon.
[1] New Armco crash barriers were installed around the circuit, including on the Mulsanne Straight, where there was previously no protection from the trees, houses and embankments in the event of a car leaving the track.
[3] Into the second year of the new 3-litre regulations for Group 6 Prototypes, the initial entries closed with 109 applications – the biggest number in the past decade.
However, after the requisite culling 60 cars were accepted, but a number of withdrawals meant only 51 practiced with non-starters reducing the final grid to only 45, the smallest field in the decade.
[4] After a dominant season to date, Porsche had already won the 1969 International Championship for Makes and arrived with easily the biggest representation with 16 cars, a third of the field.
Starting in July 1968, Porsche made a surprising and very expensive effort to conceive, design and build a whole new car for the Group 4 Sport category with one underlying goal: to win its first overall victory at Le Mans.
The 917 included another feature which would prove to be controversial in the week leading up to the race: movable aerodynamic wings linked to the suspension.
[6] A last-minute decision the day before Le Mans by the FISA allowed them to race, although the 908s had to lose the flaps as they had previously run without them.
[9] In the Prototype class, Porsche had three works 908s, also in langheck form, including regular team drivers Gerhard Mitter / Udo Schütz.
Automotive, managed by David Yorke, chose not to run the disappointing Group 6 Mirage M2s and instead entered two of the cars they ran in the previous year's race.
[12] After an inauspicious debut in 1967, the Lola T70 Mk 3 had gradually improved, and with sufficient production now completed to put it into the Sports category, it could run the far more reliable, race-proven, Chevrolet 5-litre V8 engine.
[16] The SEFAC-Ferrari works team returned to Le Mans after a year's absence, with the new 312P prototype, a design strongly akin to the Can-Am 612P.
Two cars were entered, for former race-winners Chris Amon and Pedro Rodriguez, partnered with hill-climb specialist Peter Schetty[17] and David Piper respectively.
Henri Pescarolo took to the track, but at the first kilometres on the Mulsanne Straight, the car got airborne, doing a 360° loop, before smashing into roadside trees and catching fire.
Smallest car in the field was the Abarth 1000SP After their excellent result in the previous year's race, Alfa Romeo's Autodelta works team was favourites for a class-win.
Apparent mechanical failure hit the car on the Hunaudières straight, coming over the hump approaching the Mulsanne corner at over 305 km/h (190 mph).
[27] The power of the new Porsche 917 was shown by Stommelen on the first night of practice when he put in a blistering lap of 3:22.9 to take pole position.
It was also 0.7 seconds faster than the lap record held by the big Mark IVs of Denny Hulme and Mario Andretti in 1967 (set without the Ford chicane present).
[31] NART had a bad practice when its Dino collided with its Daytona stablemate approaching the Mulsanne corner, putting both cars out for the race.
On the very first lap, the twitchy handling of the Porsche 917 and the inexperience of one of its drivers resulted in a major accident: the death of British gentleman-driver John Woolfe.
[37][6][38] The nearly full fuel tank from Woolfe's car became dislodged and landed, burning, in front of the oncoming Ferrari 312P of Chris Amon.
[39] Debris virtually blocked the road and a number of cars were affected including the Healey, Gardner's Ford and Jabouille's Alpine.
Gardner brought the Alan Mann Ford in several times with overheating because debris from the accident had holed the radiator.
[40][18] Through the night the Matras had had their problems: Galli spent an hour getting new fuel pumps fitted and Courage had a broken headlight then clipped a Porsche 911 on Mulsanne, getting bodywork damage.
[29] The 1.5L Alpine, of Killy/Wollek, had been running very quickly and steadily moving up the order to as high as 11th leading the medium-engined cars and the Thermal Efficiency Index.
The Herrmann/Larrousse Porsche had been driving hard making up time and when the other Wyer Ford lost two laps changing its rear brakes it moved up to second place.
[18] In another bad year for motorsport accidents, the Porsche works team lost two of their drivers at August's German Grand Prix Gerhard Mitter, driving an F2 BMW was killed in practise.
