1971 24 Hours of Le Mans
As it turned out, there was a perfect confluence of the fastest and most powerful racing cars yet seen at Le Mans, a long fast track and extended good weather to produce the fastest race in the event's history to date setting a record that would stand for almost 40 years.
Winners, at a record speed, were Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko in their Team Martini Porsche 917.
[2] This allowed an Armco guardrail to be erected between the pits and the main straight, greatly increasing the safety of the pit-crews.
It included a new Mulsanne straight alongside the public highway and a new series of curves to cut out the dangerous Maison Blanche corner – the scene of many major race accidents over the years.
[3] This year, first prize for outright victory was US$13000 – barely the cost of a top-tier racing engine, and not reflecting the huge preparation and work required.
[10][4] However, a vast fleet of privateer Porsche 911s arrived to fill the gap, making the GT category the strongest-supported group.
[11][12] Porsche also supplied a slightly larger 5.0-litre engine (vs 4.9L) using high-performance nickel-silicon cylinder-liners from NSU that improved oil consumption and reduced wear.
[11] They entered three cars – a long-tail for Vic Elford/Gérard Larrousse (winners at Sebring and the Nürburgring) and a magnesium-alloy chassis short-tail for Gijs van Lennep/Helmut Marko.
The 512M modifications were offered to the customer teams, but not applied to the works cars as Ferrari had decided to give up any official effort with the 512 in order to prepare the new 312PB for 1972.
Their chassis was made by Holman & Moody and the engine prepared by Can-Am V8 specialist Traco (claiming 614 bhp).
[17] A number of quick-change modifications were added for wheels, brakes and refuelling to save valuable minutes in the pits.
Known as the "512F", it was designed by former Ferrari racing engineer/driver Mike Parkes it had a bigger rear-wing and used the Porsche 917 windscreen which was 120mm narrower, allowing for better water- and oil-cooler placement.
Beltoise had recently recovered his racing license after investigation in an accident at January's Buenos Aires 1000km that had killed Ferrari driver Ignazio Giunti.
Fitted with the Ford-Cosworth DFV F1 engine (that only arrived at the start of race-week, making its Le Mans debut) that was limited to 8800 rpm, allowing around 400 hp.
Once again, rally-specialist Henri Greder and Claude Aubriet's Ecurie Léopard bought their Chevrolet Corvettes as the biggest cars in the entry list.
Greder also made waves by nominating his French female rally-driver teammate, Marie-Claude Beaumont, as his co-driver.
[7][18] Due to insufficient production, Ferrari's current GT car, the 365 GTB/4 "Daytona" had to run in the Group 5 Sports category.
Swerving to avoid the 911, Siffert got the car into a series of spins but amazingly only lightly tapped the barriers situated right next to the track.
Another major incident in practice was when André Wicky's 908 lost its rear suspension doing 290 kp/h (180 mph) along the Mulsanne and dragged its tail for over half a kilometre.
Wicky was not injured, but the car came to rest over a blind brow and a 917 came flying along the straight to find a marshal on the track sweeping away debris, emphasising the issue of spotting yellow flags at 200 mph!
[27] Once he had recovered after his wild ride during practice, Jo Siffert commented ”I have never seen anything so dangerous as this profusion of slow cars.
[28] Honorary starter this year was Hollywood actor Steve McQueen with the opening of his film "Le Mans" that had been shot with footage from the 1970 race.
The Montjuich Ferrari was fourth ahead of the Martini 917/20 "Pink Pig", the Matra and Marko's recovering Porsche.
They had made it back to 3rd after the delay when Joest found he had no brakes approaching Arnage, went up the escape road and crashed out into retirement in the early hours of the morning.
Marko and van Lennep won by three laps from Attwood and Müller who had eased off their charge back up the field.
[11] What was significant this year was that virtually no car had a trouble-free run, with a number of engine, gearbox and suspension rebuilds required keeping all the pitcrews very busy.
Winner of the GT category was the 2.4-litre ASA Cachia car of Couroul/Anselme (battling an oil-leak) taking sixth in the last hour and finishing barely 40 metres ahead of the André Wicky Porsche 907 of Walter Brun/Peter Mattli.
Less than a month later, after winning the next round at Österreichring, Pedro Rodriguez was killed driving a Ferrari 512 at Germany's Norisring in a non-championship sports car race.
Then in October Jo Siffert died at the World Championship Victory Race at Brands Hatch when his BRM crashed, rolled and caught fire with him trapped underneath.
[4] Results taken from Quentin Spurring's book, officially licensed by the ACO[36] Class Winners are in Bold text.
