1973 24 Hours of Le Mans

The race promised to be close, with Ferrari, Matra and Porsche all having two wins in the championship along with a surprise victory for Mirage at Spa.

All three Ferraris had time in the lead, but as mechanical issues overtook them it was the Matra of Henri Pescarolo and Gérard Larrousse, despite its own challenges, that took the chequered flag.

This year the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) extended the eligible classes to eight with an extra one each in Group 5 and 2.

[1] Reserves were not kept, rather the ACO selected the 55 starters from those who arrived taking into account the results of the Four-Hour race at the Test Weekend.

Even though Autodelta, the Alfa Romeo works team withdrew just days before the event there were 61 cars present for practice on race-week.

[1] After a distinct lack of success, Matra withdrew from Formula One to concentrate on contesting the World Championship of Makes against Ferrari.

[4] Adding two cars to their regular Championship team made a strong 4-car challenge in an all-French driver line-up.

Jean-Pierre Beltoise and François Cevert were constantly quickest but pushed their car hard, whereas Henri Pescarolo/Gérard Larrousse drove with endurance in mind, having got both of Matras victories to date.

The aerodynamic longtail chassis increased speed on Le Mans’ big straights while the improved V12 was now capable of 460 bhp in race-trim.

[5] The regular team driver pairings of Jacky Ickx/Brian Redman (who had both Ferrari victories this year) and Arturo Merzario/Carlos Pace were augmented by Carlos Reutemann/Tim Schenken.

But continual unreliability meant the Weslake project was shelved and the team focused on improving the V8 spyder refitted with ZF gearboxes,[6] buoyed by a 1-2 result at Spa.

Autodelta, the Alfa works team, felt their new 500 bhp flat-12 powered car was still unprepared for 24 hours and did not enter.

Despite the Swiss team’s owner Georges Filipinetti dying in May from a heart attack, a car was entered for Jean-Louis Lafosse and Hughes de Fierlandt.

Alain de Cadenet also returned to Le Mans after a strong run the previous year in his Duckhams-Cosworth, paired again with Chris Craft.

[12][2] Filling out the Group 5 field were four older Porsche 908s, including the regular entries from the Spanish Escuderia Montjuïch and Swiss André Wicky.

[18] In Group 2, the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) was again very popular with top drivers and close racing, and the mighty battle between the works teams of BMW and Ford spilled over into Le Mans.

[20] At the March test weekend, Beltoise put in a time for the Matra four seconds faster than Ferrari had 12 months earlier.

The Porsche RSR prototypes were slower than their test weekend times, until van Lennep found performance improved with narrower rear tyres.

[21] Several incidents gave the mechanics all-nighter repair jobs: John Watson's Mirage spun in the Porsche curves and the rear section lifted and clouted him on the head; Lola had a tyre blowout rip up the rear bodywork and Ferrari got an urgent call from the factory saying the valve springs were set wrong needing 48 changes per engine.

His special-engine car was disqualified by the officials after Don Yenko had had an accident doing illegal road-testing on public roads after a full differential change.

[15][21] The Kremer-Porsche caught fire when oil leaked onto the hot exhaust, necessitating a full engine-change, and Walter Brun put the Wicky-BMW into the Armco at the chicane.

[23] At the same time, the GT-leading Sam Posey’s NART Ferrari lost five minutes in a poor pitstop, allowing the Charles Pozzi car of Elford/Ballot-Léna to take the category lead.

[19] Then at 2.30am the leader was stopped out on the track by a broken conrod, and soon after Beltoise's Matra (now running 5th) again had a tyre blow out on it but this time it threw him into the guard-rails.

[14] At the same time Ickx brought the pursuing Ferrari in with a split fuel cell like its sister-car had had earlier, costing 25 minutes and six laps to repair.

[3][25] Finally, with barely 90 minutes to go, the Ickx/Redman Ferrari was out – another conrod had broken and the car was wheeled away to a standing ovation from the crowd in the grandstand opposite.

[18] The Brescia Corse Alfa Romeo had had a troubled end to the race with gearbox, clutch then fuel-pump issues after a solid first half but eventually got home in 15th.

The final round in Argentina was cancelled due to lack of support, giving Matra the championship with five victories (all to Pescarolo/Larrousse) to Ferrari's two.

[6] In the European GT season it was Claude Ballot-Léna and Clemens Schickentanz, both driving Porsche RSRs who shared the championship on equal points.

[29] Later in the summer, “Pesca” and Larrousse came back to Le Mans to be presented with the Legion d’Honneur, France's highest order of merit.

[5][8] Scuderia Ferrari's factory team would be absent from prototype racing at Le Mans for 50 years until their return and win in 2023.