1980 24 Hours of Le Mans
When another rain shower appeared in the last hour, Ickx dived for the pits to put on wet tyres, while Jaussaud bravely stayed out on his slicks.
After five years of going alone, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) returned to the World Championship, becoming the series' premier race, and easily with its biggest field.
[1] True to its founding objective to stage a test of endurance and technical innovation, this year the ACO introduced a number of new regulations designed to encourage greater reliability and efficiency over raw speed.
However, it did not take into account the vagaries of the weather and with constant rain on Thursday, it left only a very short window in the twilight for teams to get all their drivers qualified.
Despite now being a part of the World Championship again, the ACO still needed to open its entry list to the IMSA series to guarantee something approaching a reasonable line-up.
The GTP car was driven Belgian endurance racers, brothers Jean-Michel and Philippe Martin who had won the 1979 Spa 24 Hours in a Ford Capri.
[12] Alain de Cadenet had been bringing his own Lola-derived cars to Le Mans since 1973 and this year was a genuine contender after victories in the World Championship rounds at Monza and Silverstone.
Originally based around a Hesketh Formula 1 chassis, it had been considerably reworked by ADA Engineering and using a Cosworth prepared by John Dunn at his Swindon workshop.
[27] Jean-Marie Lemerle also ran a Lola-ROC with a long-tail, while an ex-ROC team car, now fitted with a BMW engine, was entered by Jean-Philippe Grand, who had Yves Courage as a co-driver.
[28] Dorset Racing were back with their Lola-Ford, driven by Martin Birrane, Peter Clark and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.
[26]) Managed by the F1 team-manager, Luis Peano, top female driver Lella Lombardi was paired with newcomer Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister.
As in the WCM, they were also supported by the Italian Jolly Club customer team running a car for their current ETCC champions Martino Finotto and Carlo Facetti.
IMSA-GTX rules were a variant of the Group 5 specifications, and after the car's dominance the previous year, had added 40 kg minimum weight to the twin-turbo version as a Balance of Performance.
[36] Dick Barbour was back at Le Mans, and using the maxim "if you can't beat them, join them", had bought three of the Kremer brothers' modified Porsche 935/K3s.
With Bill still injured from the Indianapolis 500, 20-year old brother Dale Whittington took his place, and they brought endurance expert Hurley Haywood on-board as the third driver.
Then on Thursday, Desiré Wilson had a major crash in practice when she hit the barrier by the Ford chicane and rolled the De Cadenet several times.
[15] A number of teams had a degree of nervousness about their prospects for the race: the Rondeau/Jaussaud car developed a bad engine-vibration half an hour before the end of practice, which fortunately turned out to only be the ignition out of synch.
[28] Visibility was terrible and at one point John Paul put the wheels of his 935 on the grass at 290 kp/h (180 mph) thinking he was astride the road's centre- line and not the edge.
[13] De Cadenet's erstwhile team-mate, Chris Craft, had lost second and third gear early on, with the Dome losing several hours in gearbox repairs and leaving them running a distant last on track.
[3] The works Lancia team had a miserable race and both had been retired in less than two hours with engine problems, putting all the pressure on the Jolly Club car to be able to get them points in the World Championship.
The worst incident was on the seventh lap, when Mike Sherwin crashed the third Barbour 935 into Yves Courage's spinning Chevron at Tertre Rouge and was launched over it before thudding on its nose into the guardrail.
[40][51] The BMW-France M1, running ninth, also lost a lot of time when Le Mans Racing School lead-driver Marcel Mignot spun at Tertre Rouge, damaging the front end and needing the car's steering rack changed.
[50][19] Not long after that, a similar issue befell Wollek, now back in the Gelo Porsche in fourth place, losing the fuel-injection belt as he passed the pits.
After their tribulations at the start of the race, the car of De Cadenet and Migault had run perfectly and charged through the field from 39th to now be fifth (123), a lap ahead of the Barbour Porsche of Rahal/Garretson/Moffat and the third Rondeau.
The Charles Ivey team lost a row of cylinders, and soon after 6am the Gelo Porsche of Wollek/Kelleners fell out of sixth when it was put out of the race with a broken head gasket.
An errant stone getting wedged in the engine undertray delayed the third-placed Barbour Porsche, bringing it into the clutches of the second Rondeau and the De Cadenet.
John Paul in the JLP Porsche clouted the barrier on his off-track excursion, that cost half an hour to repair, while the WMs, in the confusion, stopped three times each to change tyres.
Then five minutes later, another heavy shower arrived and Ickx immediately dived for the pits to change to wet tyres, hoping to catch a march on the leader.
Five laps back, the JLP Porsche had been fighting for second-in-class with the Pozzi Ferrari of Dieudonné/Xhenceval/Regout for virtually the entire second half of the race, and in the end beat it home by less than a kilometre.
[24][23] Despite their hour-long stop earlier in the morning, the persistence of the De Cadenet team paid off with a well-deserved seventh, holding off the challenge of the Vegla Porsche.
