1981 24 Hours of Le Mans
The win for Porsche made Ickx the first driver to achieve five outright victories and was a suitable finale to mark the last season of Group 6 racing.
[4] With the retirement of Charles Deutsch as the Le Mans race director, the ACO appointed Marcel Martin to take his place.
Built in conjunction with Ted Field's Interscope team, it had been banned in America, but the removal of the 3-litre upper-limit in the WCM made it eligible to be used at Le Mans.
Converted to run on petrol instead of methanol and wound down in boost, it still generated 620 bhp at a canter and blasted the car down the Mulsanne straight at 355 kp/h (220 mph).
[5][9] The preparation and prospects were sufficient to entice Jacky Ickx out of retirement once again, lured by the opportunity to become the first driver to achieve five Le Mans victories.
Those cars were run by Rondeau with Jean-Pierre Jaussaud (his winning co-driver) again, and Henri Pescarolo this time with French F1 driver Patrick Tambay.
Their drivers were Le Mans local François Migault (in the race-winning chassis from the previous year), and Gordon Spice (despite him suffering a serious road-accident less than a month earlier) in one,[14] and Jean-Louis Schlesser/Philippe Streiff/Jacky Haran in the other.
Having achieved homologation, the works team also entered a 924 Carrera GTR in the IMSA GTO class, to be driven by Andy Rouse and Manfred Schurti.
This year his co-drivers were the Belgian Martin brothers, and De Cadenet gave up his usual British racing green for their red and white Belga tobacco sponsorship.
In North America, Cooke-Woods Racing took their new car and fitted it with a 700 bhp, 3-litre turbo Porsche engine, assembled at Bob Garretson's facility in California.
Chevalley raced with his regular co-driver Patrick Gaillard, and they were joined by Bruno Sotty[21] Dome brought the RL80 remodelled with composite bodywork.
Called a Mazda prototype for an IMSA GTP category spot, what turned up instead was, rather, a rough conversion of a 12-year old McLaren Can-Am fitted with a 5.7-litre Chevrolet V8 engine.
[29] The Weralit team had won an unexpected victory at the Monza round of the World Championship, and the drivers then (Jürgen Lässig, Edgar Dören and Gerhard Holup) were at Le Mans hoping to shake up the field again.
Class-winners for Lancia in 1980, Carlo Facetti and Martino Finotto, having crashed their very fast Ferrari 308 at Nürburgring, were brought in to bolster the young "hot-shots".
With support from the factory, Lundgardh's "baby-Porsche" (as it was coined) had a 1425cc turbocharged engine and was fitted with the streamlined, Kremer bodykit that made it 55 kg lighter than the Lancias.
[33] Bob Akin's team had a brand new Kremer Porsche after their other car had been destroyed in the fatal accident at the Nürburgring that had killed Herbert Müller just a month earlier.
[34][12] Joest entered a 935J with a 2.8-litre engine in the GTX class, for Porsche test driver Günther Steckkönig, with Kenper Miller and Mauricio de Narváez.
[33][12] That of the Roman Bellancauto team had a special streamlined bodyshell designed by Armando Palanca, and the engine tuned by Roberto Lippi.
Within the first session Ickx had thrown down the gauntlet with special Dunlop qualifying tyres, beating Bob Wollek's 1979 lap record by half a second with a 3:29.4.
Preston Henn's 935 (3:46.2) was the quickest GTX car in 17th, while the best of the BMWs was that of Hans Stuck in 21st (3:47.6, 15 seconds better than last year) and the best Ferrari was the NART entry in 29th (3:52.6).
After the transporter lurched into a ditch en route to the circuit, shunting the car's engine bay, they also fell afoul of the 110% qualification rule (despite being 14 seconds faster than the previous year),[39][12] as did the two factory-assisted Porsche 924s in Group 4 – embarrassingly put out by poor installation at the factory.
[6] The first fuel-stops started around 45 minutes into the race, with Ickx ceding the lead over to the more fuel-efficient Joest-Porsche, and in fact the Rondeaux could run for half an hour longer than the Porsche.
[2][5][43] While more cars pitted for fuel, the running order was Joest, Field, Bell, Tambay and Spice (Rondeaux), and De Cadenet dicing with Craft in the Dome.
The next lap as he grabbed fifth gear, about 1.5 kilometers down the straight the car suddenly slewed to the right, hitting another marshal's post, crushing the legs of the occupants, before spearing across into the other side.
The Interscope-Kremer 935 (53) had slipped to fifth with its engine issues, about to be passed by the youngest Whittington brother in the Joest car, the Haran Rondeau and the remaining WM.
[15][45] After its bad start, the Lola had been running better until 8.40pm when de Villota dumped a puddle of oil at the Esses from a major engine leak, and the repairs took 3 hours.
[11][45][13] As dusk fell, Mass moved up into second, four laps behind Ickx, and the two 936s maintained a comfortable 1-2 position throughout the night, gradually extending their lead.
[7][31] Bell drove the final two hours in the leading Porsche, in the end taking a very comfortable victory – at 186 km, it was the biggest winning margin in over a decade.
[27] After battling ignition issues at every fuel stop, Charles Pozzi's Ferrari team snatched an exciting GTX win in a back-and-forth duel with the Cooke-Woods 935 that finished barely 1.8 mi.
[37] The sole surviving Group 6 2-litre car, of Frenchmen Jean-Philippe Grand and Yves Courage, despite finishing last, had covered sufficient distance to win the Prize for Thermal Efficiency.
