1985 24 Hours of Le Mans
Then at 9pm Jean-Claude Andruet had a major accident when his WM had a tyre blow out a high speed at the Mulsanne kink, sending him into the Armco barriers.
In his final Le Mans, Jacky Ickx finished an anticlimactic 10th as the lowest placed Porsche, after a race of constant delay.
By the start of the season, FISA (Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile) had dropped its abrupt regulation changes for the World Championship.
[1] Despite the arrival of technically specific fuels in Formula 1, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) mandated that all cars had to use the standard 105-octane supplied centrally.
A cooperative of local civic bodies was formed to organise and administer the race and its preparation, with financial investment from the national government and Sarthe département.
This year Porsche and Lancia had cars, while Mercedes and Toyota arrived with support for their engines, joining Peugeot, Ferrari and Aston Martin.
The full might of the veteran team of drivers was present: Jochen Mass and six-time winner Jacky Ickx (the pair colloquially called "MIX") had won two of the three championship rounds to date, at Mugello and Silverstone.
Klaus Ludwig was back as lead-driver, with Paolo Barilla and pay-driver Louis Krages (racing under the pseudonym "John Winter").
[8] Like Joest, Richard Lloyd's GTi Engineering had done considerable work modifying their 956B, rebuilding it on a strong honeycomb-monocoque rather than the standard single-sheet hub.
Former Renault designer Marcel Hubert tweaked the aerodynamics, and all of which made this the fastest car seen at Le Mans since 1978: reaching 370 km/h (230 mph) on the Hunaudières Straight.
The Dome-Toyota 84C had got the company's first victory earlier in the year, in the All-Japan series, driven by Geoff Lees and Eje Elgh.
His regular IMSA drivers were present: Tullius raced with debutante Chip Robinson and Claude Ballot-Léna (in his record 20th Le Mans) while the second car had Brian Redman/Hurley Haywood/Jim Adams.
Owner-driver, Ian Harrower, engaged John Sheldon as a co-driver, in his first drive since his major accident at Le Mans the year before.
After a year of work, and over 3000 km of testing, the ALD 01 entered Le Mans sponsored by over 400 local businesses through the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He beat Ickx's pole lap from 1983 by almost 2 seconds, with an average speed breaking 250 km/h (155 mph) for the first time at Le Mans.
[33] A number of teams were dissatisfied with the low-downforce kits on their cars, and reverted back to the standard package finding times improved with greater cornering stability.
[5] This was working smoothly and mindful of the tighter fuel allowance, the top-20 C1 cars stayed fairly steady for the first couple of hours – the reduced strain on the engine helping with mechanical reliability.
[37] Ickx was putting in another one of his impressive comeback drives, setting the fastest lap of the race in the sixth hour, but he was then stymied having to pit to replace a gearbox oil cooler, losing another 7 minutes.
[41] In contrast, the Kreepy Krauly March was having a nightmare run: Coppelli went off in the Porsche Curves, several punctures, a pair of broken wishbones, the Motronic unit and then a fuel leak.
Race director Michael Martin told the timekeepers to credit those cars with an equivalent distance to the time they had lost in waiting.
[41][40][13] In C2, the Martin brothers' works Mazda (18th)had been leading since sunset, with the Carma Alba seven laps back (21st) having recently taken second from the ADA Gebhardt (22nd).
The Spice/Bellm Spice-Tiga had led off-and-on for 90 minutes going into the evening, but had now slipped to 4th in class (24th) after losing nearly the same amount of time fixing the oil cooler, the exhaust and the undertray.
[40] The recovery of the RLR-Porsche was completed when Palmer retook second place at 8.30am, when Schuppan had to stop and have a wheel bearing replaced, costing 9 minutes.
[7][5] About an hour later, Le Mans debutante Paul Belmondo was on cold tyres and just starting his new stint, when he lost control at the Dunlop Curve.
[39][38] Promising Australian youngster Lucio Cesario, finally got his chance to drive, as a Lancia reserve driver, giving Nannini and Wollek a rest when he did a single 50-minute stint.
[39][14] For the sizeable British contingent (including the Duke of Kent[38]), after showing initial promise, both the Jaguars and EMKA had drifted back down the field.
[43] Soon after, Joël Gouhier had a big accident on the Hunaudières Straight when the transmission on the Brun 962 seized, launching the car into the guardrails, then flipping and rolling down the track.
[39][29] In the final few hours, there were a number of cars struggling to get to the end: the Kreepy Krauly March had suffered two wishbone failures, punctures and Motronic issues had cost them much time early in the race.
By dint of being the only GT running at the end, when all their opponents retired in the first half of the race, the Helmut Gall BMW won Group B, repeating its win from the previous year.
[42][13][44] The RLR team had similarly successful tactics: and the sensor delay that cost them three laps early on would be eventual margin of their defeat (and had 30 litres of fuel left).
