1987 24 Hours of Le Mans
Dropping from 105-octane, it played havoc with the engine-management systems of the Porsche turbo-engines, and the fancied teams from Joest and Kremer lost their cars with holed pistons.
Gordon Spice had a similarly convincing victory in the C2 class in his Spice-Fiero, finishing sixth overall over the Écurie Écosse, who in turn won the Index for Energy Efficiency.
It provided informed race-commentary for the legion of British fans onsite for the race, albeit not running right through the night, and would go on to become an established feature of the event.
This year team principal Walter Brun stepped aside from driving duties, with his lead car with an all-French line-up led by Pierre de Thoisy.
Season regulars Oscar Larrauri and Jésus Pareja, who had finished second last year, had the #2 car, while the third had the all-Canadian crew Bill Adam/Scott Goodyear/Richard Spenard, and was fitted with a TV camera.
[13] With reduced support from the factory, four of the chassis (both Kremers, a Joest and a Brun car) were built in Britain by John Thomson's TC Prototypes, with a lightweight honeycomb composite frame.
[13] Kremer's lead drivers Volker Weidler and Kris Nissen had finished second at Jerez, and were joined by Kunimitsu Takahashi.
[13] Richard Lloyd's Liqui Moly team (now called Britten-Lloyd Racing) had done a lot of innovative work with their new chassis, designed by Nigel Stroud.
It was the first event for Jürgen Lässig's brand-new 962C, and he was joined by Pierre Yver (who brought the Primagaz money) and Bernard de Dryver.
Revised aerodynamics gave greater downforce from the new undertray, and to take on the long straights the –LM version had a new nose and low rear wing.
The V12 SOHC engine was increased to 7.0 litres and TWR's engine-specialist, Allan Scott, could tune it up to 720 bhp, giving a top speed of 355 kp/h (220 mph).
[15][16][17] To cope with the increasing downforce, their tyre-supplier Dunlop developed special tyres laced with kevlar to hold their shape under the loads.
For Le Mans, TWR stalwart Win Percy joined the latter pair as a co-driver, while a third car was entered driven for Dane John Nielsen and F1 driver Martin Brundle.
Thackwell was also cross-entered with the second car, supporting Scottish F1 driver Johnny, Earl Dumfries and American Chip Ganassi.
[19] Peter Sauber also sold one of his C8 cars to French privateer Noël del Bello, who had stepped up from running his Tiga in the C2 class.
[25] Jean-Philippe Grand's Graff Racing brought its Rondeau M482 to Le Mans for the fifth, and final, time as the sole representative of the marque.
[27] Spice Engineering was developing their new lightweight SE87C for this, but after the test weekend, chose instead to carry on running the reliable SE86C with its DFL Cosworth prepared by John Nicholson.
[29] Duncan Bain and Neil Crang had formed the Dune Motorsport team and fitted their GC287 with the 3-litre, 380 bhp, Rover V6 engine, from the MG rally-car.
[29] Dane Thorkild Thyrring used the turbocharged Cosworth BDT rally engine, tuned by Brian Hart to put out 600 bhp.
Norwegian Rallycross champion Martin Schanche sold his JM19 to German Peter Fritsch who got Dahm Cars to fit a heavy Porsche GT-turbo engine.
[21] Perhaps the most unusual entry was from José Thibault, who arrived with an old Chevron B36 fitted with enclosed bodyshell with a central fin, designed by the Sthemo team.
Rally-driver René Metge would again drive the car, this time partnered by GT veteran Claude Haldi (in his 20th consecutive Le Mans start).
Aside from changing from wet or intermediate tyres to slicks as the track dried (Lammers & Palmer pitted after the first lap), the standard fuel mix was burning out their pistons as the Bosch engine-management computers ran the mixture too rich for the engines to cope with.
[48] The race then went under safety car a second time, when the BLR Porsche suffered a broken oil-line and caught fire at Mulsanne corner soon after midnight.
The Jaguar slammed in the right-hand barriers, did several somersaults scraping the roadside trees and disintegrated, ending up 300 metres beyond the corner.
[15][48][49][50] Car designer Tony Southgate was justifiably proud that the cockpit was left intact and not a drop of fuel from the nearly-full tank had been spilled.
[51] The length of the safety period was sufficient to relieve any fuel-consumption concerns for the leading Porsche, negating the big advantage the Jaguars had over it.
A wretched couple of hours for Jaguar continued with the Cheever/Boesel car: being delayed by fuel issues, loose rear bodywork and then a tired Cheever mistakenly grabbed reverse gear, stripping off teeth and firing them through the casing.
The Nissans fared a bit better, with the Takahashi/Matsumoto/Hoshino car getting into the top ten late in the night, until delayed and finally retired with a broken gearbox.
[28] After a broken exhaust had cost them a quarter-hour and the class-lead at 9am, Mallock, Leslie and Duez lost an hour at the middle of the day with clutch and transmission problems, eventually finishing 8th overall.
