The myth of Le Mans in 100 chapters (II): Alonso's hammer, a Japanese Batmobile and the winners arrested by the Gestapo

During this weekend, in which the centennial edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is celebrated, EL MUNDO offers you some of the best moments of the legendary endurance test. If you want to consult the previous chapter, click on the following link.

Part I: The winners who trafficked, Alonso's obsessive 'on board' and Porsche's pink pig

The rain and the night

33. PESCAROLO EXHIBITION
Nobody knows every corner of Le Mans better than Henri Pescarolo, the driver with the most participations (33, without interruption, between 1966 and 1999), including three victories (1972-1974).. But the early morning of that September 29, 1968, when Jean-Luc Lagardère, owner of Matra, went to wake him up, he was simply a 25-year-old driver who in his two previous experiences had just completed 90 laps.. In addition, his teammate, Johnny Servoz-Gavin, had suffered a previous problem with his windscreen wipers and the rain was getting so violent that the team was already thinking of retiring the car.. “Jean-Luc asked me if I wanted to continue and I didn't hesitate for a second. I left telling myself that each lap could be the last one, because it seemed impossible to drive in those conditions.. When I caught up with those in front, I barely saw their red lights,” he recalled years later. “My goal was to put the car back where it needed to be, that is, behind the Ford GT40”. That feat made the whole of France fall in love, despite the fact that the Matra de Pescarolo did not reach the finish line due to a puncture.

3. 4. “TELL ME IF YOU WANT ANOTHER”

“Tell me if you want another relay, eh? Because I have the rhythm of the night”. Fernando Alonso's radio message sparked laughter from the Gazoo Racing engineers, still incredulous about the Spaniard's display during his 2018 night stint at Le Mans. After starting with a deficit of 2:20 against the #7 Toyota car, in the following 43 laps he managed to cut 96 seconds (2.2 per lap) from the highly inspired Mike Conway and a José María 'Pechito' López clearly overwhelmed by circumstances.. A devastating rhythm, like a hammer between 3:19 and 3:21, key to the subsequent victory, in the company of Sebastian Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima.

35. THE BEST MCLAREN GT

How could McLaren Le Mans conquer with that F1 GTR, whose reliability inspired so many doubts? How was that model designed for millionaires the first to win in its first participation, something that until then had only been achieved by Ferrari, with its 166MM, in 1949? How did that GT1 class, which in the previous one had not let the mechanics sleep due to a gearbox prone to breakage and a BMW engine with too much revs, surprised the Porsche WSC, in the hands of Bob Wollek, Thierry Boutsen and Mario Andretti? The only plausible answer, with its overwhelming simplicity, can be attributed to JJ Lehto: “It was fun”. This is how the Finn summed up, as soon as he got out of the car, his underwater night recital. Years later, he would remember the continuous radio messages from Paul Lanzante, the head of his team. “I kept asking myself, 'Are you sure, JJ?. I told him not to worry, but he kept asking me to slow down a bit 'because we are so much faster than the rest'. Someone told me that at one point I was 30 to 35 seconds faster than everyone else.”

36. AGAINST THE SKEPTICS

In 1972, many doubted that Graham Hill, then 43, would take his tenth Le Mans start seriously.. Among the most skeptical was his own Matra teammate, Henri Pescarolo, 14 years his junior, obsessed with his first win. The Frenchman treated the double F1 world champion (1962, 1968) and the Indianapolis 500 (1966) with some indifference and was wary of his talent at night and wet driving. After all, at that time, Hill linked more than three years without getting on an F1 podium. However, in the early morning of that June 11, as soon as he saw him behind the wheel of the MS670, the Frenchman had to surrender to the evidence. “Given his age I thought he would not be willing to take risks, but it was precisely him who made the difference, during the night and in the rain. When I saw the times I thought: 'Okay, I can go to sleep now”, he would confess years later, about his long-awaited victory, which would open the doors of the Triple Crown for Hill, a unique milestone in the history of motorsports..

The most groundbreaking designs

37. A MONSTER IS ON THE LOOSE

The residual role of the American teams, absent at Le Mans since 1935, was mitigated, in part, by Briggs Cunningham, one of the pioneers when it came to hybridizing chassis and engines.. In fact, the ACO rejected several of its initial proposals when configuring a car with a Cadillac body and Ford mechanics.. Until in 1950, he registered two entirely Cadillac creations. The most striking, the Spider model, was immediately baptized by the French press as Le Monstre. Cunningham finished off the vehicle with a tubular chassis, aerodynamics product of an embryonic wind tunnel and seat belts, on the advice of its pilots, with experience in aviation.. He took the wheel himself, in the company of Phil Walters, and finished in eleventh place.

38. A CHILD'S DREAM

Minoru Hayashi created the Dome brand in 1975, with the idea of making very attractive road cars and generating profits with which to finance their presence in the most prestigious competitions.. And he never fell in love with it as much as Le Mans, so that same year he received the first sketches of the Dome Zero RL. Its extraordinarily striking concept was based on a pronounced wedge shape and a cabin more typical of spaceships.. Not by chance dome means child's dream in Japanese. Of his three participations, between 1979 and 1981, he was only able to reach the finish line in the second, 92 laps behind the winner.

Damonte, with the Nardi Bisiluro at Le Mans.

39. BY A SIMPLE REBUFF

The Nardi Bisiluro was something like a double torpedo, barely 400 kg, so light that at Le Mans it was literally blown away by the wind. An idea so revolutionary that today it is still stored in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum (Milan). It was designed by Enrico Nardi and Carlo Mollino to challenge giants like Ferrari and Jaguar, giving everything to aerodynamics and cornering. For this they incorporated a 750 cc Giannini engine and only 62 CV, located along the left side, while the pilot was placed just on the other side. But in the terrible 1955 edition, Mario Damonte lasted six laps. Nothing else. Being lapped by Eugenio Castellotti's Ferrari 121 LM, the simple slipstream ended up expelling him from the asphalt.

40. RADICALLY DIFFERENT

A little desperately, after the numerous fiascos that followed its only podium finish in 1998, Nissan played the card of radical innovation in 2012 with the Deltawing. The project, which seemed inspired by the Batmobile, entered Garage 56 at Le Mans, the usual setting for show cars, designed more to impress the untrained eye than to compete with the best.. Its strong points, obviously, were the aerodynamics, the weight (590 kilos with pilot and fuel included) and the consumption of a 1.6-liter turbo engine, which only needed half the gasoline of an LMP1. After starting in the middle of the grid, his journey ended on lap 75, when Satoshi Motoyama was hit by Kazuki Nakajima's Toyota.

creepy accidents

41. INFAMOUS MERCEDES
In 1991, Mercedes, with all its power of seduction, had convinced Michael Schumacher to sit in the C11, just two years after his second overall victory at Le Mans, with Jochen Mass, Stanley Dickens and Manuel Reuter.. As early as 1999, its engineers were working tirelessly to keep up with Porsche, Audi, Toyota and Nissan.. They racked their brains so much that they finally made a fatal miscalculation. They paid it, in their meats, Mark Webber and Peter Dumbreck. The Australian, twice on the Mulsanne straight, during the warm up. The urgent call to Adrian Newey, guru of F1 aerodynamics, was useless. The car would take the exit yes or yes. So that in the fourth hour of the race, the Scotsman suffered another terrifying flight in Indianapolis, at more than 300 km / h. That CLR was leaving the mainland like a plane taking off. Since that unfortunate Sunday, the Silver Arrows have not returned to Le Mans.

42. 'ROCKY', ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE

The 2011 edition was disastrous for Audi, which had already lost one of its three cars by lap 14. It was when Allan McNish was fighting for the lead and was hampered by the Ferrari of Anthony Beltoise. The excursion through the gravel and the impact against the barriers made us fear the worst, although there was no personal injury to be regretted. Hours later, already under the spotlight, Mike Rockenfeller suffered another gruesome accident, when trying to pass Rob Kaufman's Ferrari GTE Am on the dizzying descent to Indianapolis. When rescue teams arrived at the crash site, they found no trace of Rockenfeller.. After a few harrowing minutes, a track marshal found the German on the other side of the barriers, in an area that he himself had considered safe seconds before losing consciousness.. “The safety measures in this car are incredible and have saved my life. I hope I never experience something like this again,” Rocky explained from the hospital.

43. MARC DESTROYS THE CONCRETE

In the only day of official tests, the nerves of the rookies, the desire of the veterans and the caution of the favorites are perceived. A strange combination that on rare occasions can lead to more than one scare. Marc Gené, protagonist of a terrible accident in 2008, when he presented himself as a candidate for victory with the Peugeot 908 can attest to this.. During the afternoon session, in the Porsche curves, his prototype stepped on the grass, shooting against the protections. The images of the shattered concrete and the car reduced to its survival cell scared the entire pit-lane, although the Barcelonan emerged gracefully, with some bruises and pain in one foot. After starting third on the grid, he finished second at the finish, behind the Audi of Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello.

44. “LIKE AN OUT OF CONTROL PLANE”

Anthony Davidson's detailed description of his 2012 accident chills the blood. “I felt like I was on a plane out of control.. He knew how close the barriers were and at this speed he was going to reach them in no time.. The car crashed to the ground and I felt a tremendous punch to my spine as it fell back onto all four wheels. She still had her eyes closed and her hands off the wheel. Half a second later I had a frontal impact against the barrier”, the Briton recounted what happened with the Ferrari AF Corse of Piergiuseppe Perazzini, a 56-year-old amateur driver. “I opened my eyes again and realized that I was still alive. He had feeling and could move his feet. Everything worked. I knew I should stay inside, but I felt panicky and claustrophobic. I slammed the door open and got out carefully because of the back pain.” Another miracle, at almost 300km/h, against the guards of the Mulsanne curve.

Mr Le Mans

Four. Five. THREE DECADES LATER

A unique record, with nine victories, seven of them with Audi (2000-2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2013), one with Porsche (1997) and one with Bentley (2003).. In addition, two second places (2012, 2014), three third places (2006, 2009, 2010) and four retirements, all of them triggered by the accidents of his teammates when the Dane's car was leading the race.. Thus ended Tom Kristensen with a Jacky Ickx record that for three decades had been considered unapproachable.

46. HUMILITY BY FLAG

“I have had the privilege of driving for 15 years for the best team in the world. I have had great colleagues and I have worked with fantastic people. My nine Le Mans victories would not have been possible without Audi.”. Between 2000 and 2003, along with Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro, they would become the first drivers to win three straight Le Mans wins since Jacky Ickx and Henri Pescarolo in the 1970s.. In any case, when he was questioned about the secret of his success in La Sarthe, he never lost his humility.. “This is the most challenging race and you have to respect all its factors – night, day, rain, oil, teammates – plus the right mentality”.

47. THE CALL THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

In the spring of 1997, when he was already approaching thirty, Kristensen's palmares dwindled to two F3 championships in Germany (1991) and Japan (1993).. In fact, he had not even set foot on Le Mans when he received the call from Ralf Jüttner, Audi's technical director, to share a car with two F1 figures: Michele Alboreto and Stefan Johansson. “I signed four days before the race. I could only do 17 laps in qualifying. I wanted to impress my bosses so I made a lap record. I remember Ralf's message on the radio: 'Now hold it steady'. Then I understood that if a German starts speaking to me in English, I am doing a good job”, he would remember years later.

48. DYED OF MOURNING

The last hurrah, in 2013, was dyed black for Kristensen for two reasons. In March he had lost his father, Carl Erik, a rallycross driver, whom he had always revered.. In fact, just a year before he had shared an unforgettable weekend at the Goodwood Festival of Speed with him.. To that duel he had to add the tragic death of his compatriot Allan Simonsen in the middle of the race. So neither at the podium ceremony nor at the subsequent press conference was he able to enjoy his ninth Le Mans victory.. “I have driven with the determination of my father, the humblest guy in the world. Hopefully one day we can win here again to dedicate it to him, because this victory is for Allan,” he said.. That long-awaited tenth triumph, things of fate, could never materialize.

Drama in the last laps

49. STOP TO WIN

Everything was decided by 120 meters, the second closest difference in Le Mans, a well-deserved end to one of the best races in history. The battle between the Ford GT40 of Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver against the Porsche 908 of Hans Herrmann and Gérard Larrousse intensified in the decisive stage, when David Yorke stopped Ickx for a three-minute overhaul, with tire changes and brake pads included. What seemed like a suicide turned out to be the winning strategy. Because that GT40, by then somewhat outdated, began to dominate in the slow sections, while Herrmann, confused by a light on his dashboard that erroneously warned him of the alarming wear on the brakes, could only oppose despair in the melee. Those frictions on the last lap were epic.

fifty. THE TOYOTA JAGFE

In 1999, endless punctures prevented any fight against BMW and in 2014, an absurd failure in the flowmeter, when Kazuki Nakajima was leading comfortably in the middle of the test, put the most superstitious at Toyota on notice.. The ambitious Japanese project was not lucky at Le Mans, although what it suffered in 2016 exceeded any forecast. “This is the hardest thing that has happened to me in my career.. He will stay with me forever”, admitted the Japanese driver, who with 10 minutes to go was comfortably leading before the unsuccessful siege of Porsche. However, with four minutes to go, a fault in the connection between the turbocharger and the intercooler triggered a loss of power that made him trudge back to his garage.. Emergency repairs allowed him to get back on track, but his last lap lasted more than six minutes, for which he was disqualified and couldn't even taste the consolation of the podium.

51. COUPLE, NO LUCK

What could have been the first Spanish victory mutated into a monumental fiasco, when there was barely a quarter of an hour left before the checkered flag. Chus Pareja shared the seat of the Porsche 962 with the Argentine Óscar Larrauri and the Swiss Walter Brun, owner of the team and with a great nose for adapting the car to the great novelty of that edition: the Mulsanne chicanes. With greater downforce they already slipped into second place on the grid. Larrauri fell ill overnight, so Pareja and Brun took up the sole pursuit of the Jaguar XJR-12s, in their striking Silk Cut livery.. The one who was leading could not use the gearbox correctly, so the feat seemed possible. Instead, a lubrication system mishap left the 962 stranded on the Mulsanne Straight.. “It has been one of the worst feelings of my life, because I have been very close, but that's how luck is,” Pareja declared, applauded by his opponents on the way to his garage.

52. PORSCHE, IDLE

Of Porsche's 19 Le Mans victories, none was as exciting and suspenseful as 1977, starring Jürgen Barth, Hurley Haywood and Jacky Ickx.. To calibrate the merit, it is enough to point out that in the second hour, his 936/77 had fallen off the cliff to 41st position, while the Renault A442 of Jean-Pierre Jabouille and Derek Bell dominated at will. In the evening, Ickx started a furious comeback with which they rose to second place, ahead of Jacques Laffite and Patrick Depailler, also with the diamond team, led by Gerard Larrousse. Everything seemed decided in the early hours of Sunday, but the leaders, with eight laps ahead, broke the engine. Renault counterattacked with Depailler. However, shortly before noon his injection pump was blown to pieces.. There everything seemed resolved for Porsche, which just 45 minutes from the end burned a piston. Although he had 17 laps ahead of his immediate rival, the regulations required him to do at least one more lap.. After half an hour of repairs Barth fired up his sluggish engine to idle the 936/77, in its gorgeous Martini livery, to the finish line.

Le Mans in the cinema

54. PAUL NEWMAN, AT 54 YEARS OLD

Paul Newman's passion for cars had already been immortalized in 500 Miles, a mediocre film by James Goldstone where he himself took over the driving scenes. Just over a decade later, while crisscrossing his collaborations with Robert Altman, the Ohio actor embarked on one of Porsche's most dominating projects at Le Mans.. That 935/77A model was a prodigy of power. Until today, the only winner that mounted a rear engine (1976). Newman, in the company of Dick Barbour and Rolf Stommelen, climbed to the second step of the podium. Era 1979. He was 54 years old.

53. FIVE MONTHS OF CHAOS

The most enthusiastic motor adventure ever filmed was the pursuit of a speed madman. Steve McQueen had been obsessed with running the 24 Hours, with Jackie Stewart as a partner, behind the wheel of a Porsche 917. The initial astonishment of the producers and the insurers would end up turning into a resounding negative. So McQueen had to settle for spending the summer of 1970 giving his body and soul to Le Mans. A chaotic five-month shoot from which John Sturges would flee and which Lee H would end up completing. Katzin.

55. CHINESE, WITH CHAN

In 1995, Jackie Chan did not hesitate to mix martial arts with racing cars in Thunderball.. Those crazy chases behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi were something like the germ of his collaboration with David Cheng, one of the best Chinese drivers of this century.. Their joint project was born in 2016, hand in hand with Alpine, and reached the top of Le Mans in 2017: victory in the LMP2 category and second place overall, only behind Porsche. However, Chan did not even travel to France to attend the feat of Ho-Pin Tung, Thomas Laurent and Oliver Jarvis live.

56. A PAIR OF STATUETTES

It was nominated for best film at the 2020 Oscars, but had to settle for the statuettes for best editing and sound effects. That was also the legacy left by James Mangold, its director: that of a story that stays halfway through almost everything.. Le Mans'66 reveals the legendary edition in which Ford dethroned Ferrari. Christian Bale plays Ken Miles, a racer with boundless faith, and Matt Damon plays Carroll Shelby, the mastermind behind the Ford GT40, perhaps the most beautiful racing car ever built.

technical innovations

57. PULL OR PUSH?

Since the dawn, front engines had set the standard at Le Mans, with 30 wins in a row.. Until in 1963, Ferrari surprised its opponents with the 250 P, the first mid-engined car to win the event.. That year, Ludovico Scarfiotti and Lorenzo Bandini led the second classified -another 250 P- in 16 laps (215.39 km), the third largest difference in history. Enzo Ferrari, author of the famous “Horses pull the plow, not push it”, must have swallowed his words.

58. LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

Although total darkness barely lasts eight hours in mid-June, car lighting has always played a crucial role in La Sarthe. Back in 1926, the French team Lorraine-Dietrich mounted the first fog lights on its B3-6, key to its victory. Later, in 1962, Ferrari incorporated iodine for the halogens of its TR1/LM. Gone are the filament bulbs and dynamos. Pilots doubled the view range to 300 meters.

59. THE DIESEL AGE

Throughout the 20th century, diesel engines had barely loomed as something more or less exotic at Le Mans. From the pioneering six-cylinder in-line engines of the 1949 Delettrez or the four-cylinder H-shaped engine of the 1950 MAP, it took more than 50 years for a winning project. In 2006, Audi presented its R10, with a 5.5-liter V12 turbo diesel, with which it scored five victories in the following six editions (it only missed the 2009 one, in favor of Peugeot, also with diesel technology).

60. THE HYBRID EMBRYO

Today, its dominance has been established in almost all engine categories, but the truth is that hybrid technology, which combines the strength of an internal combustion engine with an electric one, was quite a discovery in 1998.. So, the American Don Panoz took his Esperante GTR-1 to Le Mans. The work of a visionary, who sought to multiply autonomy thanks to a system of electrical energy regeneration during braking. Its heavy batteries earned that car the nickname Sparky. He couldn't even take the start, but with that model he marked the way to the future.

antiheroes and losers

61. WOLLEK'S 30 ATTEMPTS

Between 1968 and 2000, Bob Wollek started 30 times at Le Mans, 21 of them with a highly competitive Porsche. He was on the podium six times (1978, 1989, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1998), signed three pole positions (1979, 1984, 1987) and four partial victories in his category (1977, 1992, 1995, 1996), although he could never taste the glory of the general classification. Among all his misfortunes, perhaps none like that of 1998, when at the age of 54 he got behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 GT1-98. Everything began to come to a halt at six in the morning, when his teammate Jörg Müller spun at the first Mulsanne chicane. “Jörg went crazy. I had spent the whole week telling him: 'Even if we are second and have two laps to go, go slow, don't try to catch them'. Shortly after, in the garage, he told me: 'I'm an asshole'. The fact is that minutes later, the leader Allan McNish also had to spend half an hour in the pits due to an overheating problem.. But it was already too late for Wollek, because his mechanics were obsessed with fixing a water leak that didn't really exist.

The Ferrari 312PB, at Le Mans, in 1973.

62. FERRARI'S GOODBYE

The debacle of 1970, when they abandoned nine of their 11 cars and the two survivors were left off the podium, had wreaked havoc in Maranello, where they immediately got to work to adapt to the new regulations.. After hard months of work, Ferrari presented its 312PB, with which it had to stand up to Porsche. In fact, in the 1972 FIA Sportscar Championship, he won 10 of 11 races.. All except Le Mans. And the reason was as simple as it was bleak: Enzo Ferrari did not trust his reliability. Therefore, the Scuderia engineers had to evolve it for the 1973 edition, also trusting in the hands of Jacky Ickx and Brian Redman.. That #15 car came to take the lead, but after 332 laps, his heart exploded. Not even the second position of Carlos Pace and Arturo Merzario, six laps behind the winning Matra, made the great boss of Modena change his mind. It was the last nail in the coffin of his resistance program.

63. IN THE CAR AND IN WAR

In the years of the Popular Front, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, some French pilots carried the spirit of resistance to its ultimate consequences.. This was the case of Jean-Pierre Wimille, winner with Bugatti in 1937 and 1939, and Robert Benoist, with whom he shared the wheel in the first victory.. Their destiny united them during the war, since both enlisted in the British secret service to help the resistance against the Nazis.. In June 1944 they were arrested by the Gestapo.. Wimille managed to escape, but Benoist, only three months later, was executed in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

64. 'EL CHUECO', NOT EVEN AT THE FINISH

The inclusion of Juan Manuel Fangio, considered by many to be the best driver in history, among the list of losers at Le Mans might seem like heresy. Even more so after his extremely delicate position during the 1955 tragedy, just behind Pierre Levegh's car, which ended up taking 82 lives ahead. However, the truth is that El Chueco did not even see the checkered flag in his four participations (1950, 1951, 1953, 1955). A meager record for someone accustomed to endurance, with two second places in the Mille Miglia (1953, 1955) and a double win in the 12 Hours of Sebring (1956, 1957). De La Sarthe, after the debacles with Gordini, Rosier and Alfa Romeo, said goodbye in 1955 in the worst way. Just when he was closest to victory. Together with Stirling Moss he came to dominate with some comfort during the night, but after the disaster was known, Mercedes withdrew his two cars.