1930 Le Mans

1930 — The effects of the American stock market disaster spread quickly. A tentacle of poverty reached Le Mans in only seven months: just 17 cars lined up, tails to the pit counter on June 21, 1930. But a stout crowd in a fine party mood was an ideal counterpoint to the lack of entries.

The French had all but surrendered an overall Le Mans victory to W.O. Bentley’s seemingly unbeatable green cars, and a dearth of large displacement blue cars culled the field as much as the performance of the American stock market.

America sent only a pair of Stutz Black Hawks to face the Speed Six Bentleys from the factory team and Dorothy Paget’s two-car supercharged 4 ½ liters privateer outfit. Italy was well represented by Lord Howe’s British-entered ALFA-Romeo 1750. But it was the massive 7-liter supercharged Mercedes-Benz of Rudolph Caracciola and ‘24 Targa Florio winner Christian Werner that had the Bentley Boys on full alert.

Caracciola was a gifted driver with a plump CV by the time he arrived at the Sarthe. Werner was a technically skilled, dignified but relentlessly competitive driver who spent his waking hours driving and working for the Mercedes racing and experimental department. This was an unpleasant reality for the British band of brother amateurs, who retired the Rudge-Whitworth Cup to the hallowed chambers of the BRDC’s London office.

The ‘30 24 Hours of Le Mans was about speed and endurance. The fans came to play and dance and eat and drink and watch the big fast cars, rather than attempt to cipher Monsieur Durand’s baroque indexes and handicaps. They would not be disappointed.

Caracciola was the first man to his car at 4:00 o’clock, and the Mercedes was the first away. W.O. knew the big Benz was faster than his entire fleet but arranged his cars as a pack of harriers. With tactics familiar to any contemporary chef d’equipe, Bentley designated Le Mans’ fastest man, Tim Birkin aboard a Speed Six sporting a Union Jack on its doors, as Caracciola’s chief tormentor.

Birkin finally caught sight of the white car as he roared past the pits on the third lap. He was close enough to catch a brief glimpse of Caracciola’s pit signal board as he entered the dusty wake of the blown SS. Bentley’s rabbit had demolished the lap record for the 10.15mi circuit, raising the ante to 88mph. Birkin caught Caracciola on the run to Mulsanne, and as he maneuvered to pass, a loud bang issued from the rear and sent the entire tread of a Dunlop tire flying off, mutilating the fender as it went. Witnesses said Birkin never even flinched, and simply put two wheels in the grass and passed Caracciola anyway.

A lap later, the mangled Dunlop carcass gave up entirely at Arnage, and the Speed Six began a drunken slide, as Caracciola howled past – supercharger wailing. The unseasonable heat was too much for the tires on the Speed Six, but Caracciola’s 7-liter had no such trouble with his identical Dunlops. The pit stop for a fresh cover dropped the Birkin/Kidston Bentley to seventh position, and W.O. moved Sammy Davis in the No. 3 Speed Six into attack position.

Things remained static but fraught until the cool of the evening. At the top of the field "Petit" Jean" Chassagne took over from the astonishingly brave Birkin, and Werner relieved Caracciola. The Mercedes’ stop was slower and more methodical than the well-practiced Bentley team’s, and Werner was never able to match his partner’s pace. Slowly Barnato began to close on the No. 1 Mercedes.

Then Dunfee buried Sammy Davis’ No. 3 Bentley in the sand at Mulsanne on his out-lap and ran back to the pits to report. When Davis arrived at the scene, he dug for over an hour (with the lens of a headlamp!) only to reveal that the front axle was bent beyond his ability to repair it. The No. 3 became the first retirement after 21 laps.

Barnato caught Werner in the gloom of dusk and passed for the lead. When Caracciola returned to the No. 1 Mercedes, he quickly dispatched the leading Bentley and remained in front until 9:30 p.m., when Barnato passed him again near the end of his shift. But Caracciola fought back, and the Barnato Bentley pitted almost simultaneously with the white car. Barnato double-stinted and was out of the pits first, as the blown seven-liter six-cylinder Mercedes required a lot of oil. But Caracciola was after Barnato almost instantly with the supercharger wailing.

The white car led until the first hours of Sunday, when it was again forced to the pits. The headlights were flickering dangerously. Although the Mercedes team had even bigger problems, they were mute on the specifics. The routine inspection of the No. 1 car turned into an autopsy. The batteries were fried, said team manager Alfred Neubauer, and lacked the power to crank the engine. The Mercedes team even tried push-staring the car to clear the pits, but even this didn’t work. Finally the massive German car was abandoned in the pits, as it was too heavy to push all the way to the dead car park!

From there it was a Bentley benefit and parade. The surviving Speed Sixes composed another team photo finish ahead of the very fast Talbots that fought a race-long battle with Lord Howe’s lone ALFA. The sole Bugatti of Le Mans’ first distaff racers, Mademoiselles Mareuse and Sake, were a fine seventh, and second in the 1500cc class. Just nine of the 17 starters finished. Neither Stutz made it home, and the Brisson/Rigal Black Hawk nearly burned to its axles between the Hippodrome café and Mulsanne.

Woolf Barnato, whose financial largess supported W.O.’s company well beyond the bounds of traditional business practice, won his third Le Mans in the green cars wearing the Union Jack. Even today, Barnato (pictured above in white coveralls during a pit stop) has his own page in the record books, as the only man to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans at each attempt.

After their fifth victory, W.O. Bentley’s factory cars never appeared at Le Mans again. His company survived just one more year before a receiver was nominated during the summer of ‘31. A lone privateer Bentley was entered through ‘33 but achieved nothing. Rolls Royce took control of Bentley, and the marque was seen again on the Sarthe in ‘50 (8th overall) and ‘51. A fastback Bentley Continental was used as the course car during the ‘50s. The grand British marque is forever fated to be part of Le Mans legend and lore.

The ‘30 event forms a wide boundary between Le Mans’ first epoch and the years leading to war, misuse, disuse and rebirth.