1934 Le Mans

1934 — Le Mans’ new two-story pits and articulated refueling booms (right) were stunning additions to the permanent circuit. In just a dozen races, Le Mans had matured into a premier event that stood level with the grands prix of nations on the international sporting calendar.

The ALFA factory team was absent. New grand prix rules and a restructuring of ALFA’s competition priorities focused on the new 750Kg. grand prix formula left Le Mans almost exclusively in the hands of privateers: primarily British privateers who embraced the Le Mans’ format. It all seemed to strike a peculiar chord in the British national soul. And a week’s vacation in the French summer sun is a powerful sensory magnet to a population most easily recognized by their dominant national social prop, the umbrella.

Since the inaugural 24 Hours in 1923, English-speaking drivers won half of the races, while those who spoke a romance tongue claimed the other five. Le Mans was practically a British race conveniently located in France. For '34, two of the five ALFAs, the clear favorites, were driven by the best of Britain’s splendid amateurs.

Half the field wore green though everyone there expected that the cars in front would always be red, even though there were only four Italians. First away was indeed an ALFA, but it was Lord Howe’s blue 8C2300 driven by Rose-Richards. The other blue car in the first rank was the supercharged 4.9 Bugatti.

The end of the first lap was precisely the same as the final lap of '33: Raymond Sommer’s ALFA led. Rose-Richard’s ALFA was second, ahead of Philippe Etancelin in the No. 9 ALFA he shared with Luigi Chinetti. After 90min, Lord Howe’s blue 8C appeared in the lead with Rose-Richards driving. Sommer’s ALFA sat steaming in the baking French afternoon near Arnage and required a tow to get to the dead car park. Sommer’s effort to equal Barnato’s hat-trick was spoiled.

Lord Howe’s ALFA led until the first stops at a conservative, but required, 24-lap distance. Chinetti passed Rose-Richards, who had surrendered the leading No. 6 ALFA to its owner Etancelin. While Chinetti maintained that lead, Howe was reveling in the chase and – at about 8:15 p.m. – set a new lap record at 90mph with all but a half-hour of his fuel gone. The No. 5 ALFA of Clifford/Saunders-Davies eventually joined the Sommer 8C2300, after a protracted 40-lap trip from third place to a broken-valved DNF.

More ALFA problems popped up just after the six-hour mark, when Lord Howe’s leading No. 6 stopped on the circuit without lights. It took nearly an hour to trace the electrical system for the fault, but by 11:30 "Lord Earl" as the French delighted in calling him, was back at the pits but well down the order in 11th position overall.

The big No. 2 Bugatti of Veyron and Labfic was looking poised to upset the ALFAs when Veyron was stopped – almost exactly at the stroke of midnight – by engine trouble. It took Lord Howe an hour to move his ALFA back up to sixth place. When his clutch failed and defied repair, there was just one ALFA left running at Le Mans.

The Aston-Martin team was well placed for a victory in the Rudge Cup, until a wholesale round of retirements in the seventh hour eliminated the entire works team. Within the hour, the No. 23 Aston had sudden and fatal engine problems; the No. 22, Appleton driving, broke an oil pipe. These were the secret prototypes of the now famous Ulster Astons, and the twin failures were the worst kind of bad news at the worst possible time – the little 500cc No. 23 car was running second overall when stricken.

Chinetti and Etancelin had steadily built a lead of over seven laps by the ninth hour but were haunted with an all too familiar problem that had plagued the ALFAs in the '33 24 Hours: the gas tank was leaking. With the 4.9 supercharged Bugatti gone and all the other ALFAs – the only cars that could keep pace – in the dead car park, the pair wisely slowed their pace and kept a weather eye on the fuel leak. They had built a lead of over an hour and could afford a moderate pace. They dealt with it in an interesting manner: they ignored it and ran a measured race until 4:00 o’clock Sunday.

Their pace was well off the record of '33 and would have been good enough for only third when Chinetti first won with Sommer in '32. But it was good enough to win by an hour from the 1.5-liter Riley of Jean Sebilleau and George Delaroche who were just a lap ahead of the irrepressible Freddy Dixon /Cyril Paul Riley. The rest of the top 10 were all British, save the 10th place Bugatti 3.0-liter, including the fourth place MG Magnette K3 of Charlie Martin and Roy Eccles who not only won the 1100cc class but were just two laps behind the Dixon/Paul Riley.

It was ALFA’s fourth consecutive win on the Sarthe equaling Bentley’s rule from '27 through '30. ALFA-Romeo had won the first two major grands prix of the '34 season only to be crushed by the revolutionary new Auto Unions and Mercedes-Benz GP masterpieces. Two weeks after Le Mans, Louis Chiron won the Grand Prix de l’ACF at Montlhery. It was the final major success of Vittorio Jano’s red masterpieces until Tazio Nuvolari summoned a miracle at the perfect moment during the high summer of '35.

Though Bentley had won Le Mans five times to ALFA’s four no big British cars seemed ready – let alone poised – to take up the Union Jack at the Sarthe.