1956 Le Mans

1956 — The specter of 1955 stretched into the summer of '56. The Pope himself got in the headlines when he voiced what sounded to many as an appeal to end auto racing. The Swiss didn’t equivocate and banned racing outright, while the French GP and the 1000Km of the Nurburgring were postponed.

The A.C.O. behaved with neither hysteria nor bravado and began to make extraordinary changes. They were so sweeping that the 24 Hours did not qualify as a round for the '56 World Sports Car Championship: prototypes were limited to an F1-like 2.5-liters, and fuel capacity was trimmed to 130 liters. (The ’55 Mercedes-Benz W196S prototypes packed 50gal fuel tanks!) The distance between refueling stops rose to 34 laps, imposing a de facto fuel consumption formula of 26 liters per 100km, or about 10mpg. An unpopular rule requiring wider windshields was included, and Aston-Martin took an extraordinary step and put actual glass in front of their drivers, lest a grist of oil, water and deceased insects render the new cockpit-width plexiglas opaque.

Massive modifications to the pit/tribune straight removed 12m from each lap. Two more levels were added to the pits, and the distance between the road and tribune was increased. A four-meter trench and a three-meter berm were added between the road and the spectator area.

Signaling was no longer permitted in the pit area. A new signal station – away from the confusion, clutter and congestion of the pits – was built 75yd from the exit of the Mulsanne Corner, and the new outpost was connected to the working pits by subterranean telephone lines. The whole project cost over 300m francs and forced postponement of the '56 24 hours until July 28. It was only the second time since the inception of the 24 Hours in '23 that the race was not held over the weekend of the summer solstice, but no one complained.

Jaguar was the clear favorite the moment the new prototype rules were issued. Its 3.4-liter six had been a Le Mans star since its '54 debut. By July '58 over 50 individual D-Types had been built. That bland fact meant that the D-Type was a true production car, at least as described by the A.C.O. rule book. The car – built solely to win Le Mans – was unencumbered by the new 2.5-liter prototype displacement rules, and a fleet of them went to the Sarthe in July.

With Mercedes-Benz gone, only Ferrari, the Aston-Martin DBR1s and a pair of 3.0-liter DB3S Astons – led by Targa strongmen Stirling Moss and Peter Collins – were genuine rivals to the armada of D-Types, all save the Jaguars and the DB3S Astons at 2.5-liters.

Ferrari went the Formula 1 route with four-cylinder engines from their GP Squalos in place of the 2.0-liter units. Neither new-hire Juan Fangio or Eugenio Castellotti were available for Le Mans’ July date, as both claimed illness and deferred the all-day grind to rest before the German GP at the Nurburgring a week hence.

Porsche faced startlingly real competition from Lotus. Founder Colin Chapman had made a one-car reconnaissance to the Sarthe in '55 in a Lotus IX powered by an 1100cc Climax four, but was disqualified before the halfway hour. This year he had a 1500cc type XI for himself and American David Mackay-Fraser plus a pair 1100cc Lotus 11s lapping faster than the Porsche coupes.

Just before the start, the public address requested a moment of silence to honor those who died near the 13km marker during the tragic '55 race.

At 4:00 p.m., Moss was first away in the No. 8 Aston, but last year’s winner Mike Hawthorn led the first lap "grand prix". British cars rode first through fifth. Then two works Ferraris and the Gordinis.

On the next lap, Paul Frere in the No. 2 Ecurie National Belge D-Type spun and tagged both embankments in the esses, luring Jack Fairman’s D-Type into an avoiding spin as well. The No. 3 Fairman/Ken Wharton Jag had all but escaped only to be struck by Fon Portago’s 624LM Ferrari. All three cars retired.

Hawthorn was soon joined at the front by the private Jaguar D-Type of Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson from David Murray’s Ecurie Ecosse stable. Two more laps and the leading works Jaguar was stuttering with ignition troubles. Misfiring, the No. 1 Jaguar began to slow and stumble backwards through the order. Pit stops to change plugs, fiddle with the fuel injection and make a rotor change plunged the pre-race favorite even further down the field.

The Ecurie Ecosse D-Type led at the end of the first hour, after the Moss Aston and the Peter Walker’s sister ship DB3S had taken turns in front. Hour two was somewhat less fraught, but only at the front of the field. News reached the pits during the early evening that Louis Heny had died en route to the hospital after his 750cc DB rolled over on him at White House.

The first stops under the new fuel rules came before 7:00 p.m. Colin Chapman’s 1.5-liter Lotus led his class with economical ease. His Porsche rivals never knew that the svelte little Lotus still had over three gallons of gas in the tank when it first stopped.

The rain that had threatened all afternoon arrived in time for dusk. At quarter distance, three marques filled the top three: Aston (Moss/Collins) and the Ecurie Ecosse D-type (Flockhart/Sanderson) on the same lap with the Olivier Gendebien/Maurice Trintignant Ferrari 624LM a lap back.

The top two swapped positions at midnight, but less than an hour later the Jaguar went ahead again. The Scottish D-Type and the Moss/Collins Aston spent the early morning hours practically within sight of each other. By half distance at 4:00 a.m., the dark blue Jaguar and the 3.0-liter Aston remained on the same lap, just 19sec apart. Their pace had put the third place Gendebien/Trintignant Ferrari a full four laps behind. Well back (22 laps) but running strongly again, the sole surviving works D-Type of Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb had regained its footing.

The Aston held the lead through dawn and beyond, before Moss surrendered the lead to Sanderson during a pit stop. Through the morning and into the post dawn rain the Ecosse team banked a two-lap lead over the 3.0-liter Aston as Moss and Collins were hampered by a balky gearbox. By morning, they had lost two gears.

The works Hawthorn/Bueb D-Type had seized the attention of the crowd and was clearly the fastest car on the soggy course. But they had dropped too far too early; and despite clawing their way from last place to sixth, the '55 winners simply ran out of time.

The blue of Ecurie Ecosse D-Type prevailed for Jaguar and the Cross of St. Andrew. No records were set. Only 14 cars made it to 4:00 o’clock Sunday, and the whole affair had the tone of a discount sale. The monsters from Ferrari were absent, though a red carswith its second-hand F1 four-cylinder engine and primitive chassis was third overall and first home in the 2.5-liter-class. At the other end of technology, the Lotus entries gave Porsche a cold fright, but only the Bicknell/Jopp 1100cc Eleven finished; exactly in the middle of the 14 weary survivors.

It was either a rebuilding year or a learning experience, depending upon one's native tongue. Again Jaguar won its coveted one-race championship, but no one considered hanging an asterisk by the result.