1957 Le Mans

1957 — After its first hour, the 1956 edition of Le Mans had been a somewhat processional economy run – a tentative first step into a new era rather than the most important sports car race in the world. Cautious and conservative new rules had diluted the core product, and the whole show lacked passion and red blood cells. Still, a man perished in one of the slowest cars in the field despite the best efforts of the A.C.O. to sanitize this seminal event.

But in '57 the A.C.O. celebrated its golden anniversary by returning to the traditional mid-June date and erasing the year-old fuel economy rules. The minimum distance between fuel stops was pegged at 30 laps. Roadsters were required to fit actual functioning doors, and the passenger’s seat had to be identical to the driver’s seat. Tools and spares no longer had to be carried aboard. Fuel tank capacity was left to the manufacturers and, by the way, there were no limits on engine displacement in the headline prototype category.

And the 24 Hours rejoined the World Sports Car Championship. The FIA had added a paragraph to its sports car rules, which sounded suspiciously similar to the A.C.O.’s new unlimited sports car rules.

The new rules were a welcome jolt of creative electricity. The factories went for the bait, especially the Italians, who read the new rules with smiles and wide eyes. Ferrari had 10 entries spearheaded by its strategic weapon, the 4.0-liter Tipo 412 V12s.

Maserati brought five cars, including two 450Ss: one the famous Costin-designed coupe for Stirling Moss and Harry Schell (No. 1, pictured above), and a standard roadster version of the potent and brutal 4.5-liter V8 450S that Juan Fangio and Jean Behra had used to win the 12 Hours of Sebring. There were two standard six-cylinder Maser 300S roadsters that had outrun all the Ferraris at Sebring, finishing second overall behind the doomsday 450S "bazooka". Fangio was entered as Maserati’s spare driver, and stood ready to go into the car that needed his skills most. In practice, he had hauled the 450S Costin coupe around at 126mph, causing knowing stares and quite expressions of awe.

Jaguar relied on private entries from Ecurie Ecosse and Ecurie National Belge. Several D-Types had the new, bigger 3.8-liter engines. Aston-Martin brought two 3.0-liter DBR1s and a 3.7-liter DBR2.

In the face of the massive Italian phalanx, France fielded no serious entries for overall victory, concentrating, instead, on the Index of Performance. They faced Lotus on the undercard. Chapman brought an 1100cc Eleven and a 750cc Climax-powered Eleven specifically to dethrone the French DBs in the lucrative Index of Performance.

At 4:00 o’clock, Saturday Moss – unofficial World Champion of the Le Mans start – got to his Frank Costin-designed 450S Zagato coupe first, but Peter Collins was the first to break ranks in the No. 6 Ferrari he shared with Phil Hill. Collins' first lap equaled the lap record . . . from a standing start.

The Ferrari led the first lap from Tony Brooks’ DBR1 3.0-liter Aston that was just ahead of Moss (450S), the Ferraris of Olivier Gendebien and Mike Hawthorn, and Ron Flockhart’s 3.8 Ecurie Ecosse D-Type. Collins’ glory lasted just one more lap, when a broken piston removed him from the front of the queue.

Early in the second hour, Behra was feeling both comfortable and patriotic in the big Maser and picked off Moss’ claustrophobic (and uncomfortable) coupe for second place. Then he banged out a record lap at 124.53mph, which set off the public address and thrilled his countrymen. This beat the new record just established by Hawthorn in the leading Ferrari. The cheering died away as another announcement carried the extraordinary news that the leader had become the first car in Le Mans history to record a sub-four minute lap. Hawthorn’s 3:58.7 worked out to a 125.6mph average and chopped eight seconds of the record he set with the works D-Type two years earlier.

A protracted pit stop just before six o’clock for the Hawthorn Ferrari promoted both of the monster Masers just in time for the two-hour update: Maserati-Maserati-Ferrari (the Gendebien/Trintignant 3.0-liter), the Flockhart/Bueb Ecurie Ecosse D-Type, Mike & Musso’s Ferrari and the Brooks/Noel Cunningham-Reid DBR1: all on the same lap.

The Maserati threat began to evaporate just after Behra surrendered the No. 2 roadster to Andre Simon on the 34th lap. The little Frenchman crashed on his outlap and split the Maser’s commodious fuel tank. Behra was furious and cannot be quoted here.

Moss then began a series of complex and protracted pit stops in the No. 1 450S and that was the start of a long and uncomfortable fighting retreat down the order. The agony ended just before dusk when the rear axle finally failed.

The first three hours alone had been worth the price of admission. But the passion and the urgent driving of the F1 brigade was over. The red cars practically vanished from the leader-board by nightfall, and Le Mans passed back into the hands of the regular and reliable Ecurie Ecosse 3.8-liter D-Types and the quiet and unperturbable men who drove and serviced them.

From the six-hour mark, the dark blue Jaguars steadily ground away at the 24-hour clock. By 10:00 a.m., they were joined by the 3.4-liter team car of Ninian Sanderson and Chris Lawrence. D-Types rode comfortably in the top four positions, and the Stuart Lewis-Evans/Martino Severi Ferrari 315S was all that was left of the big-displacement red hoard. Lotus was poised, two-deep, for the big payday in Index with the 750cc Eleven (averaging nearly 90mph!) leading the Americans' Herbert MacKay-Fraser/Jay Chamberlain 1100.

Brooks’ established distaste for Le Mans was further reinforced when he spun the sole surviving Aston DBR1 at Tertre Rouge and was struck by Umberto Maglioli’s new be-finned Porsche RSK. Neither man was seriously injured, but the Aston ended the moment undignified and cockpit-down in the Tertre Rouge sand.

What little excitement there was on Sunday came from the Paul Frere/Freddy Rousselle D-Type when it stopped for an agonizing interval on the RN158 headed for Mulsanne. The driver received repair instructions from the pits via telephone in the Mulsanne signaling redoubt.

David Murray’s Scottish D-Types won by eight laps from their teammates Sanderson and Lawrence in the 3.4-liter Jaguar. The Italians had failed utterly, the winners having held the lead since assuming the top spot during the third hour. A privately entered 2.0-liter Ferrari won the 2.0-liter class with a seventh overall, just ahead of the white and blue Carel de Beaufort/Ed Hugus 1.5-liter-winning Porsche Spyder. Colin Chapman and David Murray earned the same amount for their efforts in the most-British Le Mans since the resumption of the 24 Hours in '49.

The venerable D-Type had won three of four Le Mans races since its debut in '54; but politics, rather than pace, would change that.