1971 Le Mans

1971 — The modified Le Mans start was hardly a Le Mans start at all. For 1971 they joined the rest of the racing world and laid on an all-American speedway-style rolling start – pace car and all.

The Index of Performance was banished as well. French cars were again serious, substantial and fast enough to run with the Germans and Italians. Le pur sang bleu no longer required a special have-not under-class. Besides, the CSI’s sports car rules assigned the V12 Matras to the pure ranks of the Group 6 category. Real racing cars, prototypes, F1 cars with fenders that were expected to seize the headlines when the unlimited displacement monsters were banished in favor of 5.0-liter limited production (25 units, please) Group 5 "Sports Cars".

The CSI saw Chevy-powered Lola MkIIIs and aging 4.9-liter Ford GT40s. Porsche saw a juicy and seductive loophole and drove the 4.9-liter 236mph model 917 right through it to victory at Le Mans. And, incidentally (very incidental compared to Le Mans) the International Championship For Makes.

Matra was back after some early humiliation during the previous summer solstice. So was victorious Porsche with its factory anointed quasi-works entries from John Wyer Automotive and Martini Racing.

The latter included the preposterous-in-pink No. 23 (tellingly, the number from Porsche’s glorious '70 victory). Entered under the Martini Racing banner, the piggy-pink Sau wore tongue-in-cheek (very cheek) graphics from Porsche’s in-house design department. These were the same worthies who had offended the pedants and other self-anointed traditionalists in '70 with the purple and green Martini "hippie" 917LH. The pink graphics, labeling the car as if it were a butcher’s model of a market-ready swine, graced the unorthodox contours of SERA aerodynamicist Charles Deutsch. Previously his fame sprang from authorship of the banished Index tiddlers from DB. The Sau was sui generis in extremis. But it made the show and even out-qualified three of the seven 917,s plus seven of the new and improved Ferrari 512Ms. The Pig gridded an impressive seventh in the hands of Willi Kauhsen and Reinhold Joest.

The Gulf Porsches from John Wyer Automotive were the stars. New long tail bodies and concave noses gave the second-generation 917 langheck extraordinary poise and much needed stability. Jo Siffert shared with Derek Bell and Pedro Rodriguez teamed with '69-winner Jack Oliver, who was ecstatic about the high-speed behavior of the new long tail. New 4999cc engines made more power and pushed the new 917s near 240mph.

Ferrari’s wild card came from America. Roger Penske had created what was arguably the best Ferrari 512M. Rich Sunoco blue with yellow wheels and von Dutch pinstriping the Penske/Kirk White entry was the ultimate Le Mans Ferrari. It was also a stone on the Mulsanne straight: about five-years slow as Le Mans top speeds had breached the 200mph barrier during the previous decade. Even the '71 512S coda lunga works cars could match the Porsches on top speed. But the short-tail Sunoco Ferrari didn’t have the shape for that kind of motoring. At least it had the motor: Penske sent the 5.0-liter V12 to the Can-Am V8 engine maestros at Travers & Coons – Traco – for some serious training.

Somehow Mark Donohue found places to make up the 25mph Mulsanne disadvantage, and qualified a remarkable fourth – four seconds behind the pole Gulf 917, but, at least best of breed.

The other blue car came from Matra who made it gin clear that this was a transitional year and entered one car for F1 men Chris Amon and Jean-Pierre Beltoise. Two planned 24 Hour tests at le Castellet failed to reach the projected length. Dyno tests had already told them things they already knew about the important moving parts.

The Ford Cosworth DFV had finally escaped Formula 1 for its Le Mans debut. Guy Ligier’s new JS3 (drawn by Michele Tetu, who would design several Ligier F1 numbers during the '80s) was a pure Le Mans special with a bespoke DFV. Cosworth limited the revs to 8800rpm and the urge to perhaps 400hp. The project rode on Michelin radial tires, and Patrick Depailler shared the cockpit. It was a tidy design and looked better in its BP yellow and green than it would have wearing bleu.

Our man Alain de Cadenet made his Le Mans debut in Baron Hughes de Fierlandt’s Belgian 512M out of Jack Swaters’ Ecurie Francorchamps garage. Speedvision regulars were well represented in the Ferrari ranks. Sam Posey had raced one of NART’s semi-private 512s to a marque-best fourth overall in '70 and was paired with Tony Adamowicz in another Chinetti 512M for ’71. They qualified 12th and gridded behind de Cadenet’s No. 9 on the 49-car grid.

Ferrari was in the throes of developing its new F1-flavored 312 Group 6 prototype. The wind was blowing in a new direction. Alfa won Brands Hatch and the Targa with 3.0-liter T33 prototypes. Vic Elford and Gerard Larousse won the 1000Km on the Nurburgring with Martini’s 908/3. The new Ferrari had even led at Brands. The days of the Group 5 loophole busters were all but over. But no one had any delusions about what it took to win Le Mans. Even the pace car was a Porsche.

There are basically four races at Le Mans; the first lap; the third hour; halfway at 4:00 a.m. and the one that counts at 4:00 o’clock Sunday afternoon.

Pedro Rodriguez – a full second faster in qualifying than anyone – won the first race – by a ton. The piggy-pink Sau was up to sixth behind Donohue, who had been demoted by Vaccarella's 512M during the first lap.

By the third circuit, Rodriguez had lapped nearly a quarter of the field and established the informal ground rules. The first pit stop altered the order slightly: Siffert was now in touch with teammate and rival Rodriguez; Penske pitwork had put Donohue in front of Vaccarella to lead the Ferrari class.

Penske repeated the feat on the next round of pit stops and put David Hobbs back on course ahead of the Elford/Larousse Martini 917. Which didn’t last long.

The race to the third hour was also won by the JWA 917L. Rodriguez was relieved by Oliver, who took his first stint just before 7:00 o’clock and continued in the lead. Hobbs and Donohue were third ahead of Bell/Siffert JWA 917L. They were delayed by a loose condenser. Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep were a steady fifth in the white Martini 917K. Porsche outnumbered Ferrari six to four in the top 10 with Hughes de Fierlandt and de Cadenet’s 512M ahead of Amon and Beltoise who led Group 6 in eleventh position. Lurking near the top Nino Vaccarella and Jose Juncadella’s 512M was four laps down to the leading 917L.

At 8:16 p.m., Donohue pitted the blue No. 11 Ferrari early. The Traco-built engine died. Engine trouble too for Elford and Larousse. The big horizontal fan broke its mounting bolts, and the engine overheated to death. Both exited to the dead car park.

A long pit stop for a new alternator belt on the Marko and van Lennep Martini 917K reshuffled the front of the order. Amon and Beltoise worked forward, driving around the problems of others in the luscious-sounding Matra 660.

Team Martini (not so quasi-works Porsche) intercepted trouble for the entire 917 species and likely saved the day for Stuttgart. On the final pit stop of Saturday, the 917/20 Sau betrayed an endemic weakness. Like its langheck stablemate, the pink Porsche displays signs of loose fan bolts. The word to check and retighten the bolts on each stop traveled through the Porsche pits. Siffert and Bell had fallen to 14th. A broken shock and subsequent misdiagnosis cost the Swiss and his new co-driver 30 laps. The yellow 512M of de Fierlandt and de Cadenet assumed seventh place, behind the lone Matra.

Rodriguez did not win the race to the halfway point at 4:00 a.m. Just before 3:00 o’clock, Oliver pitted the leading JWA 917L with complaints that sound familiar to all who attended the Siffert/Bell broken shock episode. Some suspect a missing wheel weight: a tire is replaced as remedy.

One lap reveals that the problem persists. Ultimately the left rear shock is diagnosed and replaced. Team Martini is in trouble as well. Its second place 917K is in missing the all-time Le Mans favorite gear ratio, fifth. Herbert Mueller in the JWA 917K is babying the new 5-speed box as well. The pits are full of headliners in various shades of trouble and bother.

The big electronic scoring board suddenly shuffles the top of the order: the No. 15 Scuderia Montjuich Ferrari 512M is the new leader. For the first time since the titans of Group 5 faced each other on the Sarthe, a Ferrari leads Le Mans.

All glory is fleeting and this small moment of Ferrari rapture ended within minutes, just after 4:00 a.m. Ten minutes was all the time it took to adjust the leading Ferrari’s clutch, but it was enough to restore the natural order. The Marko/van Lennep Martini 917K goes in front at 4:11 a.m. At 4:22 the No. 15 Vaccarella Ferrari is stranded on the course, the clutch completely gone.

Rodriguez was back in the cured, second place No. 18 Porsche and running hard, chasing the leading Martini 917K, now four laps up the road. How the oil pipe broke in the JWA langheck is forgotten. Luckily Pedro was going in a straight line when it happened and despite the surprise hot oil shower the little Mexican superstar got the 917 under control and back to the pits. And no farther. It was up to Jo Siffert and Derek Bell now.

Dawn showed the No. 32 Matra in an amazing second position. The factory-prepared Martini 917K of van Lennep and Marko still led, but JWA had two cars headed for the front. Siffert was sixth, but Mueller and ’70 winner Richard Attwood were third, two laps behind the Matra which had developed an illusive and stubborn misfire. New plugs didn’t fix it. Neither did a fuel filter. They checked the metering unit as well. It didn’t take the No. 19 917K long to erase the Matra’s two-lap advantage, making it Porsche-Porsche at the top. Siffert and Bell never got that far. The crew managed to patch the crack in the crankcase, but it didn’t hold. Bell was at the wheel when it finally quit.

The pursuit of the Matra was unnecessary. At 9:40 a.m., Amon pulled to the side of the road at Mulsanne and stepped out of the 660 V12 roadster. The fuel-metering unit was cooked, and the pits were too far away. The sigh of the crowd was audible all around the circuit.

Now the Wyer 917K was closing, slightly but measurably, on the leader, but the word came down from Porsche that a one-two finish was in everyone’s interest and that’s how it ended.

Posey and Adamowicz were a distant third for NART but won the Ferrari class. Twice the New York team had brought home the best 512. With the fine weather, their pace would have easily eclipsed the speed of the winning Porsche in '70. But '71 was a much cleaner race, absent the rain of Porsche’s first Le Mans victory. Marko and van Lennep broke Le Mans’ 5000Km mark, outdistancing even Gurney and Foyt’s distance record set four years earlier in the 7.0-liter Ford MkIV.

From Le Mans, it was something more awful than the end of an epoch. The final race of the Group 5 era came in July, at Watkins Glen. By then the great Pedro Rodriguez was dead, killed in a second-level money race at the Norisring in a Ferrari 512. He was balked lapping a slower car. The 512 hit a stone bridge abutment and burned.

Almost poetically, Alfa Romeo won the Glen Six-Hour from Siffert and Le Mans-winner van Lennep. It had rained and Siffert had a puncture. Seppi was incensed and fought back like a wild man through the mist and spray, but the flat tire had taken too much time. The next day Siffert raced the first 917/10 in the lucrative Watkins Glen Can-Am and pocketed third place money. Two months later Seppi was dead as well, killed at Brands Hatch in a make-up F1 non-championship race for the abandoned Mexican GP. Siffert and Rodriguez, both giants of endurance racing’s golden age – and F1 teammates – lost along with the fastest sports cars in history.

New rules, punitive rules some said, sent the glorious 5.0-liter sports cars away and replaced them with F1-ish 3.0-liter sports prototypes. Porsche took the hint and left for America where the turbocharged 917/10 and 917/30 became icons and helped sell a bunch of the new Porsche 914s and the occasional Audi.

Those who claimed a new era was dawning were right, but for the wrong reasons.