1973 Le Mans

1973 — Matra abandoned F1. It wasn’t working. The French company's reign as Le Mans winners was nearly up as the 50th anniversary edition of the enduro arrived. Matra had failed to finish, let alone win, the 24 Hours of Daytona. Bill France reinstated the now-traditional 24-hour format, and Ferrari kept its 312PBs parked for the Florida championship opener. Matra sent just one car, and it retired leaving the race to the new 2.7-liter Porsche RSs of Roger Penske and Brumos Porsche. The Jacksonville team notched the Carrera RS its first victory in the opening round of the 1973 World Sports Car Championship by a fat 22-lap margin.

Matra and Ferrari squared off for the rest of the season. By the time they tore the May pages from their calendars, both marques had each won two title rounds. Ferrari skipped Le Mans in '72 but sent three 312PBs to the Sarthe. Matra entered a full quartet: three MS670Bs and a ’72 spec back-up. The low-rider 670Bs were pure Le Mans specials that were merely analogous to the cars that had won Vallelunga and Dijon. Two wore new Porsche-designed gearboxes and two had the ZFs that had prevailed in '72.

John Wyer was back with two Cosworth-powered Gulf Mirage M6 roadsters. Wyer’s DFV V8s had won the 1000Km of Spa, but the victory was won on tactics (a Wyer specialty) and patience (ditto) rather than raw Spa-speed. Even these cars – bearing the proud Gulf colors – were in the second rank behind the French and Italians. And Ferrari behaved as though it was unsure that the 312s could survive the 24 Hours, even with new endurance engines and Mulsanne-specific coda lunga bodywork. Porsche had entered new 2.8-liter Carrera RSRs and everyone assumed they could go at least that far.

The Grand Touring entry looked similar to '72 with 7.0-liter Corvettes against a phalanx of Ferrari Daytonas and the Porsches. Smart money said that an overall victory by one of the GT cars was likely. Ferrari was treating that talk seriously and had a fleet of ex-pseudo-semi-works GTB4s for major players: a quartet from Chinetti-NART, plus Daytonas from French distributor Pozzi and Ronnie Hoare’s Maranello Concessionaires. All counted, an impressive 22 cars (of 54 starters) were in GT. There was still fan interest in the Group Two sedan category, as the Ford Cologne team had done so well, so entertainingly the year before.

Celebrating the 50th chronological anniversary of the 24 Hours, the ACO presented a stylish historic retrospective race for Le Mans winners and participants of the past. Stirling Moss again drove for Rob Walker, this time in a Delahaye.

Ferrari sent the Arturo Merzario/Carlos Pace No. 15 312 – a second quicker than the Jacky Ickx/Brian Redman 312 (gridded second) -- out first as a rabbit. Little Arturo set a withering pace. But no one at Matra was dumb enough to think that a car that could not run 24 hours at Daytona could sustain such a pace. Matra raced its plan and let Arturo go. Sure enough, not long after Pace took over, the red rabbit was back in the pits, Carlos soaked with a serious fuel leak that had him itching where one cannot scratch while on television.

Then Matra somehow managed to get all four of its prototypes in the pits together. Just the sort of bad weirdness that gives comfort to competitors and provides commentators grist for an entire broadcast.

The first two hours featured Ferraris in front with the Merzario/Pace rabbit leading Francois Cevert, Henri Pescarolo, and the Carlos Reutemann/Tim Schenken Ferrari. The NART Ferraris were one-two in GT looking like all that pre-race talk about an overall GT victory might contain more wheat than chaff.

Ferrari swapped the lead with Matra through the first six hours. The back-up Bob Wollek/Patrick Depailler Matra 670 was the first of the prototype works’ cars to retire. It was a gallant effort. Depailler actually led at the turn of the fifth hour, but it didn’t last long as he found himself near Mulsanne with a seized engine via a broken oil pump. The Schenken/Reutemann 312 filled the void, and the score was even: Ferrari and Matra each with three cars running.

Just before midnight Cevert was feeling racy and posted a record lap at 3:39.6 in the No. 10 670B on its tiny 13in wheels, and it stuck. He was settling in after Matra had re-factored their pace; longish pit stops for brake pads had fouled their original plans, and Cevert had the duty of running down the leading Schenken/Reutemann Ferrari.

Sunday morning arrived with the sort of attrition rate one would expect from Formula 1-based sports racing cars, but the Ferraris were all running and just one Matra was missing. The Cosworth cars were in trouble. Daytona winner Peter Gregg was having a fine Le Mans debut, third in GT. Sam Posey and Milt Minter were doing even better leading the Grand Touring class in the NART Daytona. The American Daytona was having a solid fight with the Pozzi Daytona starring Vic Elford and Claude Ballot-Lena.

The rot set in at Ferrari just after 2:30 a.m. The Schenken/Reutemann 312 put a rod through the block despite leading since nightfall. Redman and Ickx, who had returned from a dip to ninth place, were just one lap down to their teammates when nagging exhaust troubles arrived. They were a lap or so ahead of the Henri Pescarolo/Gerard Larousse 670B and the pair settled down for an evening of lead swapping during pit stops. Neither car was in prime condition: the annoyingly regular brake pad changes on the Matra vs. a cranky exhaust system on the Ferrari.

It was ultimately the same problem that had visited the Merzario/Pace rabbit, and the leading No. 15 Ferrari Ickx/Redman slid into second place. A fuel leak ended the stalking battle for the lead before lunch and promoted a patient Matra team to the top. When Pescarolo pitted with annoying, sometimes alarming, brake vibrations he was told to carry on in the lead at flank speed. That’s when the starter failed to operate and Ickx and Redman were suddenly back in the picture.

It took 20min to get the Matra going and by then the Ferrari was back on the lead lap. This race of the running wounded continued through three o’clock and had radio, television and public address musing openly about a repeat of the dramatic '69 finish. That one of the main players from that opus was engaged made the speculation that much juicier and simpler to understand – until 3:30 when Ickx coasted silently into the Ferrari pits.

At the end it was the right Matra, one of Velizy’s two all-French teams –Larousse and Pescarolo – that finished six laps ahead of the Merzario and Pace Ferrari rabbit. The No. 46 Porsche RSR of Herbert Muller and Gijs van Lennep (pictured above) was fourth, but classified as a sports car rather than a GT car. Quick Vic Elford and Claude Ballot-Lena won the GT category for Charles Pozzi’s Ferrari concern and salvaged some honor for Modena. But the French press correctly observed that the No. 39 Daytona was a French entry. As was the first 24 Hour a half century earlier, Le Mans was again an all-French affair, from practically any perspective.

Later that summer Matra clinched the World Championship For Makes in New York. Larousse and Pescarolo ran the table, winning both Osterreichring and Watkins Glen after their triumph at Le Mans. In October, Le Mans lap record holder and Jackie Stewart’s brilliant F1 teammate, Francois Cevert died in a grim accident in Watkins Glen’s uphill esses. The USGP had been the scene of Cevert’s lone F1 championship win and was Matra’s deciding sports car victory of '73. Stewart won his third World Driving Championship and retired. Matra decided that – while titles were nice and the words "World Champion" looked good in corporate parent Chrysler’s annual reports – it was time to go for the Le Mans hat trick.