1976 Le Mans

1976 — There was a loophole, and news from Le Mans said the A.C.O. would decline championship status, at least for 1976. Or perhaps it was the other way round. No Matter. The German project started in November '75. By the time they turned the '76 calendar to the March page, the new car was ready to test.

It is one of Porsche’s most enduring legends, potent and sudden revenge for the banishment of the glorious 917 species of Le Mans winners. And it was a well-guarded secret. The project folder, marked "936", was a collection of spare parts, solid intuition and way-outside-the-box thinking. They didn’t even schedule wind tunnel time. It was even painted flat black. Weissach had been scheduled to test the new 935 silhouette coupe, and project 936 went along in the same van. Secret.

It debuted in its testing black with Martini livery at the Nurburgring. DNF. The sponsor was displeased and ordered the car painted white – Germany’s FIA color – before the next race at Monza. It won. Then Imola: another victory. A third win at the Coppa Florio and the FIA Group 6 championship was Porsche’s. That was simply a bonus. Dr. Fuhrmann, who had sparked the project, really wanted Le Mans.

The A.C.O. accepted entries from the CSI’s Groups 6, 5 and 4, plus IMSA cars from America. There was even a new category for something called GT Prototypes, conveniently shortened to "GTP". And then there was the NASCAR class. Bill France himself was on hand to wave the tricolor. Le Mans learned fast

There was a pair of the new 2.1-liter 936 Porsches in Martini livery, over white. The first for Jacky Ickx and Gijs van Lennep. Plus a back-up for Reinhold Joest and Jurgen Barth. Then the 935s plus one GTP prototype silhouette 2.9-liter RSR. One 908 with a 2.1-liter turbo and one normally aspirated 908. The depth and diversity of Porsche’s inventory allowed the tacticians a certain flexibility on race day. It was simply a Phalanx. Porsche’s company policy regarding rules loopholes had been followed to the letter.

Stuttgart faced two Renault A442 turbos. The yellow cars were pole-fast. The Jean-Pierre Jabouille/Patrick Tambay/Jose Dolhem No. 19 qualified an easy first. Britain was represented by the defending Mirage-Fords. Alain de Cadenet and Chris Craft were back with the Lola T380 Cosworth that had stunned the experts the previous year. Inaltera, a wall paper retailer – the cars were built in downtown Le Mans by Jean Rondeau – produced a handsome DFV-powered Coupe for the new GTP class. And there was a fleet of dead-reliable and fast Porsche Carreras in the GT class.

The slowest car in practice was the Dick Hutcherson/Richard Brooks/Marcel Mignot 5.6-liter Ford Torino in full NASCAR specs. Herschel and Doug McGriff were nine seconds faster in their Dodge Hemi Charger. Mike Keyser and Ed Wachs were flying in their AAGT Chevy Monza. The Frank Stella BMW art car for Peter Gregg and Brian Redman looked handsome in its graph paper livery, complete with plotted power and acceleration curves. John Greenwood’s Corvette was especially attractive and became something of a styling touchstone at GM and a noisy crowd favorite despite its national origin. But for the first time since '49, there were no Ferraris at Le Mans.

Diversity had run amok, and the fans loved it. The A.C.O. should have made bumper stickers that said, "We Don’t Care How The Hell They Do It In Paris!" – but in French, of course.

To underline their new attitude, Bill France himself stepped into the 90-plus degree heat of Saturday afternoon to drop the flag and send sports car racing’s new world order on its way.

The first lap race was won by Jabouille’s Renault with Jacky Ickx’s 936 a respectful second. The pere et fils McGriff Dodge Hemi didn’t make it all the way to Mulsanne. Redman had Frank Stella’s masterpiece into a formidable fourth and Greenwood’s throbbing Corvette burned into Mulsanne at an alarming and entertaining 215mph!

By the 10th lap, Ickx took the lead when Jabouille pitted the leading A442 for fuel. That was the final lead change of the 44th running of Le Mans, although there was still time for racing and assorted automotive heroics.

Poor Greenwood pitted early to be doused in water. The heat was almost unbearable. That done, he survived a puncture which ruptured a fuel tank, and that was the end of the crowd-pleasing Corvette. The NASCAR Ford Torino went missing early as well, but the photographers got what they needed.

Up front, the new 936s were running first and second, two laps apart like alien visitors from an advanced civilization bent on motorsport rather than intergalactic domination. The Mirages, now owned and entered by Arizonan Harley Cluxton, followed the Porsches into the gloaming: Francois Migault and Jean-Louis Lafosse third and Derek Bell with Vern Schuppan fifth behind the amazing fourth place de Cadenet/Craft Lola-Cosworth.

The private team from London had paused early to replace an alternator belt and carried on with their plan to run 3:55 to 4:00 laps. Porsche’s new 935 was doing the major suffering: they too lost an alternator belt. The battered rear wing required protracted attention as well. A rear suspension pick up point had also broken. Once these problems were solved Rolf Stommelen and Manfred Schurti began to stalk the London Lola.

Jean Rondeau’s ground breaking Inaltera GTPs were performing surprisingly well despite some baroque new car troubles, including the departure of a driver’s door at full-Mulsanne speed!

Around midnight, the Porsche crew changed a turbo on the Martini 935 in just 10min. All the while, Ickx and van Lennep, who had announced before the start that Le Mans '76 would be his final race, led at leisure in a car that had not existed even in the corporate mind just seven months earlier.

The 936 was unequal parts 908, 917, RSR Turbo flavored by more than a dash of mistrust for the efficacy of the new Group 6 rules and the general paranoia that comes from living within easy driving distance of Berlin. Somehow this bizarre brew was the perfect antidote for Porsche’s Le Mans problem.

Renault lost its pole-winning A442 early Sunday morning, and that removed yet another Porsche worry.

By dawn, the Ickx/van Lennep 936 was having no problems. Harley Cluxton’s JCB Mirage Cosworths were in fine fettle, riding second and fourth. Craft and de Cadenet were an amazing third. Stommelen and Schurti had the Group 5 Porsche 935 fifth. At 10:00 a.m., the gremlins attacked everyone except Ickx who was off in his own little world: both Mirages had fuel pump trouble, Joest and Barth spent over 20min while the crew worked on a valve. Then the 935 came down with a dose of fuel pump trouble. The sugar-sponsored de Cadenet Lola Cosworth pitted from third with a stripped wheel-locking nut, and when Alain stepped aside for Craft, he burned his foot on a hot exhaust pipe!

With breakfast cleared away and all the troubles of a long night remedied, Ickx and the soon-to-retire van Lennep were 16 laps to the good from the Mirage. The Craft/de Cadenet Lola was just two laps behind them.

By lunchtime, the Inaltera GTP team was back from the dregs of the order in eighth position after the crew had robbed all the doors available from the spare cars. Craft and de Cadenet had eased onto the same lap as the second place Migault/Lafosse Mirage.

It was Ickx’s third Le Mans win and van Lennep’s second; the Dutchman went out on a fine high. Porsche won everything it entered: overall, Group 5, IMSA GT and Grand Touring. It was a remarkable and sobering demonstration of the powers of the small independent company that had not yet reached its 20th anniversary.

The John Wyer-built Mirage Cosworths proved to be fast and durable racecars. But the cheers of all Britons and many of the French were loudest for Alain de Cadenet and Chris Craft. The little one-race-per-year London team had finished an amazing third, just one lap behind the Mirage which was visited by the same problem that hit de Cadenet a year earlier when it lost its rear bodywork, this time cruelly in the final quarter-hour. Jean Rondeau’s little team was the best of the Grand Touring prototypes – also with reliable Cosworth power – and laid the strong foundation of the GTP class.

The A.C.O. discovered that it didn’t need to be a championship race; it was a one-race championship.