1979 Le Mans

1979 — For the second time in a decade, Hollywood came to Le Mans. Steve McQueen got there first with his movie about the golden epoch of the Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512 loophole busters. But 1979 was entirely different: Paul Newman, actor and serious racecar driver was making his Le Mans debut in Dick Barbour’s Porsche 935 (photo). Rolf Stommelen was Barbour’s anchor to windward, but the crowd and media were obsessed with the 53-year-old American movie actor, who discovered racing while filming Winning with bride Joanne Woodward and Robert Wagner.

The skinny guy from Connecticut was a pretty fair hand, but his stardom outshone even the favorites, the immaculate Porsche 936s bearing the omnipresent (in Le Mans, anyway) livery of Essex petroleum on the outside and a fortified fifth-gear cluster on the inside. The humiliation of '78 was still a fresh talking point in and around Stuttgart. Even without ’78-winners Renault to humiliate, Porsche was poised for the kind of crushing, merciless victory so beloved by all true Germans, regardless of their secular nationality.

Consensus: the 936s were literally unbeatable. When the race started at 2:00 p.m. (to accommodate Monday morning’s national elections), the 936s set a withering pace through the first load of fuel.

By 5:00 o’clock, the precision scales began to tip: Hurley Haywood and Bob Wollek had a sputtering, fuel-starved 936, and that was the small stuff. Brian Redman had a bigger and more alarming problem. As he swept under the Dunlop Bridge in the 936 he shared with Jacky Ickx, the left rear Dunlop pulled away from the rim. The damage was more than cosmetic. The flailing tread slashed at coolers and couplings and hoses. Nearly every system that served the flat-six was injured.

The Ford-powered and sponsored Mirage of Derek Bell and David Hobbs eased into the lead, as the Porsches wobbled and flailed. Ford France had composed a consortium of French Ford dealer funds and installed Cosworth DFV V8s in the ex-Wyer/ex-Cluxton Mirages for the occasion. These were blood descendants of the Ickx and Bell JWA Mirage that won the ’75 24 Hours. As the long twilight set in, British hopes were lightly buoyed. Behind them, lurking with intent, was a fleet of 935 Porsches entered in both the Group 5 and the IMSA GTX category.

Before Saturday became Sunday, the Group 6 contingent was lame and hobbling. Gearbox problems frustrated the Mirages. Porsche struggled to rebuild the entire fuel system on the Haywood/Wollek car. Hurley and "Brilliant" Bob fought back, wading through a sea of sickly cars before reaching second overall by 7:00 o’clock Sunday morning. Teammate Ickx ran out of luck when marshals spotted him on the receiving end of some unwanted assistance as he tried to fix a broken fuel injection belt.

The 936 Porsches were still feeling the effects of the Six Hours of Silverstone. Between the British round and Le Mans Porsche had to rebuild the Wollek/Haywood car that was first declared a total write off after an adult strength accident in Britain. The 936s ran out of invincibility by midnight.

The Group 5 cars had simply inherited the momentum. By dusk the 935K3 Porsche of the Brothers Whittington (Don and Bill) and Klaus Ludwig assumed a slight margin from the lead Gelo Racing 935 of Hans Heyer and Manfred Schurti. They kept in touch throughout the evening and morning, swapping the lead on pit stops.

Sunday brought light rain and the sprinkles eventually brought a Hollywood special effects-quality thunder and lightning storm.

After breakfast, John Fitzpatrick contributed to the special effects demonstration when the turbo on his Gelo 935 exploded in front of the pits and spat a huge, scary sheet of flame. The real damage came when the bored and soaked fire marshals emptied several million francs worth of extinguishers at Fitzy’s 935. This accomplished three things:

1) It made the marshals feel useful and/or macho and . . .

2) It put the man who many still consider the finest and fastest 935 racer of all time out of the 24 Hours. A new turbo would have been all the repair necessary to allow Fitzy’s pursuit to continue, but the fire marshals eliminated that option.

3) It left the Whittington/Whittington/Ludwig Porsche several laps ahead of the crowd/media favorite Barbour/Stommelen/Newman Barbour Racing 935.

But only until 7:00 o’clock, when Haywood and Wollek went by them into second place, 13 unlucky laps behind the leading 935. An hour later their engine died after a back breaking night of pursuit through persistent IFR conditions: Team Hollywood eased back into second overall and first in IMSA GTX.

The electric moment of the race came near lunch Sunday afternoon. Don Whittington coasted the leading Porsche to a stop on Mulsanne with a broken fuel injection belt. It took Don a half-hour to apply a temporary and extraordinarily clever double-remedy. Once back at the pits, it took the Kremer crew somewhat less time to set things right and back on course. The Hollywood Porsche reclaimed 10 laps during the episode, and the leading 935 was now only four laps ahead.

No matter – with 20min remaining Stommelen pulled the Hollywood Porsche off the road to Mulsanne. After a quick diagnosis, he slowly eased back onto the track with the Barbour Racing 935 making flatulent, blow-head-gasket noises. Two crawling laps ended when Stommelen pulled up within sight of the clock by the pits. There he waited for 2:00 o’clock. When the hour arrived he puttered the 935 across the line to a heads-up second place and a win in the IMSA GTX class.

The Whittingtons, who had been racing cars for little more than one year, sprayed the champagne as le Marseilles and Deutschland Uber Alles were played. The crowd was more interested in the Barbour crew screaming "NEW-MAN! NEW-MAN! NEW-MAN!". PLN drank his share of the Moet like a gentleman.

The Group 6 cars failed utterly. Jean Rondeau won the sports class with his home built DFV-powered GTP coupe. It was the first Le Mans for Pink Floyd manager and arch enthusiast Steve O’Rourke in the Ecurie Francorchamps Ferrari 512BB. He and Nick Faure and "Bernard de Dryver" (a far better nom de course than most) were a fine 12th overall and fifth in the IMSA GTX category.

Le Mans '79 was the last for Porsche 935 stalwart and IMSA champion Peter Gregg. Like O’Rourke, he raced a 512 at Le Mans in the year the 935 scored its first win on the Sarthe. The Charles Pozzi-entered 512 BB he shared with old pal Claude Ballot-Lena lasted 219 laps. A year later Brumos Porsche’s Peter Gregg’s would return to Le Mans with disastrous consequences.

When the anthems had been played and all the champagne sprayed or drunk someone noted that "The Star Spangled Banner" had been omitted. Or ignored.