1987 Le Mans

1987 — The year started out fine for Porsche. They won Daytona and Sebring, but the new XJR-8 Jaguars put a string together starting in the championship races at Jarama. Then they won consecutive world championship events at Jerez and Monza and Silverstone one-two, which was a potent omen as the British round had for a time taken the place of the Sarthe’s spring test days. Jaguar took three cars to the early May training session, and Raul Boesel’s was the fastest against a lone works 962C.

When the serious business of the solstice rolled around, the Rothmans works Porsche ranks were diminished by one, when Price Cobb spun on some oil near Maison Blanche. His 962C got up on the guardrail, then flat spun leaking a contrail of fuel. It was afire before it slammed, belly down, back to earth. The American stepped from the burning wreck – he was unable to see the cockpit extinguisher knob through the flames and smoke! – into the RLR 962. Cobb’s co-driver Vern Schuppan joined the No. 18 Jochen Mass/Bob Wollek car. Keis Nierop, winner of the 1984 Sebring 12 Hours in a 934, went along to the works 961.

Sauber (Mercedes) was back after its flying demonstrations of '86 with a two-car C9 effort for four-time winner Henri Pescarolo and Mike Thackwell, plus the baroque pairing of Johnny Dumfries and CART Champ Car driver and Pittsburgher (actually, he’s from the eastern suburb-burg of New Kensington) Chip Ganassi.

The two Team Toms Toyotas qualified well, but the Nissans seemed present just to fill spots on the grid. At the front of the grid, Jaguar was top heavy with all sorts of talent and what appeared to be at least one million fans plus GP star Martin Brundle appearing in the role of the "rabbit".

The three-car Walkinshaw Jaguar team had had its way with Porsche in the short enduros and brought a chilling level of professionalism and efficiency to the Sarthe after their theatrical '87 Le Mans re-debut. It had been 30 years since the Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar D-Types had won Le Mans, and Coventry was feeling very racy indeed after four straight championship victories.

But from the start, the Mass/Wollek/Schuppan pole-winning 962C led away under less than ideal now-it’s-raining-now-it’s-not conditions. Hans Stuck was second and Brundle third. Behind them it was a bit of a mess.

The Bosch Motronic units of the private 962s were misbehaving, or perhaps digesting bad gas from the A.C.O. – your choice. Porsche blamed the A.C.O. The A.C.O. shrugged and blamed Porsche, and that led to the bizarre sight of both Joest Porsches and one Kremer entry inert in the dead car park after just seven laps: holes burned through the pistons. Mass was gone nine laps later with the same trouble, and now the Rothmans team was down to one car.

Porsche issued a full-marque EPROM emergency recall and installed new chips that retarded ignition timing by 1.5deg. Derek Bell, Stuck and Al Holbert were now on their own in the No. 17 962C. The winners of the season opener at Daytona were now the sole surviving works Porsche, and the race had 23 hours to go. All three Jaguars were running regularly: suddenly Porsche was an outright underdog.

The first of the Sauber C9s went behind the pits about an hour after that with a broken gearbox. At least they looked menacing in their black Kouros aftershave livery. The normally aspirated 6.0-liter Jaguars were having a fine time. The Eddie Cheever/Boesel car was at the top of the first hourly page, sipping daintily at the same A.C.O.-supplied gas that had given the Porsches dyspepsia. It was a small lead – 0.5sec. – and Stuck was not behaving as if he were outnumbered. When the second hourly report was issued, the No. 17 Porsche was leading. By just 11.4sec from the three-car Jaguar train – the fattest lead of the race . . . so far. By the end of the third hour the margin was down to 0.9sec.

This went on through the evening into dusk, with the Jaguars finally getting in front for a sustained period. By midnight, the lone works Porsche was leading once again, but Walkinshaw kept his No. 6 car close throughout the night. Porsche’s surfeit of survivors allowed Norbert Singer the very real luxury of dispensing with complex stratagem. Bell, Holbert and Stuck simply had to run as hard as they could and not run out of fuel. Simple. Jaguar was even getting better fuel economy.

A third of the Jaguar menace disappeared into the trees along the RN 158 about 2:40 a.m. Win Percy got the full Mulsanne Experience when one of his tires exploded. The debris field was ultimately over 400 yards long and car-shrapnel had sprayed the trees behind the Armco above the height of a man’s head. Percy, like Cobb, stepped from the cockpit, such as it was, unmarked. Physically.

The Mulsanne mess summoned the pace cars and yellow lights for nearly two hours and at once erased any fuel consumption advantage enjoyed by the production-based Jaguar V12s. The Brundle/John Nielsen car was now Jaguar’s designated hitter. By full daylight Sunday morning, the No. 6 Jaguar was on the Mulsanne straight at the same time and on the same lap as the lone and leading Rothman’s Porsche.

Every driver in the lone No. 17 Porsche (pictured) had won Le Mans and knew the drill. Each brought with him a unique set of skills: Bell was, fast, mature, cerebral, analytical and utterly unflappable; Stuck was instinctively fast with an eerie sense of car control and seemed to have some sort of Faustian pact with the weatherman. Al Holbert was able to be both racer and engineer at once and possessed an intellectual clarity that had already converted disaster to triumph for Porsche at Le Mans. There was no weak link in Singer’s camp.

As morning light pushed back the shadows, Jaguar began to trip over an inventory of problems: more time squandered. Nielsen took over for Brundle in the No. 6. There was a serious front-end vibration. New tires cured it but cost yet more time, and they dropped to fifth place. Jaguar had switched to harder compound tires fearing a repeat of the Win Percy accident: more time lost. Unnecessary time: the compound was not the problem. Percy’s XJR-8LM had merely suffered a small puncture and subsequent slow leak. The eventual heat buildup simply ran its natural course. There was no problem, endemic or otherwise, in the Walkinshaw team’s tire choice.

Nielsen was back in the pits with a major water leak – from the exhaust pipes. Cheever’s No. 4 XJR-8LM had a hole in its gearbox casing. Epoxy was applied, but that ended their chances for victory. With six hours remaining, the race was effectively over. No one in the leading Porsche was prone or, it seemed, even susceptible to mistakes.

Bell had, for a fifth time, won the race neither Fangio nor Moss ever could win. Holbert had his third and Stuck his second. Porsche Chairman Peter Schutz had told Norbert Singer, "Porsche must win Le Mans." Singer & Company had delivered an unprecedented 12th victory for the marque. The outnumbered works car was followed home discreetly by the private Lassig/Yver/de Dryver 962C from Hans Obermaier, 20 laps distant. The piercing four-rotor Mazda 757 won the IMSA GTP class with a seventh overall, best of the Japanese contingent. Spice beat them home to win C2 with a superb sixth overall.

Walkinshaw’s only surviving Jaguar was fifth, 30 laps down. Tony Southgate’s impeccable aerodynamics were better used at places like Brands Hatch than Le Mans. Walkinshaw Jaguars beat Porsche in Kent a month later and again on the Nurburgring in August. In fact the XJR-8s ran the table after Le Mans, scoring one-two victories at Spa and Fuji. It was plenty good enough to win Jaguar the resurgent World Sports Prototype Championship. But the world title without a Le Mans win is like a diamond ring without the diamond.

Again the Jaguar mechanics displayed a crude hand lettered sign just after 4:00 o’clock Sunday afternoon… "THANK YOU AGAIN – WE WILL BE BACK."

Porsche had a different message. Two weeks after Le Mans, citing pressure from the CART Indy Car program and the TAG/McLaren F1 engine project, the company said that the six-year-old 956/962 Group C car would not return to the world prototype championship as a works program. The wiggle word was, apparently, "championship".