1989 Le Mans

1989 — When Sauber returned to Le Mans the black paint and stark AEG "circuit board" graphics were gone. The C9s were painted silver and wore a prominent three-pointed Mercedes-Benz star on the nose. It was a clear corporate statement. Or even understatement. Germany had long ago been assigned white as its national racing color but Mercedes had raced in silver – actually bare alloy – since the days of the mythic 750kg grand prix formula a half century earlier. The Silver C9s said, "We’re back. No more mister nice guy."

Sauber had withdrawn its AEG black C9s from Le Mans a year earlier when a blown Michelin tire called its entire Le Mans program into suspicion. Now with the cars painted silver it took mere seconds for the daily press to exhume the banal and hackneyed honorific: "silver arrows." They were right for the wrong reasons.

Peter Sauber was the immediate beneficiary of years of priceless Mercedes-Benz fuel management research. The 5.0-liter M119 32-valve V8s made power and torque in massive quantities while sipping gasoline. The research had not begun as a competition department exercise, but that’s where it landed. The long-standing grudge match between Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz would finally take place in 1989 after a two-year postponement. Neither house cared that the A.C.O. and the FIA could not come to terms over rules, and the 57th 24 Hours of Le Mans would be excluded from the World Sports Car Championship.

Championships are all but meaningless against the established social and commercial realities of Le Mans. Cars have been created solely to win Le Mans. Anything else is a bonus. There is always the clinging notion that a calendar of world championship races is merely a corporate convenience assembled expressly to rationalize or even amortize across an annual calendar the expense of winning Le Mans; to soothe the fiscally tormented corporate counters, who must explain where the millions went, and why. Smearing the expense across a championship calendar is easier for the executive mind to grasp than one huge, orgasmic financial lunge in the middle of June.

Not that money – or the money minutia of racing budgets – was a problem for Mercedes-Benz. Its biggest financial problem in the summer of '89 seemed to be that entirely too much of its assets were tied up in cash. With its potent AEG and Messerschmitt subsidiaries, it was likely the only automobile company able to land a man on the moon. But what is that compared to one victory at Le Mans?

There was no book on the Mercedes-powered Saubers. A year earlier they had departed after Thursday evening during practice. A new, taller Michelin tire had exploded on Mulsanne, and the board was hardly in the mood to take chances – even one regarding a subordinate supplier – at Le Mans.

Porsche and Jaguar were known quantities. After their heroic and well-judged victory in '88, Jaguar had to be considered the favorite. But there was Porsche, 12 times winners on the Sarthe across 19 years. The aged 962 was the senior player in the Le Mans derby but hardly one to be counted out, or even taken for granted. The long '89 entry list read like the program of a retail auto show: Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Nissan, Toyota, Aston Martin and Mazda. Plus the famous private houses: Joest (with works baby-sitter Norbert Singer on loan to check the math), Kremer, Brun (with five 962s!) Richard Lloyd Racing’s radical honeycomb 962s, Chamberlain, Courage and Spice. The silver C9s from Hinwil had to be the top dark horse.

Especially after qualifying – Sauber-Mercedes gridded one-two after a qualifying battle that was likely equal to the marquee value and tension of a whole F1, Indy Car or NASCAR weekend. Jean-Louis Schlesser, the man who hates Le Mans, won the pole at 155.235mph. Just barely out of the mythic 3:14s where only Hans Stuck had trodden. This lap included a staggering 248mph pass down Mulsanne in a car that had never been in a rolling floor wind tunnel.

All this while, the WM-Peugeot speed merchants could conjure "only" 239mph during the same session. The fastest Jaguar was a further five-mph off that. The C9s were all about engines; the 5.0-liter turbo V8 was the heart and soul of the car. The C9s lacked the poise and driving comfort of the mature (old?) Porsches but were so powerful that they overcame any obstacle with on-demand brute force. (Original equipment on many Mercedes-Benz models since '37.)

Mauro Baldi, in the second C9 got a fine run at the start, and Schlesser eased in behind him as they arced under the Dunlop Bridge for the first lap grand prix. Jaguar’s Davy Jones wouldn’t let them go and pressed Schlesser, who simply gave the young American a free pass. Jan Lammers pitted his Jaguar with a leaky tire, and Julian Bailey was the man of the moment with a charge from 12th to 5th in his Nissan R89C (spelled L-O-L-A). Impressive and heady stuff. Four laps later his Le Mans adventure was over, when he touched the barrier too hard.

The Sauber-Mercedes squad let the Jaguars run their own race: Jones led from John Nielsen, then Bob Wollek’s pretty in pink Joest Porsche 962. Then the thundering C9s of Baldi and Jochen Mass. Qualifying over, Schlesser was in no hurry. He didn’t like Le Mans and was all too happy to run to the pace set for him by team manager Dave Price. Which is exactly what the whole Sauber team seemed to be doing. Silver paint or not, corporate presence or not, word in the paddock was that this was simply a dress rehearsal for '90 when Sauber and MB would race for victory and all that went with it.

When Mass passed Wollek’s Joest Porsche for second during the latter’s pit stop, the game was up: power, speed and economy. And strict discipline. With an hour gone, Jones still led, but a very racy Lammers was back in the top 10 where he stayed for about three hours. Derek Daly had relieved Jones in the No. 3 Jaguar and was humming along in the lead when the final drive just quit. The resourceful Irishman was able to make on-course repairs with instructions from the techs: initially he got the car in reverse and had to start all over again. This time he found second gear and waddled back to the experts for a full service stop.

Wollek put the pink Joest Porsche in the Jaguar’s place and proceeded to romp around, only to trip over Dominic Dobson in Vern Schuppan’s No. 33 Takefuji 962. It went into the barriers, somewhat lightly, but carried on. That set off a tragic/comic interlude.

The impact had cracked a fuel line and raw gas was pumped onto the No. 33 car’s manifold. It looked like Dobson, now in the early laps of his second stint, had put the 962 on afterburner into Mulsanne. A huge plume of flames followed the Porsche. Quite a show for the denizens of the signal pits. Dobson finally got the flaming mess stopped at Indianapolis, where the Keystone Cops pageant began in earnest. Dobson had to stand and watch the car burn, shards of flaming carbon fibre floating into the tress, setting small fires as they landed, while a fire marshal lumbered toward him spraying the extinguisher at everything but the burning car as he ran. By the time this comedian got to the No. 33 Porsche the bottle was empty and the car was unrecognizable. The caution period behind the pace cars – the A.C.O. sent all five Mercedes 190 course cars! – was just 20min.

More stupid fun erupted when Johnny Dumfries hit the barrier in his V8 Toyota. He was unharmed and spent considerable time fiddling with the No. 37 89CV to the delight of the Japanese TV camera crew who showed far more video interest than the moment required. When Dumfries eased away, he dragged camera along by the tangled cable. His mirror was full of Japanese photogs, screaming, waving their arms and running after their escaping video piece. Other TV crews saw what was happening and got it all. It was one of the best segments of the post-race television highlights package. Watching with disbelief in the world-feed TV production truck, the whole video crew was in stitches. Even the Germans.

At the serious end of the race Joest and Jaguar led into the evening with the Baldi/Kenneth Acheson/Gianfranco Brancatelli C9 third, slowly improving its pace as the shadows deepened. The soft compound Michelins were obviously happy in the cool of the evening. Then the resurgent Lammers/Patrick Tambay/Andrew Gilbert-Scott XJR9LM Jaguar eased into fourth place.

Joest cars had been running one-two, but the leader hit trouble just before 1:30 a.m. when Stuck saw the temperature gauge climb. It was just a loose pipe but the repair took 15min and dropped the pink No. 9 Porsche to fifth place. This promoted Tambay in the No. 1 Jaguar from 10th to the lead in just nine and a half hours.

Baldi’s Sauber was now second from Nielsen’s XJR-9, and the Mercedes-powered cars had not begun to fight. But a quick look at the scoring monitors showed that the fastest car on the course was Mass in the No. 83 C9. The change to soft-compound Michelins should have been a warning, or, at least, a clue. The night air was cool and, oddly, dry and the Michelins had found the tire equivalent of nirvana. The C9s were blasting down Mulsanne at 240mph. The time had come. By morning the Mass/Manuel Reuter/Stanley Dickens C9 had moved up to second.

Behind the leading XJR-9LM, the Walkinshaw team had hit trouble: the engine blew in the No. 2 car and the transmission in the No. 4 Jaguar ate third gear. Bad omens: the strength, heart and soul of the Sauber C9s were the soft spot in the Jaguar program. Sure enough just before 6:30, Lammers pitted with an ill transmission. It was rebuilt, and Lammers was the hero of the final hours, the lone cause for celebration among the massive British contingent.

The Sauber/Mercedes topped the 7:00 a.m. hourly report, first and second. The No. 61 and No. 63 C9s traded places occasionally, running laps around 3:23; but the decisive moment came when Baldi spun, then pitted for a new nose. Mass simply thundered along in the lead.

Ultimately all that power and torque began to take its toll. With 15min remaining the transmission in the second-place Sauber – the Baldi/Brancatelli car with Kenny Acheson up – lost all but fifth gear, but torqued home regardless, five laps behind the winning Mass/Reuter/Dickens C9. It was the first and only Le Mans win each man would score, but one victory at Le Mans is a fine and full CV.

Mercedes power was first, second and fifth. Some dress rehearsal.

Sauber-Mercedes crushed all competition in the '89 Sport-Prototype championship. The Group C fuel consumption rules had become a joke before the technical might of Mercedes-Benz. The automotive electronics revolution overwhelmed the now ancient language of the rulebook. The season was as disastrous for Walkinshaw’s Jaguars as it had been successful for Sauber who scored more points in the teams championships than their two nearest rivals – Joest Racing and Brun Motorsport – combined. What we remember is Le Mans.