1991 Le Mans

1991 — The Nineties summoned some new economic detours. The boom of the Eighties stumbled, and international politics were unsettled. Four marques joined the 3.5-liter "atmo" group anyway: Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Peugeot and Mazda found Le Mans was again part of the title chase, and that gave the frothy new two-tier sports car rules some serious traction.

Rules for the World Sports Car Championship had changed for the third time in five years. Fuel consumption restrictions were removed, minimum weights recalculated and Porsche’s venerable 962 was further penalized with extra weight. When Stuttgart protested the FIA backed off by 50 kilos, but only for the sprint races. The honorable old warrior would race at 1000kg (2200 pounds) at Le Mans where it mattered. No further compromise. Of all the Category Two runners, Mazdasport Europe got the best deal.

The new premier sports car class was a bit too Formula 1-ish for a generation raised on Group C and totally alien to fans of the Group 5 monsters of the early Seventies. The rules were weird too: normally aspirated 3.5-liter cars could eat exotic fuels, while the old Group C, or Category Two cars, would inhale "pump grade" gasoline. The length of all championship sprint races was set at a brief 430km to give the nervous 3.5-liter cars a shot. Plus this bizarre fillip: the first 10 positions on the grid were reserved for the 3.5-liter Category One cars! This wildly popular new permutation of the World Sports Car Championship drew 17 entries for its first round, most were veteran Group C players. At Le Mans the count was a pauper’s ration: just 38 cars, but more than twice the size of any FIA grid. In police work...

The year started well for Porsche at Daytona. While not part of FIA championship, the IMSA 24 Hours around the Florida speed-bowl still held top of brain attention with enthusiasts everywhere. Hurley Haywood won his fifth Rolex 24 in one of Reinhold Joest’s utterly reliable 962Cs. Then Nissan won a soggy IMSA Sebring 12 Hours to complete the 36 Hours of Florida mini-season.

The new FIA championship kicked off at Suzuka, where everyone had a good laugh over the Top Ten Grid Positions rule for Category One cars: only six of the 3.5-liter "atmo" cars showed. Just 10 cars finished; but the best was a 3.5-liter Peugeot 905, and the FIA’s bacon was, to some measure, saved. Jaguar’s new Category One cars then won Monza and at Silverstone finally moved the heavy Group C cars off the podium entirely.

The A.C.O. was obviously unimpressed with the popular prophecies of political and global economic doom. The old 1956 vintage pits were replaced with what looked like leftover bits of a science fiction movie set. The romantic, evocative and smelly (the toilets were always just a bit too far from the pits) old signature pits were razed. In their place a gigantic glass tower, suites, grandstands and commodious new pits shamed even the best F1 facilities. Pit road was widened to 15m, three meters wider than the pit straight; and each pit was now 15m by 5m, five times the size of the old '56-era pits. The sparkling new edifice was baptized on Friday evening with a fireworks display and appropriate pageantry.

By then Peugeot Talbot Sport had its first Le Mans pole thanks to the FIA’s "first 10" rule. The real fast man of the meeting was brave Jo Schlesser in the Group C Sauber Mercedes – they’re back! – about three seconds faster than the seeded 3.5-liter Peugeot. The best Porsche was, again, Walter Brun’s Repsol-sponsored 962C. The 7.4-liter Jaguar XJR-12s were parked somewhat further toward Virage Ford. The Mazdas were sitting comfortably in the middle of the little legislated grid. The Category Two rotaries got a juicy 170kg-weight break from the FIA, plus carbon brakes. Mazda Europe retained the services of Jacky Ickx but hired Hughes de Chaunac and his Oreca team to replace manager Alan Docking’s outfit.

The 38-car grid looked a bit thin, but it was an avalanche of entries compared to the gauzy fields that the new WSC title rounds had so far lured. The morning warm-up was wet; but by 4:00 o’clock the track was dry, and the sky even showed some blue patches.

The Peugeots led away, but Schlesser ran them down, put the nose of his C11 Merc under the tail of Keke Rosberg’s UFO-shaped 905, then fell back voluntarily. Point made. After all, orders are orders and no use belaboring the obvious: a kinder, gentler Mercedes-Benz had indeed returned to the Sarthe.

The star of the first hour was, again, Walter Brun’s Porsche hit-man Oscar Larrauri. The Italian got amongst the Peugeot’s and Schlesser’s Merc on the ninth lap in a stout descendant of the car that had made its debut on the Sarthe a decade earlier.

A lap later, Rosberg pitted and surrendered his 905 to Yannik Dalmas. When the Frenchman pitted for fuel, a huge fire erupted in the Peugeot pits. A few gallons of spilled super special Category One race gas ignited, and the whole Peugeot pits looked, for a moment, like a replay of Friday night’s pit christening. Team manger Jean Todt simply had his men push the singed coupe to the fuel gantry of a sister ship, and Jean-Pierre Raphanel carried on in 22nd position. Todt then turned his attention to the ignition problems that had dogged the No. 6 905 since Rosberg’s first shift. Dalmas said it was getting worse but a long stop to replace a black box seemed to cure it. That’s when Jean-Pierre Jabouille stopped the No. 5 Peugeot at Indianapolis with a blown engine. It was not yet 5:30.

Jaguar, sporting regal purple livery, hit the first patch of trouble at the end of the second hour. A confused fuel pump stranded Mauro Martini at L’Arche. A temporary cure took more than 45min.

Silver cars were one-through-five at the end of the third hour: all the Mercs (led by the "junior team" of Michael Schumacher, Karl Wendlinger and Fritz Kreutzpointer) from the Brun Porsche and Joest.

Around 7:45, Schlesser ran down and passed the C11 "junior car" with a very conservative Kreutzpointer aboard. A spin by the junior Merc allowed an XJR-12 into the top three as the shadows became longer and darker. By 9:00 o’clock, the Mercs were still much in control, but Jaguar was under pressure from the very fast and astonishingly economical Mazda 787B of Johnny Herbert, Bertrand Gachot and Volker Weidler. By 10:00 o’clock, the No. 55 Mazda (pictured above, going up the inside of a Joest Porsche) had separated the top three Mercedes from their Porsche countrymen in fifth. In fact Mazda had simply outrun the heavier Jaguars fair and square. By now the Brun Porsche had suffered a profound suspension failure, and Rosberg had parked the remaining Peugeot on Mulsanne: no way to shift gears. So much for the Category One cars. It was just getting dark and the 430km barrier had already been breached.

The bulk of the seeded Category One 3.5-liter World Championship sports cars were gone before 100 laps, and only the shrieking four-rotor Mazda upset the Mercedes/Porsche/Jaguar Group C status quo. At 4:00 a.m., the Mazda was third, three laps down to the two Mercs (adults first, "juniors" second) on the same lap with the Davy Jones/Raul Boesel/Michel Ferte XJR-12. Bob Wollek, Teo Fabi and Kenny Acheson were a lap behind them, and the best Porsche (Henri Pescarolo, Bernd Schneider and "John Winter") were sixth.

Daylight brought Mercedes-Benz bad news. The "junior" car was stopped for gearbox repairs, but its stablemate continued to lead. The 787B Mazda moved up to second, but the Jones/Boesel/Ferte XJR-12 closed and engaged the shrieking Mazda to see if they were for real. They were.

When the No. 32 Mercedes of Jonathan Palmer, Stanley Dickens and Kurt Thiim went behind the garages with a dead engine, there was a small spark of alarm at team Sauber. Knowing looks all around: everyone started watching the leading Jochen Mass/Schlesser/Alain Ferte C11. Telemetry readings from the leader were sobering. And Tom Walkinshaw was not at all happy either: his best XJR-12 simply could not keep pace with the Mazda which, alarmingly, was suddenly the fastest car on the course.

With three hours to go, the Merc/Sauber Data Acquisition Guys were quiet and visibly unhappy. They called Ferte: PIT NOW! He actually asked them why before his temperature gauge went critical exiting Arnage.

The No. 1 Merc appeared at Virage Ford making smoke. Now Ferte knew. The Mercedes DAGs didn’t even have to look up from their screens to know it was finished. But the crew fiddled with the leading Mercedes for almost a half-hour. By then it was 1:00 o’clock.

At 1:03 p.m., Volker Weidler was in the middle of a double stint and had the honor of passing the stationary silver car for the lead. A rotary engine was leading Le Mans, powering a Japanese car that was neither Nissan nor Toyota.

Then the No. 1 Mercedes tried one more lap before they pulled down the garage door. At 2:00 o’clock, Weidler pitted the leading Mazda and turned it over to Johnny Herbert for the stretch run.

With a Brit leading and the Jags second through fourth, the enthusiastic British contingent suddenly had all sorts of fine things to celebrate. The last pit stop for the "Oreca" Mazda came at 3:41 p.m. When Jacky Ickx and his Mazda confederates headed for the victory rostrum there was huge applause. Even Jaguar team leader Walkinshaw urged on the crowd, and the Jaguar team began to cheer for the winner-elect. It was the sort of sportsmanship that the Bentley Boys and their contemporaries would understand and appreciate. It was Le Mans at its very best. And noisiest.

Johnny Herbert didn’t actually cross the line at 4:00 o’clock. He was ushered into parc ferme and relative safety. He got out of the scorching cockpit after a brutally hot double stint and collapsed into his father’s arms. The Bentley Boys would have understood that level of effort and commitment as well.

Mazda had pulled off the ultimate motorsports coup: they had beaten Toyota and Nissan to the punch to become the first Japanese marque to win Le Mans. Everyone understood that. Especially Nissan and Toyota.

Indeed, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.