1993 Le Mans

1993 — When in doubt be inclusive. It was a fine plan, and it had served Le Mans well in the Seventies when the economy and political intrigues conspired against the 24 Hours. GT cars were welcomed back, the Spring Test Day was restored and the A.C.O. made room for everybody, even a few Porsche 962C variants, including two from Joest and two more from Kremer.

Finally left to its own devices, the A.C.O. attracted 32 cars to its May tests, four more than had actually raced in 1993! They also fretted about pit safety. The new pits were huge, amazing, commodious and populous. So the A.C.O. changed the entire grammar of the race with one sweeping new rule: no work could proceed during refueling. It was a bolt of lightning. The high-strung 3.5-liter Category One thoroughbreds changed tires on nearly every pit stop. The new fueling rule challenged the teams, the tire builders and the masterminds who plotted strategy. Tire management became as important as fuel management, and the relationship of fuel consumption to tire wear and performance consistency became a new Le Mans chess piece.

The duel between Peugeot and Toyota resumed with even greater vigor, and the complication of higher traffic density rearranged the board. The GT category drew a light mob including the new Jaguar XJ220 supercar out of Tom Walkinshaw’s stable, plus a works Carrera RSR Turbo entry from Porsche. Two no-shows were at least as interesting as any entrant. A semi-cycle-fendered Group C prototype Cosworth-powered Allard didn’t make the show but filed an entry. With the Cold War over, a group of former Mikoyan Gurevich employees entered a Lamborghini-powered GT car as a MiG M100, hoping to attract some capitalist attention. The poor thing never ran long enough to be taken seriously and didn’t make the grid.

Toyota lost round one to Peugeot but did grid second beside the No. 2 905B of Philippe Alliot, Mauro Baldi and Jean-Pierre Jabouille that was thought to have been written off in a big crash on Wednesday night. Wrong. It was the only serious and complex mechanical labor the Peugeot technicians did all week, and it was quality work. Alliot proved it winning the pole.

The grid was Peugeot, Toyota, Peugeot, Toyota, Toyota and Peugeot. The best Porsche was the Joest No. 17 of Frank Jelinski/Manuel Reuter/"John Winter" 962C in a snug seventh behind the fast 3.5 "atmo" rivals. Porsche did the best qualifying job in GT and showed just how serious they were about the revived class, entering Hurley Haywood, Hans Stuck and Walter Rohrl in the 911S LM. This was the Invitational GT class winner from Sebring, and the heavily credentialed trio was a second faster than the svelte Walkinshaw Jaguar XJ220 that ran into legal trouble in qualifying.

The XJ220 was built to IMSA, rather than Le Mans GT specs, and IMSA demands a catalytic converter. The IMSA rules allow wider tires, and Walkinshaw went that route. Le Mans’ boss Alain Bertault pointed to the IMSA paragraph. IMSA’s Mark Ruffauf was at Le Mans and confirmed the language of the rule but added that the XJ220 was unavailable for sale in the US, so he could not comment on the ruling. The Jags raced under appeal.

Peugeot led away, Alliot from Eddie Irvine’s No. 36 Tom’s Toyota, which was in quiet stalking mode. On lap eight, Alliot made a small mistake and pranged the curb, and Irvine eased into the lead. Stuck led the GT class with a firm hand until a sticking throttle cost them 20min, and that let the XJ220 ahead.

The first pit stops came just after the half-hour, and the new rules were waiting in the pits for the faster runners. Everyone was reasonably well behaved, and Irvine was the only Cat. 1 "atmo" driver to stay aboard for a double stint. The turbocharged Cat. 2 962s stayed on course a bit longer before pitting, but they had already fallen well behind and gave no hint of being capable of an overall victory.

Peugeot got the lead back when Irvine handed his Toyota to Toshio Suzuki, but it was a long stop and Baldi’s 905B emerged in the lead. No 1 was in a no particular hurry, happy to conserve resources with pace and prudence. The performance vagaries between drivers ultimately compressed the race for the lead, bringing Jabouille, Suzuki, Thierry Boutsen and Geoff Lees closer in the early evening.

Peugeot struck oil around 7:00 o’clock. Alliot had just taken over the No. 2 car and saw a misty white contrail in his mirrors. The car went to the garage, and a loose coupling was discovered – traced to Alliot’s curb bashing – and repaired, all in 35 precious minutes. He was demoted to 15th.

From this sloppy interlude, Boutsen’s Peugeot emerged in front, shadowed by Lees' Toyota. The two had a pleasing battle for the lead for nearly 20min. until Lees was called in for a routine stop at 7:45 p.m. A bizarre stop to re-engineer the drink bottle in the No. 36 Toyota cost Irvine, Suzuki and Masanori Sekiya two laps. The new refueling rules caught out Derek Bell, whose Porsche-powered Courage needed a tow out of the pea gravel at La Florendiere. The five-time winner was into his third stint on the same set of tires when they stumbled. The Peugeots double-stinted both drivers and tires, and the Michelins seemed quite happy through 24-26 fast laps.

Quarter distance saw Peugeot and Toyota still on the same lap with the Christophe Bouchut/Geoff Brabham/Eric Helary 905 third a lap back, but two laps ahead of the Irvine No. 36 Toyota with its costly new drink bottle.

The beginning of the seventh hour was filled with fireworks when Rohrl dived into L’Arche and smacked one of the ponderous Debora prototypes in the tail, ending Porsche's Le Mans GT adventure. Cruelly Walter was forced to abandon the turbo in the Porsche Curves.

This was light prelude to the battle for the lead, which congealed through some enthusiastic motoring in the No. 38 Toyota by Lees, Jan Lammers and Juan Fangio II who was all set to take the lead in time to top the seventh hour printout when he pitted off-sequence with the engine cover in shreds and the rear wing missing! Fangio was not to blame. He was rammed by the No. 45 Chamberlain Lotus Esprit. Repairs took 35min and tipped the scales to Peugeot. It was the beginning of a trend. Just before 2:00 a.m., the benighted Kenny Acheson/Pierre-Henri Raphenal/Andy Wallace No. 37 Toyota required a new gearbox and fell 30 laps behind the leading Peugeots.

Teo Fabi pitted the leading Peugeot just after 2:30 with stories of smoke and sparks in the cockpit. Their one lap lead went away, and that’s how the halfway hour found them: Peugeot (Bouchut/Brabham/Helary) on the same lap with Boutsen/Yannick Dalmas/Fabi with the No. 36 Toyota still behind by the two laps it had taken to fiddle with the drink bottle. The probationary Jaguars led GT and only one prototype – the No. 12 Courage – retired: actually crashed out approaching Indianapolis. More tire trouble.

The leading Peugeots stopped for major brake service just before dawn and swapped the lead in the process. The real excitement lay in anticipation. That and a massive tire failure on the GT-leading Jaguar: somehow Andreas Fuchs got the No. 52 XJ220 back to the pits after a rear tire exploded at the end of Mulsanne. And Jurgen Barth moved the No. 47 Porsche 911 into the GT lead.

As dawn smeared the night away, both Peugeots ran within seconds of each other. Good PR. Dalmas got a breather when Helary pitted to fix the rear wing. On his next stop the No. 1 Peugeot was able to pit without loosing the lead. Two laps back, Irvine was on a mission to retrieve the two precious laps lost during the No. 36 Toyota’s silly "drink bottle" pit stop and was now obliged to change batteries almost as often as changing tires.

The first big moment for Peugeot came near 9:00 a.m., when Boutsen pitted the leading 905 with a broken exhaust. This was something new and different and totally unexpected, as miles of testing – Peugeot and Toyota had run more test miles before Le Mans than they would in the race – and Boutsen slid back into the lead while Jean Sage thought through this troubling interlude: isolated or endemic?

Relief was just a few hours away. It came just after 10:00 o’clock with six hours to go. The lone Toyota was within striking distance when Todt’s Peugeots pitted for a substantial service. He ordered strict formation flying orders, and that nominated the leading Bouchut/Brabham/Helary No. 3 (pictured above, descending from the Dunlop Bridge)as the winner. Just after 11:00 o’clock, Baldi pitted the No. 2 Peugeot with exhaust problems – problems that had never surfaced during exhaustive and comprehensive testing. Endemic? Or maybe something peculiar to those two cars now running a corporate-perfect second and third behind the leading No. 3 905. The final three hours was a nervous time for Todt.

Peugeot made time for a complete and thorough three-minute physical of the exhaust system when Brabham handed off to Helary for the last shift. By now the No. 36 TS010, the only Toyota with a prayer had been inert for a total rear end change. That done, the trio ran the Japanese challenger as hard as it would go. Fast enough to set the fastest lap but insufficient to crack the three-car Peugeot train. It had been 11 years since works cars had finished 1-2-3 at Le Mans, and not even Mercedes-Benz had accomplished that feat.

The sons of triple World Champion Jack Brabham had won Le Mans outright and in the GT class. Walkinshaw’s Jaguar was first across in the new GT class: David Brabham, David Coulthard and John Nielsen had beaten the Porsche by two laps. The Larbre team protested, and the A.C.O. awarded the GT victory to the Jurgen Barth/Dominique Dupuy/Joel Gouhier 911 Carrera RSR.

Peugeot went off to F1, as did Jean Todt, who took on the heavy burden of running Ferrari’s F1 team. Todt had a full resume by 4:00 p.m. June 20, 1993. Jean-Marie Balestre called him "the Lion of the Desert" after spearheading four Peugeot Paris-Dakar victories. He had also won two Rally Championships and the late World Sports Car Championship for Velizy, and now a miracle triple-win at Le Mans.

It was indeed the end of an era at Le Mans or, perhaps, the beginning of a new age. The days of the Group C car were numbered. It was now the turn of the GT car. All the experts agreed on that.