1999 Le Mans

1999 — American car manufacturer and mega-businessman Don Panoz was utterly seduced by the soul and vitality of Le Mans. With the A.C.O. rulebook at hand, he created the American Le Mans Series, formalizing the universal passion for Le Mans into an endurance racing championship. In September 1998, the first Petit Le Mans at the massively revamped Road Atlanta drew a solid field for a 1000km race. The winning Ferrari was seeded a place on the '99 Le Mans grid, and the Franco-American relationship was cemented.

"Petit" was a solid success; and when the ALMS began its first full season at Sebring in '99, the 58-car grid to A.C.O. specs was packed with a sense of purpose and excitement that had deserted American sports car racing at the end of IMSA GTP era.

BMW appeared with breathtaking new cars and a new team. BMW chose Schnitzer to replace Rafanelli, who appeared with its own much-modified R&S Mk III wearing a 4.0-liter Judd V10. Audi was there with a two-car team. Panoz was having one last fling with his front engine GT1 coupes. Practically every Ferrari 333SP in North America turned out. So did the fans, who sensed that Dr. Don was on to something big and important and entertaining. BMW stomped everyone, but Rob Dyson’s venerable Ford-powered R&S MkIII was second and still on the same lap as the mega-DM BMW after 12 hours. Audi’s American expeditionary force was a fine third and fifth on its well-judged maiden voyage but looked unhappy about it.

There were 18 lead changes among five cars and everyone said, "Just wait until Le Mans!" forgetting the giant hurdle pre-qualifying had become. By then, Audi had two teams – the Sebring roadster R8Rs of Audi Team Joest and the swoopy Tony Southgate-designed R8C coupes of Audi Sport UK – and nearly as many people on site at Le Mans as Team AMG Mercedes with its three turbo V8 LMR GT Prototypes.

Cologne-based Toyota Team Europe won the personnel overkill award (including its own meteorology staff!) with the three-car GT One team that had come so close in ’98. They looked even more menacing and better provisioned than before – if that were possible. Martin Brundle was back, and TTE hired ’98 winner Allan McNish because Porsche was conspicuously absent despite dire warnings about a new 4.0-liter V10 prototype-BMW-killer, that tested but never appeared at Le Mans.

Schnitzer had its two-car Sebring winning team under the guidance of Charly Lamm, who had the invaluable services of three-time Le Mans winner Yannik Dalmas and Sebring winner JJ Lehto – two of the biggest Le Mans guns extant in the a pair of properly German white V12 LMRs. Team Panoz had ditched its long-serving coupes for a pair of stunning new LMP Roadsters powered by the potent, noisy and very-American Robert Yates Racing Ford V8. The shamrock team’s driver roster didn’t have a wrinkle or weakness in it. Even the back-up guys looked like and raced like "Number Ones".

The loud and massively fast front-engine American roadsters had stunned the pundits on the second day of pre-qualifying when David Brabham’s practically untested LMP Spyder was less than one tenth behind Brundle’s much-feted GT One Toyota. Brabham simply blew off JJ Lehto’s BMW, Thierry Boutsen’s Toyota and Bernd Schneider’s doomsday Mercedes. No one seemed to know quite what to make of the American cars, so everyone decided to make jokes about the unorthodox appearance of the thundering Panoz: the major wits said it looked like Cruelella deVile’s cartoon car. Cartoon fans, no doubt.

Same experts agreed that the Toyotas were the safe bet now that TTE had a full Le Mans on its team CV – especially now that the Porsches were gone. After all, they had Brundle and McNish: Say no more. Besides, Toyota just had to win before they went to off to F1.

Formula 1 champion Mercedes-Benz had very similar needs after its appalling Le Mans performance of '98. And BMW would be off to F1 in 2000 as well and was of much the same mind as Toyota and Mercedes, except for fielding a roadster on a smaller budget. There was still, after all, that small extra fuel allowance for open cockpit Le Mans prototypes. BMW liked the odds and the other numbers that had lured the alleged smart money to the GT1 rules.

The closer the calendar got to Wednesday evening, the more the experts were certain this edition of Le Mans would be an all-out war between Toyota and Mercedes-Benz.

Practice got off to a harsh start on Wednesday evening. Just before 8:00 o’clock, Eric van de Poele’s Nissan went under the tire barrier out of Tertre Rouge. It took nearly an hour to get the Belgian ace out of the car, and the session was extended without the planned one-hour interruption. Lehto tried to match the Toyotas that were numerically arranged at the top of the time sheets; but at 9:45 p.m., Brundle cracked off the first sub- 3:30 lap in six years. And that was that. The GT1 cars had the legs on the prototypes, and it seemed that the experts were right after all

Twenty three-hours later, the entire focus, tone and texture of the race changed when Mark Webber’s Mercedes took off and flipped on the run from Mulsanne to Indianapolis. Webber was sore but otherwise uninjured. Mercedes PR leapt into action and organized a Friday morning press conference starring Webber and MB sport chief Norbert Haug. The best Mercedes CLR was gridded fourth, just ahead of Brabham’s Panoz prototype and 0.3sec slower than Lehto’s BMW prototype.

On Saturday morning, Webber became the center of media attention again. This time the cameras were rolling and when the three-car Mercedes team came over the Hump into Mulsanne. Webber’s No. 4 car shot into the air as if it had been heaved off a catapult, and flipped over backwards. Again Webber emerged from the bank-vault Mercedes cockpit unhurt. Haug called the office; decisions were made. The Mercs would race and little winglets grew from the fenders of the two earthbound Mercedes coupes. It was, after all, the 10th anniversary of Merc’s last win on the Sarthe.

At 4:00 o’clock, Joan Hall, Minister of Tourism for Southern Australia – host of the Adelaide 2000 Race of a Thousand Years – sent them on their way. The grid was a bit strung out but, as usual, went off almost exactly on time, just four seconds before 4:00 o’clock. It’s an art.

Brundle and Boutsen left with Christophe Bouchut’s Merc from Tom Kristensen’s BMW and Brabham’s Panoz. Andy Wallace was the first of the marquee players to pit for big service. Just 20min in, the new Audi R8C needed a gearbox. The No. 29 Geisse 333SP Ferrari required similar service just before 5:00 o’clock. Gearboxes: a trend. By then things were looking a bit brighter at Mercedes. Snazzy pit work had put Bernd Schneider’s nervous Bridgestone-shod CLR ahead (barely two seconds) of the Toyotas and Kristensen’s BMW.

The Vipers had the big GT class well under control. By 6:00 o’clock, Oreca’s No. 51 and No. 52 Vipers had put the third-place Porsche one lap down. Another trend. The first round of pit stops for the overall leaders confirmed what some wished to ignore; the BMWs were fast and economical. They were already winning the race between refuelings. Yet another trend. By 6:00 o’clock, Lehto led McNish, but by just four seconds.

Just before 7:00 o’clock, McNish set a new lap record and put the No. 2 Toyota in front. That changed in the fourth hour, but the big news of the early evening was Joest’s 10min-gearbox change in the No. 7 Audi R8R.

Heading for 9:00 o’clock, a bad case of long faces broke out in the Toyota pits. Two stops to fiddle with gear change hydraulics consumed 46min and dropped Brundle’s GT One two laps behind the untroubled BMWs.

At 8:47 p.m., everything changed in an ugly moment. Peter Dumbreck had his Mercedes inches from a Toyota GT One as they crested a light rise on the rapid run from Mulsanne to Indianapolis. As the Mercedes crested the shallow hill it took off and began a sickening series of flips that ended with the car belly down in a cleared section of woods.

The A.C.O. sent two pace cars, and the field followed the red and white Corvettes for more than 30min while Dumbreck was evacuated, miraculously uninjured. Team AMG Mercedes called Frank Lagorce in the No. 6 Mercedes and told him the grim news. At 8:33, the No. 6 appeared in pit lane, turned into the garage and the overhead doors rolled shut. A few minutes later, a crewman appeared with a stepladder and took the MERCEDES sign from above each garage door.

The speedy Toyota and the very thrifty BMWs skirmished at opposite ends of the fuel window. By midnight, the No. 17 BMW had a firm grip on the hourlies. Brundle’s Toyota was already gone, the victim of a puncture and subsequent accident at Mulsanne near 10:30. Just McNish & Company stood ready to joust with the parsimonious leading No. 17 BMW. There were heroics of a different sort in the Panoz garage. An oil leak required retirement or a full removal of the engine. Team Panoz chose the latter, spending an hour and 40min and returned the No. 11 car in 26th position just before Saturday became Sunday.

By midnight, the leading BMW had spent just 14min in the pits. It’s not a statistic that the fans or even the media can follow, nor can rival team managers. No matter. Charly Lamm’s race plan was already plain, if anyone was really watching. BMW’s '99 Le Mans effort began when they read the rules. Everything was planned. To win Le Mans one would have to beat BMW’s plan, and the initial investment was accruing the best kind of interest. Every pitstop paid a little dividend; by midnight the No. 15 BMW had stopped nine times, the Boutsen/Kelleners/McNish Toyota had made a dozen pit stops, a third more stops. From here it was downhill to dawn.

The pendulum took another swing in Schnitzer’s direction just after 3:00 a.m. Toyota’s Boutsen was on the same lap and catching the leading BMWs when he tangled with Michael Maisonnueve’s GT-2 Porsche in the Dunlop Chicane, lost the physics battle and arrowed into the tire barrier. It was a big hit. Boutsen fractured a vertebra. Toyota lost its second player and best chance.

The pace car had the field for over an hour. The No. 66 Porsche went a full lap with a pierced oil tank, and it took the weary marshals more than an hour to mop up the considerable mess. Toyota was down to one car, the all-Japanese crew of Ukyo Katayama, Keichi Tsuchiya and Toshio Suzuki. They had worked back carefully from 11th to fourth place, four laps behind the leading BMW and on the same lap as the third-place Audi R8R of Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Didier Theys. Charlie Lamm had both of his white V12 roadsters at the front, and they stayed there until dawn. And Beyond.

For everyone else, it was a long night. The Brabham Panoz required two gearboxes after a brilliant race with the Toyotas and BMWs on Saturday. The tight Panoz team refused to quit and worked hard all night. They were rewarded on Sunday afternoon. There were few dramas that make either good television or exciting race reports. BMW ran to its plan, aided by Toyota’s bad luck and Audi's indecision. With a pair of proven prototypes Audi decided it really wanted a GT1 racer and had hired Tony Southgate to make the miracle happen. Near 10:00 a.m. Sunday, the James Weaver/Andy Wallace/Perry McCarthy R8C Audi ran out of transmission and went to join its sister ship in the dead car park. The Biela R8R Audi prototype that had run with almost boring regularity at Sebring was third when Boutsen’s crash reduced the Toyota effort to a single car.

Lehto was aboard the leading No. 17 BMW in the Porsche Curves when a rollbar retention link broke and jammed the throttle open. The Finn caromed between the Armco barriers and out of the lead. Shaken, he lain briefly on the nose of the BMW until he could walk away albeit with an injured knee.

The second-place No. 15 BMW moved ahead, and the No. 45 Thomas Bscher ’98-spec BMW prototype was poised to move up to fourth overall when the clutch failed. Steve Soper brought the black roadster into the pits. By 2:00 o’clock, it was back in fourth and poised to play a supporting role in the final act.

The Toyota pits had come alive with the retirement of the Lehto BMW. It was now a straight fight – the leading BMW vs. an incensed Toyota crew.

"I remember the lap record tumbling as Katayama, who I think had announced his retirement already, was slicing around the circuit, " said Radio Le Mans lead commentator John Hindhaugh, watching the Toyota flying around the circuit, "Just a swan song from a retiring master we thought.

"All of a sudden it dawned on us that he could catch the BMW! It was like a shot of 110-proof adrenaline! Truswell" RLM’s ace statistician and commentator, who never sleeps during the 24 Hours, started recalculating to see if BMW could respond without effecting its pit strategy. "Man, we were awake then!"

At two minutes past three, Charley Lamm brought Pierluigi Martini in the leading No. 15 BMW into the pits for a routine scheduled stop. Martini stayed in the car; it took just 27sec. Katayama was coming. He had a pocketful of new lap records with him. The red Toyota coupe was moving at emergency warp speed when Katayama came upon the fourth place Bscher BMW entering the chicane. Bscher held his line. The Toyota put two wheels on the curb and rocketed angrily past the black BMW roadster toward Mulsanne, then launched the No. 3 coupe toward the fastest part of the circuit, the 200-plus mph run to Indianapolis.

With 53min remaining, Katayama felt the Toyota sag and stagger. Millions of TV viewers were riding along, watching the on-board cockpit cameras. So were the fans at Le Mans. They saw it all on the "Jumbotron" outdoor TV screens.

"I was watching an outside TV shot of the GT One, when the tire blew on the Toyota." Said a sleep-deprived Hindhaugh who was now wide-awake in the RLM studio in the tire paddock behind the pits. "I will never forget the look in his eyes. The bizarre thing is he never blinked. Never even flinched." Never lost control either.

It was over for Toyota. Le Mans loves heroes and now it had another one. The whole world watched Toyota hobbled, but it was seen as a grand victory. The Toyota crew changed the left rear and the brake scoop it destroyed between Indianapolis and the pits. They carried on to second overall; the only finisher in the much vaunted LM GTP class.

Martini pitted the leading BMW a few minutes later for a fresh tire but misjudged, just barely, his approach to 4:00 o’clock and was forced to make an extra lap for BMW’s first victory at Le Mans.

The 24 Hours is a virtual statistics factory. It’s the one race that can keep a statistician or a full-blown amateur pedant engaged and happy for the other 51 weeks on the calendar. The '99 24 Hours was the most impressive for some time for the stats keepers. The winning BMW spent a total of 33:04 in the pits. The second-place Toyota an impressive 47:36, utterly remarkable but nothing like the amazing precision plan done by Schnitzer and BMW. They practically won Le Mans ’99 when they decided that an open cockpit prototype, and not at LM GTP, was the true path.

BMW even had a third car in the top five: Thomas Bscher’s ’98 spec prototype was fifth and easily the best supporting actor.

Audi also discovered the true path with a superb third and fourth overall. Local constructor Courage placed its Nissan-powered C52 an impressive sixth. Panoz roadsters finished a heroic seventh and 11th and won a huge cheer from the massive British fan contingent who love a battered brawler who won’t quit. Each of the Panoz LMPs had spent more than two hours in the pits, but the crews never flinched and simply refused to give up.

As his sinister black and silver roadsters rumbled under the checkered flag in formation Don Panoz spoke for more than just his crew of fast men, tough guys and hard workers – "We’ll be back."