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Racing the History The perfect brake at the Tertre Rouge chicane in the middle of the night, full throttle on the endless Mulsanne straight, the looming arc of the Dunlop Bridge, the overtakings, the fatigue that stuns. And all this at the wheels of cars that made the history of the 24 Hours. Once an impossible dream, with Le Mans Classic, it has now come true.  by Mark Dixon
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Saturday, June 10, 1961, 4 p.m. sharp: the famous start of the 24 Hours in a memorable picture. The racing driver who lunges forward most effectively to reach his Aston Martin DBR1 is Jim Clark. Right in front of his face, beyond the track, the Ferrari TR/61 number 10 that, in the hands of Gendebien and Hill, will win the race. The photograph is courtesy of: https://www. speedbirdphotovintage.com
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Two Le Mans symbols together during the Classic commemoration: the Jaguar D-Type, renowned for its fin and often protagonist, and the famous Dunlop Bridge, historic landmark of the French circuit.
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“S
eeing the tail-fins of the D-types on the Mulsanne Straight at dusk leaves a lasting impression… A lap of Le Mans is like playing cat-and-mouse, given the performance differences between them and my Lotus 15. The sheer power and torque of the Jaguars makes them seem effortless and they have an incredible sound as they accelerate away, but the Lotus has better brakes and handling.” not the words of Graham Hill, racing a Lotus 15 at Le Mans in 1959, but those of “gentlewoman racer” quirina Louwman in 2019, describing to The Key what it’s like to dice with Jaguar D-types in the Le Mans Classic – an event she has contested five times. And while competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours must remain a dream for all but a relative handful of professional drivers, anyone with a national or International race licence, and a bit of spare cash for the entry fee, can share with quirina the unique thrill of racing at the La Sarthe circuit. Le Mans Classic is the brilliant brainchild of Patrick and Silviane Peter, who 29 years ago re-invented the famous Tour de France Automobile rally as Tour Auto. First held in 2002 and run every two years since, Le Mans Classic is a distillation of all the best bits from the 24 Hours’ long history, open to cars that competed there from its start in 1923 and which are grouped into six categories, or grids. but there’s much more to it than that: separate races for classic Jaguars and Group C cars, track cavalcades, an 8500-car display by car clubs – it is a festival as much as a racing event, much like the 24 Hours itself. At the heart of Le Mans Classic are the six grids of 600 historic racing cars, each of which is allowed three sessions, including at least one during the night. Such a punishing schedule over the Friday-Sunday long weekend of Le Mans Classic means that they have to be managed with military precision, and so each session is nominally allocated an hour, of which 43 minutes is devoted to racing. This is the biggest difference between the 24 Hours and the Classic, the latter’s short sessions minimising wear and tear on the older cars and their (frequently older) drivers. back in the day, the sheer effort of competing in the 24 Hours
could permanently maim a driver: 1959 winner Roy Salvadori said that his toenails never recovered after being burnt by the hot exhaust pipe that was routed under the floorpan of his Aston Martin DbR1. In the Classic, keeping each session under an hour allows as many drivers as possible to get track-time and provides for a huge variety of cars, with everything from a Ford Model T to a GT40 able to race in grids that are broadly period-correct. That said, there’s no doubt that some entrants, like Jaguar C-type amateur driver nigel Webb – who has competed at every Classic since 2004 – would wish for more: “It takes a little time to get into the rhythm of the circuit, and the last 20-25 minutes are when you really start to enjoy it and trust that you’re getting it right. You don’t feel the least bit tired at the end of a session and I think they could easily be longer.” nigel also owns a D-type, which has been raced at the Classic twice by former professional driver Andy Wallace. Last time out, Andy won his grid with the D – but we should also mention that he won the 24 Hours in 1988 with a Jaguar XJR-9, and came second in 1990, driving a Jaguar XJR-12. Andy doesn’t see the length of each session as a drawback: “Le Mans is one of the finest circuits in the world and it’s still a thrill to drive it in a competitive car at high speed – it’s just fantastic!” Having raced in the 24 Hours no fewer than 21 times, Andy does have the advantage of knowing the circuit intimately and reckons that he can remember every bump in the road within the first couple of laps. Andy’s experience of driving relatively modern Le Mans racers – his most recent outing was in an RML Lola, which finished third overall in 2010 – also gives him a unique perspective on how such machines compare with the legendary racers from 50 or 60 years ago. “Historic race-car drivers often claim that their cars are much more physically demanding to drive than modern machines, that Le Mans drivers were ‘real men’ back in the day, but what they don’t tell you is that, in a modern race car, you just have no time when something goes wrong. It happens in a minuscule RACInG THE HISTORY // 93
Among the regular participants in the Le Mans Classic, many lady drivers: Quirina Louwman with her Lotus Eleven from her own museum, photographed during a break and whilst racing.
fraction of a second, whereas in an old car you have more time to sort things out before the accident happens. That said, the crash in an old car will probably be much worse when you do finally hit something!” “The operating window of a modern car is also comparatively narrow. You have to get it to the point where tyres, brakes, everything is working at its optimum, or you’re just going to be flailing about in no-man’s land. With a historic car, the amount of grip you get at the first corner is all you’re ever going to get…” “And then there’s the fact that, in a modern closed car, your visibility and, therefore, your awareness of what’s happening around you is also severely restricted, which is way worse than any extra physical burden you get from 94 // TOP OF THE CLASSIC CAR WORLD
driving an old open-cockpit car. The D-type’s mirrors are not fantastic, so it’s really useful to be able to glance over your shoulder and instantly check the position of other cars. Most of the competitors at Le Mans Classic are not professionals and, while that certainly doesn’t mean they are bad drivers, and, of course, they have as much right to be on track as anyone, it does introduce an element of unpredictability.” “In the 24 Hours, you can be reasonably sure that your fellow drivers are going to stick to a line when entering a corner, but that’s not always the case in the Classic. I’ve had a couple of instances, particularly when approaching the first chicane from Tertre Rouge in the dark, where the car in front has swapped lanes at the last moment. That gives you a
problem because in an older race car you can’t instantly brake and change direction. but you just have to be aware of it and deal with it accordingly.” One of the bedrock features of the Le Mans Classic is that competing cars must run in period specification, right down to the type of bulbs used in the headlights. That’s a far from trivial point when you remember that each grid includes at least one night-time session. Even on today’s version of the circuit, with the chicanes that were installed in 1990 on the Mulsanne Straight, a 1950s race car such as the D-type can reach 170mph or more, and it does so with a fraction of the illumination provided for modern racers. Although things weren’t much better on the Jaguar XJR-9 of the late-1980s, says Andy Wallace.
“Jaguar, of course, was a pioneer of disc brakes and they gave the C- and D-types a huge advantage at Le Mans in the early/mid-1950s. They’re still very useful at the Classic, although they have to be treated with respect.” Andy Wallace again: “The D-type is prone to locking up its rear brakes as weight shifts to the front under braking, and that gets progressively worse during a race as fuel is used up and the rear tank gets lighter. You can, of course, plumb in a brake-pipe restrictor so that the rear brakes do less work, but that can bring its own problems in that the restrictor also makes them slower to release.” Speed isn’t everything, therefore. quirina Louwman, whose words opened this feature, is no stranger to D-types and has had plenty of wheel-time in the actual car, chassis XKD606, which won Le Mans in 1957 and which is now part of the world-class Louwman Museum collection. but she loves her Lotus 15, the car she regularly uses for Le Mans Classic. “Its four-cylinder, two-litre engine is very effective in a 500kg car and it reaches over 160mph several times during a lap.” Win or lose, as far as Le Mans Classic is concerned, it surely is the taking part that counts. Motoring journalist Robert Coucher, writing about his shared drive in a 1929 Chrysler 75 at the 2004 Classic, summed up why racing at Le Mans is such a unique experience. “A flat-out drag with a bugatti down the most famous straight in the world is a significant notch on the headboard of life; a memory I will cherish forever.” Start getting your race licence in order now, and your car prepared, and you could find out what he means for yourself on 3-5 July, 2020.
For more information on the 2020 running of the Le Mans Classic, and on previous editions, see: www.lemansclassic.com
The entrants are divided into homogenous classes to carry out the races, both in daylight and at night. Here, a Pre-war group gets ready to access the track.
Although with safety in mind, the rite of the flying start, with the cars lined up and the drivers running towards them, is maintained. At the start, there are some tough sticks, just like the Ferrari 250 SWB number 8.
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