I remember being about 14 years old when I first found out about the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I happened to catch it on some TV sports channel, and I remember watching the Sauber team running their pair of silver Mercedes-Benz C9s to an overall win. The cars were unlike anything I'd ever seen before - they were sleek and swoopy and spacecraft-like, had a great engine sound, and fire blasted from the exhaust pipes on every shift. Best of all, there was a bunch of equally wild-looking cars racing, too.
At the first commercial break, I learned that I was watching an endurance race called the 24 heurs du Mans. The premise was simple: Drive as fast as you could through eight miles of the French countryside, then do it for 24 hours straight.
Ingrained in my memory is watching those silver Mercs streak along the track, then through the fast right-hander known as "Tetre Rouge" ("redhead"), then on to the 4-mile long straight, famously known as "Mulsanne". Imagine what an 800+hp car can do when you floor it for four miles! (Ed. note: during the late 1980s, the turbocharged Porsche 962s were reportedly hitting speeds in excess of 250mph.)
To a young car geek, it was all magical. As I got older, I read even more about the race, and fell in love with its rich racing history and tradition. Here are just a few:
- Until 1970, the race was started with the cars not placed on a grid, but parked along the pit wall. When the starting flag was waved, drivers would run across the front straight to their awaiting cars, start them up, and drive away with reckless abandon! During the last year of this type of start (1969), famous driver Jacky Ickx protested the unsafe start by casually strolling across the track to his car, where he took great care to fasten his safety belt. Although he was one of the last to start the race, he eventually won.
- In 1962, Ferrari brought their new for 1962 (and darling of the ball) Ferrari 250 GTO, driven by Mike Parkes. During an altercation with an Aston Martin, the GTO ended up in the sand trap at the end of the Mulsanne straight. The car ended up completing only 52 laps before it retired with overheating issues. When the car was restored in the early 1990s, sand was still found wedged in the nose.
- During the 1949 race, Luigi Chinetti won the race in a Ferrari 166MM after driving for over 23 1/2 hours straight (his co-driver became ill after being in the car only 20 minutes).
- Even non-race fans are familiar with the spraying of champagne by race winners. This was started by Dan Gurney when he won the 1967 race with AJ Foyt in a Ford GT40.
- The worst crash in motor racing history happened in 1955 when Mercedes-Benz brought one of their 300 SLRs to the race. Near the beginning of the front straight, the Mercedes-Benz collided with an Austin Healey. The impact broke the Merc's engine from the chassis, sending it skipping through the crowd, killing 86 spectators.
Victories, tragedies, and traditions alike, it made for 24 hours of drama that only a racing enthusiast would get into. These days, the cars are still very exotic, but both the track and the cars are much safer. Fortunately, this hasn't hurt the stories that are told during those 24 hours.
To this day, I still wake up early on a Saturday to catch the first several hours of the race. I get chills watching the field roll off the grid, and hear the engines come up to speed as they come out of the last of the Porsche curves and sweep onto the front straight. I'll watch through the night, catch a nap in the early hours of the morning, then am back up at 5am to watch the last four hours. What can I say? It's my Superbowl.
This year, the race is scheduled for June 11-12, starting at 9am EST (3pm French time) and is being shown by the Speed Channel here in the States. If you find yourself around a TV, give it a few laps, even if you've never watched another race, or are a dyed-in-the-wool NASCAR fan.
There is truly no greater spectacle in motorsports!
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