The Race - Part 4

By Simon Taylor and Patrick McNally (Autosport 18 June 1970)

At 12.15 the weather played another trick. While the south of the circuit remained dry, a
fanstatic cloudburst suddenly flooded the pits area, the Esses and Tertre Rouge, washing mud
off the verges onto the road. Speeds were reduced to a crawl, and in came everyone to
change to ultra-wet tyres. This affected the Corvette, which took nine minutes to do it and
lost its G4 lead to the 914, and the third-placed 908. Once again the comedy with the fat
mechanic was enacted, but to have become immovably welded to the hub. They spent 10
minutes jumping on it and trying to loosen it without success, while the other mechanincs
changed the other three wheels; having failed with the fourth, they admitted defeat and the
dry tyres were put back on again, with an angry Lins twitching up the road through the
puddles. However, so great was his advantage over the NART Ferrari that this performance
didn't lose him a place.

Almost as suddenly the rain stopped, the sun came out and the track dried, so everyone was in
to change tyres yet again. Now it was a case for everyone of keeping going in the remaining
time. There were one or two rather sick cars struggling round, notably the Skailes/Hine Chevron
which was still in and out of the pits and finally, with 1½ hour left, ground to a halt on the
Mulsanne Straight. As Cosworths apparently recommend only four hours' racing between
rebuilds for the FVC engine, it had done well! The 312P Ferrari was still plagued with ignition and
injection dramas: it was always very difficult to restart after its pit stops, and would barely pull
itself up the hill away from the start-finish area, but once on the Mulsanne Straight it would
clear and start to run on at least 10 of its cylinders. The Healey was another reluctant starter
after pitstops, and was sounding a little off song from time to time. One of the 911s, the
Sweitlik/Lagniez car, had a serious oil leak but was struggling round to finish.

The only excitemnet in the final hour was Larrousse unlapping himself on Attwood, bringing the
gap down to five laps, and the arrival half an hour before the end of the usual huge posse of
gendarmes to control the crowd, greeted by the spectators in the customary manner with boos,
jeers and whistles. A final retirement was the Healey: poor Enever had stopped with ignition
failure onle two laps from the end on the Mulsanne Straight, a cruel blow.

The Attwood/Herrmann Porsche crossed the line just before 4 pm and had to do another lap,
and then - an innovation this year - instead of the crowd swamping the circuit, they were held
in the enclosures and Dickie and hans, plus Dr. Ferry Porsche, were loaded onto a sort of
municipal dust cart, on which they did a slow lap of honour sans car or mechanics. By contrast
with the jubilant near-riots of past years, it was an anti-climatic end to a rather anti-climatic
Le Mans.

Behind the two 917s and the 908 - a long way behind - came the sole survivors of the mighty
Ferrari armada, the private NART and ENB cars. A worthy sixth should have been the Corvette
and eight the 908 camera car, but when the offical result were announced it was found that
the organisers had invoked the qualifying distance rule, which requires cars to travel a certian
distance according to their capacity to qualify afs finishers. Neither the Corvette nor the
camera car had done this, the Corvette having been slowed particurlarly by the rain and the
changes to and from wet and dry tyres, so the little 914/6 Porsche, which had run incredibly
reliably (on the same set of brake pads and same dry Dunlop tyres for the whole race!) was
declared sixth overall and GT category winner.

Thus Porsche had won all three categories; they also took the Index of Performence (the
Lins/Marko 908) and the Energy Index, calculted on fuel consumption by capacity (the
Larrousse/Kauhsen 917). For 30-year-old Attwood and 42-year-old Herrmann, whose racing
career dates back to the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 team in the 1950s and beyond, it was
perhaps an unexpected victory, the reward for a consistent drive after som many faster teams
had dropped out. For Ferrari - and for JW Automotive - it was a disappointing race: but for
Porsche the result could not have been better, even if they too had had a low reliability record.
On their 20th visit to Le Mans, they had at last scored outright victory!

1. Richard Attwood/Hans Herrmann (4.5 Porsche 917) 2863 miles, 119.29 mph
2. Gerard Larrousse/Willi Kauhsen (5.0 Porsche 917 LH) 2822 miles, 117.59 mph
3. Rudi Lins/Helmut Marko (3.0 Porsche 908/2) 2798 miles, 116.57 mph
4. Sam Posey/Ronnie Bucknum (5.0 Ferrari 512S) 2615 miles, 108.98 mph
5. Hughes de Fierlandt/Alistair Walker (5.0 Ferrari 512S) 2457 miles,
* Henri Greder/Jean-Pierre Rouget (7.0 Chevron Corvette) 2391 miles
6. Claude Ballot-Lena/Guy Chasseuil (2.0 Porsche 914/6) 2381 miles
* Herbert Linge/Jonathan Williams (3.0 Porsche 908/2) 2260 miles
8. Erwin Kremer/Nick Koob (2.3 Porsche 911S) 2256 miles

* Unclassified for mot completing minimu allotted disctance

Other unclassified finishhers in final order:
Parsons/Adamowicz (Ferrari 312P)
Maroy/Mazzia (Porsche 911S)
Verrier/Garant (Porsche 911S)
Parot/Dechaumel (Porsche 911S)
Laurent/Marche (Porsche 911S)
Sweitlik/Lagniez (Porsche911S)

Fastest lap:
Vic Elford (Porsche 917 LH) 3min 21.0 secs, 149.9 mph

Index of Performance:
1. Lins/Marko
2. Attwood/Herrmann

Index of Thermal Efficiency:
1. Larrousse/Kauhsen
2. Ballot-Lena/Chasseuil
3. Lins/Marko