Without Wyer - Part 1

By Ted West (Road & Track September 1970)

Porsche Makes It At Last - Without Wyer

There are two ways you can do it. You can either spend the entire spring winning the
Manufacturer's Championship and then break your donkey trying to win Le mans, or you can
just spend the entire spring breaking your donkey trying to get ready to win Le mans. One way
is as good as the other, because if you don't win Le Mans the rest of it just doesn't matter (for
further references, see the chins of World Champion Porsche last year, badly scraped from
being dragged on the ground after losing the 24-hr by 100 yards; see also the sly, fully
satisfied grin on winner Jacky Ickx's face whenever he talks about that race, even though he
won only one other enduro all that year). Being Weltmeister is nice, but only if one of the
races you win happens to pass within 20 feet of a pair of pleasant little restaurants in
Hunaudiéres at something over 200 miles per hour.

And so Le Mans received its usual huge entry, with every factory this side of Alpine (mercifully
absent this year) dealing out race like half-price coupons, consulting its corporate astrologers
for weaknesses in the skies, sleeping with middle toes crossed, and doing anything else that
might keep its cars running 24 hours in a row. Porsche and Ferrari were there, of course, the
former having won the Manufacturer's title in the most inevitable sort of way with six pre-Le
Mans wins to Ferrari's one. Then there were the Group 6 entrants, Alfa and Matra, neither of
whom took the entire series seriously, preferring to skip the occasional race in favor of
developing a suitable Le Mans car. However the teams may regard the Championship, the sheer
numbers present at Le Mans make clear what is thought of this event. There were, mind you,
eleven Ferrari 512s, eight Porsche 917s, four Alfa T 33/3s, three Matras (one 660, two 650s),
two Ferrari 312Ps and two Porsche 908s. Approximately half of these cars were ostensibly
"private" entries, but anything more than a cursory glance revealed that everyone of them had
been haevily breathed on by the gods back at the foundry. Nobody was taking any chances.

The Porsche 917s came in two shapes, with two different engines. There were the usual
shorttail 917s, three for John Wyer, two for POrsche Salzburg (one which didn't start for lack -
would you believe it? - of a second driver) and one for Gijs van Lennep/David Piper. Then there
were two very longtail 917s with high vertical fins and horizontal airfoil for Vic Elford/Kurt
Ahrens of Porsche Salzburg and Gerard Larrousse/Willi Kauhsen of the Martini International
team. These cars, dubbed "batmobiles" by the dullards who prevail, were fantastic looking,
reminding one of the pre'war German record cars (though oddly the shapes were actually
worked out by a French team of aerodynamicists) and the Martini car made its point even more
indelibly by carrying a purple-dayglo green psyche-stripe paint job that was so lovely that we
almost had the temerity to say so out loud before being informed by the Sacred Guardians of
Good Taste (read, British Motoring Press) that it was, after all, "unthinkable." Before that I
could have sworn I liked it.

The longtail 917 had been very unpleasant down Mulsanne in early spring tests, but the
addition of the wing had made it so nice that Vic said he could one-hand down back at 225 -
which by the way, does not mean that you or I, or maybe anyone else, could do the same. Vic
lives by a different set of rules. At any rate (of speed), it worked quite well, While the short
917s were subject to that same old hull speed, 5-liter or not, and just plain didn't go much
better than around 205-208. (Shucks, Mortie.) The longtails both used 5-speeds and Vic's
5-liter was expecting about 240, but Herr Doktor Komputer didn't figure tire drag correctly and
disappointed them slightly. At last, Vic's was faster on Mulsanne than all Ferraris. He,
Rodriguez/Kinnunen and Siffert/Redman had 5-liter engines, while the other 917s had the
thoroughly reliable 4.5.

Ferrari may have been slower down Mulsanne than Vic's Porsche, but the longtail trim they
were all faster down there than any other Porsche. Ferrari had spent time on Le Mans and
arrived with a very clean longtail. Except for a partially wasted spoiler lip and vertical fins that
weren't really properly aligned front-to-rear and, if anything, would make the car turn left (to
compensate fior the righthand kink in Mulsanne, they said later), the streamlining was otherwise
quite effective. All the cars but one (the Escuderia Montjuich entry) were coupes, and the
factory selected the lowlift noses which had first appeared at Sebring, giving two others to
Filipinetti. Among the other entries were three shorttail private cars and three longtails, mated
with the less effective Daytona nose. This latter combination proved a terrible handful for lack
of front-end stability, but ironically two of these three, Sam Posey/Ronnie Bucknum and Hughes
de Fierlandt/Al Walker, outlasted the more "important" Ferraris. The 512S engine for Le Mans
used a slightly milder cam, subtly changed intake porting, lovely new transparent plastic
velocity stacks (in case sort of thing interests you), and one-inch-wider rear tires.

Matra, for all their local-boy-makes-goodery, arrived depressingly unprepared. Ostensibly they
had been spending the entire spring on Le Mans and hadn't competed since Monza but
somehow they had only completed one of the new 660 models and had to cobble up a pair of
650s from spare parts and long lost dreams in order to present anything like a serious entry.
Each of their three cars was different, except that all used the center-induction 1970 F1 V-12.
They ran one completely conventional short 650 for Jean-Pierre Jabouille/Patrick Depailler, a
longtail 650 with narrow long trailing pontoons (and therefor 13-in. instead of 15-in. rear tires)
for Jack Brabham/Francois Cevert, and the all-new 660 for Jean-Pierre Beltoise/Heri Pescarolo.
Chief differnce in the 660 is that the monocoque stops at the firewall, after which the engine
carries all the rear gubbins. The front suspension is quite different, the tub very much simpler
and lighter, the body aerodynamically more efficient, and all of this grand and glorious news has
somehow produced a car which is yet slower than its predecessor, less stable at speed, less
predictable in corners and generally sordid. And even the 650, after an additional year's srting
and lightening, is still a full three seconds slower that the 3-liter Porsches were last year at Le
Mans. It's possible to say the 660 is simply too new, but with the amount of time spent on it for
Le Mans, it would seem more likely that Matra hasn't found any clues yet, more's the pity.