Porsche Honors 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans Victory – Part 2
A promise is a promise. An hour after the start, which saw the drivers begin the race sitting in their cars instead of performing the world-famous “Le Mans start”, Herrmann was only in ninth place.
The race leader was Jo Siffert, also in a Porsche 917, followed by Jacky Ickx in a Ferrari 512 S. Siffert later missed a shift and blew his engine, while Ickx crashed his red racer at the chicane. At around 6:15 p.m. came the almost unbelievable news that four Ferrari 512 S had crashed into one another in the driving rain and were out of the race. The race also took its toll on the Porsche armada, with all three 917s of the Gulf team gradually dropping out.
Now was the moment for the experienced veteran Herrmann, who had the perfect partner in Richard Attwood, to show what he could do. Under the most difficult weather conditions, he gradually moved his way up the field, guiding the Porsche Salzburg 917 confidently to the first ever overall victory for Porsche at Le Mans.
He realised the significance of this moment as the race came to an end on 14 June 1970: “Wow! That may have been your last lap ever as a racing driver.” Back home in Stuttgart, his victory was celebrated with a parade, in which he drove his winning car through the city to the market square. Thousands of people turned out to congratulate Hans Herrmann, ex-racing driver.
Porsche followed up this success with a further 15 overall victories at Le Mans, the second coming just a year later in 1971. In a unique Porsche 917 with a lightweight magnesium chassis, Gijs van Lennep and Dr. Helmut Marko drove to victory on a still largely chicane-free circuit. In doing so, they set an incredible record, which has never been broken.
The Porsche 917 completed precisely 5,335.313 kilometres and 397 laps in 24 hours, clocking up an average speed of 222.304 km/h (138.140 mph) despite all of the pit stops and the long night. The fastest lap in the race was achieved by Jackie Oliver’s Gulf 917, with an unbelievable 244 km/h (151.6 mph) average speed, while the 917 long-tail Coupé of Elford/Larrousse was clocked at a maximum speed of 386 km/h (239.8 mph) on Hunaudières in 1971.
In 1976 and 1977 the Porsche 936 was victorious, while in 1981 it won again under Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell with a new turbo engine. Belgian driver Ickx won at Le Mans six times, four of them in a Porsche. In 1982 he was yet again part of the winning team in a triple victory that represented the first milestone for the most successful racing car of all time, the Porsche 956. Up to 1994, different variants of the 956/962 won at Le Mans seven times. 148 of these were produced in Weissach.
In some years, Porsche conceded the most important race of the year to customer teams, who emerged as frequent winners. Klaus Ludwig and the Whittington brothers thus achieved victory in Le Mans in 1979 with a Porsche 935 for the Cologne-based Kremer team, while Reinhold Joest guided the Porsche brand to well-deserved overall victories in 1984, 1985 and 1997.
Faced with the strongest ever field to line up at Le Mans in June 1998, Porsche racing director Herbert Ampferer spoke at the time of the “race of the century”. Porsche was represented with two new 911 GT1s and achieved a stunning double victory for the factory in the world’s most important endurance race, in front of a crowd of 250,000 thrilled spectators. This was the 16th and most recent overall victory for Porsche at the Sarthe circuit.
Porsche celebrated this special motor sports anniversary in suitable style by taking part in the “Le Mans Classic”, an event which is only held every two years. In six classes covering model years 1923 to 1979, around 400 historic racing cars will gather to relive their old racing triumphs once more. Among them will be some of the overall winners from the Porsche Museum, which will lead an anniversary parade on the race track.
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