Who knows what legends stand to be created when the green flag is waved at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans? In one short day, a thousand stories will be written in sound and fury, lights streaking throughout the night, dawn breaking to reveal new frontrunners, new disasters, triumph and defeat.
It will be a day too full for a single narrative thread to encompass. So with more than eight decades of racing to sort through, trying to sketch out a Le Mans history without Harry Potter levels of multiple-volume tomes is also completely impossible.
However, we can at least touch on a few high points, outline some stories that — even if you don’t follow endurance racing or motorsport — you should know. The 24 Hours of Le Mans isn’t just a race, it’s an epic saga. It has heartbreak, and it has heroes. Here are some of the latter.
Woolf Barnato and the Bentley Speed Six
If you should find yourself in the small French town of Le Mans on the week of the race, you might idly wonder why there are so many U.K.-plated right-hand-drive cars around. Have the British invaded again?
They have indeed, as Le Mans is a central part of the roots of British motorsport. While the first winner of Le Mans was a Frenchman, it wouldn’t be long before British racing green would arrive to dominate.
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Joel Woolf Barnato was the heir to a diamond empire, and the sort of aristocratic sportsman you’d stick on the cover of a WWI recruitment poster. He was a first-class cricketer, an amateur boxer, a keen shot, an excellent rider, and a prize-winning motorboat racer. Motorcar racing was practically a given.
Barnato would win Le Mans three times on the trot – 1928, 1929, and 1930 – the only three times he entered the race. Then he went off to involve himself in other pursuits like racing against trains. Later, he would become a wing commander in the Royal Air Force, responsible for defending British factories from the Luftwaffe’s raids.
The Bentley he drove in the final two races was a 6.5-litre Speed Six dubbed “Old Number One.” It is perhaps the most famous of the racing Bentleys, and led Barnato’s funeral procession when he died in 1948, aged 53.
Wimille, Benoist and the French Resistance
Le Mans has of course not been held continually, there being a slight interruptive fracas between the years 1939 and 1945. For the men who won the race in 1937, victory on the podium would not be their greatest achievement.
Jean-Pierre Wimille and Robert Benoist took the checkered flag after enduring nearly 3,300 km in a Bugatti Type 57G “Tank.” Fitted with smoothed out body panels, the 57G benefited from an early attempt at aerodynamics, and was more efficient than its open-wheeled rivals.
When WWII broke out, Wimille and Benoist escaped to England, but they would return to France. Recruited by the top secret Special Operations Executive, they infiltrated occupied France and began working with the Resistance.
Jean-Pierre Wimille in 1936.
Supplied, Wikimedia Commons
Wimille would survive the war, despite the Gestapo breaking up the intelligence ring in a series of raids. He would go on to become Alfa-Romeo’s chief driver.
Benoist’s story is even more incredible. Given the rank of Captain in the British forces, he was parachuted into occupied France where he organized sabotage cells and supplied the fighters with arms caches. When the Nazis broke the spy ring, he was captured in Paris – but escaped by leaping from a moving car.
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Smuggled back into England, he would return to France twice again to help in the fight against the occupation. The second time he was captured, escape proved impossible, and he was executed in Buchenwald. A race was held in his honour in Paris, shortly after VE day.
Carroll Shelby and the GT40
As racing rivalries go, few are hotter than the vendetta between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II. An unlikely matchup, you might think, but in this case, Il Commentadore ended up biting off more than he could chew.
The spark that set things ablaze was as simple as the clash of two strong personalities. Ferrari made overtures toward a partnership with Ford; Ford spent the money to set things in place, and at the 11th hour Enzo balked over a passage in the deal regarding financial control for racing operations (that’s the much-simplified version, anyway).
The Ford GT40
Supplied, Wikimedia Commons
According to A.J. Blaine’s excellent book Go Like Hell, Hank the Deuce’s exact words were, “All right. We’ll beat his ass. We’re going to race him.”
The first racers were built in partnership with Lola, and featured a midship design with Ford V8 power. Things did not go well: at the 1964, all three GT40s retired.
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Enter Carroll Shelby, expert at getting Fords to go faster. His solution? More power, in the form of a seven-litre, 485-hp V8 that sounded like Henry II’s unvarnished rage. It was ridiculously fast: Shelby famously threatened his drivers with a hammer when they nearly wrecked each other. They swept the podium 1-2-3.
The next three were all won by Ford, the last piloted by a Belgian named Jacky Ickx.
Jacky Ickx and the long walk
Ever wonder why Porsches have their ignition switches to the left of the steering column? It’s a throwback to the company’s Le Mans racing days, when drivers sprinted to their parked cars and roared off – usually without attaching their seatbelts.
Even for a time when any kind of racing was dangerous, this foot-race start seemed like a pretty bad idea. As a protest, when the sprint started, Ickx walked slowly and deliberately towards his GT40.
Jacky Ickx
Supplied, Wikimedia Commons
It was a gutsy thing to do, not just angering racing purists, but as the other racers zipped off Ickx was very nearly run over.
He departed the pits dead last. British driver John Woolfe was killed in the very first lap, likely because he hadn’t fastened his safety belts because of the sprint start.
Slowly, lap-by-lap, Ickx climbed up the ranks, eventually winning the race and proving his point. The next year saw drivers starting strapped in to their cars. It was the end of a tradition, but safer for all competitors.
