How a Porsche Survived at Le Mans on Coca-Cola
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
www.porscheroadandrace.com How a Porsche survived at Le Mans on Coca-Cola Published: 17th May 2019 By: Richard Wiley Online version: https://www.porscheroadandrace.com/how-a-porsche-survived-at-le-mans-on-coca-cola/ Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: Just after the start of the race, the #15 Richard Lloyd Racing Porsche 962 GTi of Steven Andskar, David Hobbs and Damon Hill passes the pits When you were last with Richard Wiley, we were hurtling around a damp La Sarthe in 1988 with Stuck in the Shell Dunlop 962, trimming the grass and setting up great plumes of spray as the Porsche barked its flat tones in a relentless but ultimately fruitless pursuit of a howling Jaguar V12 which was on the brink of grinding to a halt with no gears but which somehow survived to the flag. A Sting in the Tale Part 2 continues Richard Wiley’s Le Mans expose with a few deviations in between, and how a Porsche survived at Le Mans on Coca- www.porscheroadandrace.com Cola. The first deviation involved visits in 1988 to Spa, Brands and Silverstone where I stood in wonderment at the sheer spectacle of Group C in full flight, albeit with eyes only for the veritable fleets of 962s on display. Notwithstanding this bias, I have to admit that the Sauber-Mercedes entries sounded utterly glorious. Kyalami 1000 kms, 10 December 1983: The #1 Rothmans factory Porsche 956 driven by Jacky Ickx/Jochen Mass calls into the pits. Norbert Singer can be seen top right of the photograph Before we head off back to Le Mans though, what follows is a major deviation. Please allow me a little slack for my forgetfulness which I guess I can partly blame on advancing years. My first association with the Porsche Group C armada was not in Europe but much closer to www.porscheroadandrace.com home at the original and much more compelling Kyalami track with its long straight and sweeping bends, most of which eventually got buried under bricks and mortar. The year was 1983. I had flown down to Jo’burg from Harare and borrowed a friend’s Golf 1 to head for the track and the running of the Kyalami 1000 km World Championship event. Homework suggested that a prime viewing spot would be on the downhill short straight linking Crowthorne Corner, which marked the end of the main straight, with another right- hander named Barbeque. www.porscheroadandrace.com Kyalami 1000 kms, 10 December 1983: The #1 Rothmans factory Porsche 956 driven by Jacky Ickx/Jochen Mass at speed during the Highveld race My ultra-early arrival saw me parked right next to the fence, no more than 10 metres from the track but right alongside a bay window VW camper complete with a ladder and roof rack on which were perched at least eight young Afrikaans fellows who had clearly spent the night there, consuming copious quantities of amber nectar. They soon spotted that I was on my own and summonsed me to join them on the creaking roof of the afore-mentioned camper. The fact that I only spoke English was mildly problematical and led to my nick name of Rooi Nek (Red Neck), but all the jibes were fully worthwhile as the view from the elevated Wolfsburger was unsurpassed. www.porscheroadandrace.com Kyalami 1000 kms, 10 December 1983: The #1 Rothmans factory Porsche 956 driven by Jacky Ickx/Jochen Mass calls into the pits. Norbert Singer can be seen to the right of the photograph and there is clear evidence of a heavy thunderstorm which was the norm for late afternoon in the summer No fewer than 16 Porsches made their way to the grid but I was fixated on the factory Rothmans pair of 956s with Jacky Ickx/Jochen Mass piloting #1 and the dependable Brit, Derek Bell, alongside German hotshot, Stefan Bellof in #2. As expected, it was Bellof who annexed pole in an F1-rivalling 1m 10s at nearly 209 km/h, but nothing prepared me for the simply breathtaking speed of the 956s down the long straight. Our lofty perch gave us a superb view of the lower reaches of that straight and as darkness fell, the sight of the roof identity lights on the factory 956s hurtling between shallow embankments at around 320 km/h was mind-blowing. So too was the fact that Porsches had www.porscheroadandrace.com enough grunt on tap to squirm the rear tyres and wag their tails on the downhill run to Barbeque. Kyalami 1000 kms, 10 December 1983: The #1 Rothmans factory Porsche 956 driven by Jacky Ickx/Jochen Mass at speed during the Highveld race I guess this digression has lasted long enough, suffice to say that Bell/Bellof took the chequered flag and survived a heavy downpour that memory tells me saw off the Ickx/Mass challenge. Never had I experienced such an adrenalin rush watching what was, and probably still remains, the most effective endurance racer ever produced, and to say that the adrenalin rush returned in June of 1989 as I prepared to head for Le Mans is an understatement, albeit that the 962 was in its twilight years. www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: The #9 Joest Racing Porsche 962 C in in the paddock before the race – to be driven by Bob Wollek and Hans-Joachim Stuck I should mention that this precursor of what has blossomed into 25 visits, was carried out in the company of Patrick, a former colleague at the Harare-based advertising agency where I spent more than a third of a century aligning other people’s minds in a given direction. Patrick, by the way had just moved to the UK and was struggling to earn a living, but the lure of Le Mans and the anticipated sound of the flat-sixes, overruled all else. The fact that up to 2018, every one of those Le Mans forays has been alongside Patrick is something special and suggests that my indoctrination – I am 17 years his senior – in favour of the Weissach streamliners has worked well! Being rookies, we had little idea of how best to go about getting from the UK to La Sarthe and in the end, settled on using the services of a specialist UK tour operator who arranged www.porscheroadandrace.com to fly us out of Stansted to Tours in what turned out to be a propeller-driven craft that should have been condemned decades earlier. Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: Porsche 962 C engine being worked on in the paddock – in the background sits Porsche engineer, Walter Näher All this was happening early on the Saturday morning of the race and needless to say, an elusive technical problem delayed our departure and caused much gnashing of teeth as the probability of missing the massed, rolling Le Mans start at 15h00 CET loomed. We eventually got to Tours and boarded a coach which our host proudly proclaimed was fitted with sleeper seats to assist with our slumbers during the wee hours of the night in a large grass car park alongside what we eventually came to know as Camping Bleu. www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: Team Schuppan Porsche 962 C body parts – in the foreground is the #55 Omron 962 while in the background is the #33 body www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: The #55 Team Schuppan Porsche 962 C being prepared in the paddock before the race By the time we got to the revered territory, we had endured agonising hold-ups in traffic of mind-blowing density. My blood pressure too had escalated to somewhere around the boost pressure of the 962s we were about to ogle over but let me tell you that getting to the periphery of the track was one thing; gaining access to our prime pews in the ACO stand was quite another. www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: Brun Racing team photo at scrutineering – #5 From-A: Grohs/Nakaya/van der Merwe; #6 Alpha: Lechner/Ratzenberger/Sala; #16 Hydro Aluminuim: Schäfer/Huysmann/Lacaud; #17 Repsol: Larrauri/Pareja/Brun; #27 Brun Repsol: Konrad/Seher/Villarino Those familiar with the Le Mans finishing straight will know that the adjacent spectator viewing area is tiered but does not run parallel to the track or the grandstands which entails stepping up a level every so often in order to maintain a straight line, something I might add we found increasingly difficult during the early hours of the morning, but that was for other reasons! www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: Derek Bell, James Weaver and Tiff Needell drove the rather distinctive #14 Richard Lloyd Racing Porsche 962 C The other factor that made progress on foot extremely slow was the fact that the closely- packed crowd, made up of a majority of shall we say “local residents,” was totally unwilling to “cedez le passage,” apparently believing that any concession of movement on their behalf would result in our occupying the miniscule space they had just vacated! www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 10-11 June 1989: The #55 Porsche 962 C was driven by Vern Schuppan, Eje Elgh and Gary Brabham – they would finish in 13th place overall Whatever, we eventually made our prime seats moments before the fleet of 55 racers moved off on its reconnaissance lap. It didn’t take long to spot the Joest Racing Langheck #9, replete in its distinctive but mildly effeminate Italya pink livery, and #7 and #8 in the now traditional Blaupunkt blue and white colours.