19th May 1996: The Race That Destroys Its Favourites

15th June 1935: The Race That Rewrote The Rules Part 5

Five races. Ninety years. One date. The fifteenth of June has a habit of producing the unexpected at Le Mans. In 1929, Bentley arrived to collect what they’d already won twice before — and they did, but not without being made to work for it. In 1935, Alfa Romeo’s pursuit of a fifth consecutive win ended when their lead driver was given the wrong information by his own pit crew, and a Lagonda running on its last drops of oil took the prize. In 1985, a customer car humiliated the factory, driven in part by a man racing under a false name. In 1996, a car built from a mothballed Jaguar chassis beat the full Porsche works effort, and handed the win to the youngest driver ever to win Le Mans. And in 2019, a wiring error made before the race started determined who finished first. Chequered Past is a podcast about motorsport history. Find us at linktr.ee/chequeredpastpod. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

14th June 1952: The Race That Rewrote The Rules Part 4

Four races. Four dates. All June the fourteenth. In 1924, a privately entered Bentley fought three works Lorraine-Dietrichs through brutal heat to give the British marque its first Le Mans victory. In 1952, a Frenchman named Pierre Levegh drove alone for nearly twenty-three hours — and came within one hour of winning the race by himself. In 1969, Jacky Ickx walked to his car in protest, started last, and won the closest finish in the race's history. And in 1980, Jean Rondeau won Le Mans in a car bearing his own name Cover image: By ZANTAFIO56 - 24 heures du MANS 1969, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99877359] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

13th June 1953: The Race That Rewrote The Rules Part 3

Three races share the 13th of June. Three times, the result confounded expectations. In 1953, Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton spent the night in a French bar after being disqualified before the race had started. By Sunday afternoon they had won — at the first average speed of over 100 miles per hour in Le Mans history — in a Jaguar C-Type running disc brakes for the first time in competition. In 1970, the dominant JW Automotive Gulf Porsches of Jo Siffert and Pedro Rodriguez were eliminated by driver error and mechanical failure through a rain-soaked night. What was left was a race of survival. Of 51 starters, only seven cars were classified. The winner was a car that had qualified fifteenth, driven by a man who had promised his wife he would retire the moment he won Le Mans. In 1987, a change in fuel specification destroyed most of Porsche's own fleet within the first hour. Jaguar, who had won the four preceding championship rounds, appeared set to end Porsche's six-year winning streak — until a tyre failure at 230 miles per hour changed the course of the race. One Porsche survived. It was enough. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

12th June 1999: The Race That Rewrote The Rules Part 2

On the twelfth of June, across seventy-three years of motorsport history, Le Mans produced four races that refused to deliver the winner anyone expected.  In 1926, Bentley ended up in a sandbank in the final half-hour while their competitor locked out the podium.  In 1954, Ferrari held on by less than five kilometres after an engine that wouldn't fire at a pit stop nearly handed the race to Jaguar.  In 1971, a car nobody expected to win set a distance record that stood for thirty-nine years — then its driver lost his career to a stone the following season.  And in 1999, the most competitive grid Le Mans had ever seen produced one of its most dramatic finishes.  Cover image: By Martin Lee - BMW V12 LMR - Pierluigi Martini, Yannick Dalmas & Joachim Winkelhock head towards Dunlop Bridge at the 1999 Le Mans, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115358827] Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

11th June 1955: The Race That Rewrote The Rules Part 1

The eleventh of June appears more than once in the history of the twenty-four hours of Le Mans — and the first of those appearances casts a shadow over everything that follows. In 1955, a crash in the third hour of the race killed more than eighty people and changed motorsport forever. This episode examines what happened, why the race continued, and what the disaster set in motion — in the regulations, in the circuit design, and in the sport’s long, slow reckoning with the question of safety. The three races that follow show how Le Mans evolved in the decades after. In 1977, a Porsche that should have been out of contention — damaged, running deep in the field — became the first car shared by three drivers to win Le Mans outright. In 1988, Jaguar ended seven consecutive Porsche victories on a gearbox held together by the torque of its engine and the nerve of its driver — while elsewhere on the same circuit, a Frenchman quietly broke the four hundred kilometre an hour barrier on the Mulsanne Straight, setting a record that can never be beaten. And in 2011, two of the most violent accidents in the modern race’s history produced something the crowd in 1955 could not have imagined: both drivers walked away. Four races. One date. And a thread running through all of them that begins in the worst moment in the sport’s history and ends, fifty-six years later, with two drivers climbing out of cars that had been destroyed at three hundred kilometres an hour. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]