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TEAM QUAIL AT LE MANSThe History - The Nineties |
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TEAM QUAIL AT LE MANSThe History - The Nineties |
1990
In 1990 the FIA ordered the Le Mans circuit to change or lose its licence. The concern was over safety of the Mulsanne straight that many thought was becoming lethal. Two chicanes were added, which changed the character of the best-known part of the circuit forever.
Ironically, the changes happened too late for the FIA to recognise Le Mans as part of the world sports car championship, and Mercedes cited this as the reason for not entering the 1990 race.
The potential of the alterations to increase safety was shown during practice when Jonathan Palmer had a rear suspension failure in his Porsche 962 midway between the two chicanes. The car struck the barrier on the left, spun and hit them again with the rear of the car, then flew across the track to the other barrier, being airborne for 100 metres before landing the right way up, and stopping before the second chicane. Palmer was shaken, but uninjured. He had been doing 200mph whereas a year before it would have been 240mph.
The chicanes inevitably slowed the lap times, from a pole time of 3m 15.04s in 1989 to 3m 27.02s in 1990. That time was set by one of seven Nissans entered this year with Mark Blundell six seconds quicker than the first Porsche.
Jaguar entered four TWR Silk Cut XJR-12s, and was confident about their chances. But there were tough challengers from three Toyotas, three Mazdas, Porsche had nineteen 962s and two Porsche engined Cougars, split between ten teams.
Nissan lost a car on the warm up lap when Acheson’s brakes failed and he broke the gearbox trying to slow. When the race started Julian Bailey in the Nissan R90CK took the lead from pole, chased by Larrauri in the Repsol Brun Porsche. As the race develpoed the normally aspirated Jaguars stalked the turbocharged Nissans and Porsches. The Brun 962 traded the lead with Brundell’s Nissan. However this Nissan collided with a Toyota at 8.30 in the evening, causing it to fall away before further problems meant retirement. Now the American-entered Nissan took on the fight and led on and off throughout the night. But at around dawn this car had to retire too, with a leaking fuel tank.
Over the next few hours Jaguar lost two cars, but the survivors rolled on fast and untroubled, except by the Brun Porsche. For many hours the 962 split the Jaguars, until it stopped on the Mulsanne straight with a dead engine, just 15 minutes short of the end. The two Jaguars finished first and second, driven by John Nielsen and Price Cobb, plus a car swapping Brundle, and by Jan Lammers, Andy Wallace and Franz Konrad. Tiff Needell, David Sears and Anthony Reid climbed steadily to take third in their Alpha Racing Porsche ahead of Joest’s 962.
The Circuit 1990-1996
Length:
13.600 km
The Mulsanne straight was split into three sections by the introduction of two
mirror-imaged chicanes to comply with an FIA directive on maximum length of
straights. New pit lane entrance in readiness for the new pit complex in 1991.
Distance record set by the 1993 winners: 5,100.00 km, average speed: 213.358
km/h.
Fastest lap was set during the 1993 race by Eddie Irvine driving the number 36
Toyota TS010 with a time of 3:27.47, an average speed of 235.986 km/h.
1991
There were more changes for 1991 when the pits built in 1956 were demolished and a vast new complex built. This included hospitality suites and press offices over 46 new garages. The pit lane was widened, the paddock extended and a five storey race control was built alongside the start-finish line.
The regulations changed in line with the World Series, and Le Mans was readmitted. Now 3.5-litre cars could have no more than twelve cylinders and a minimum weight of 750kg. There were few of these about; so another category was added for 1000kg cars of unlimited capacity, but with a fuel-consumption limit. However the engine had to be from a manufacturer already in the world championship. This then permitted Mercedes, Porsche and Ford but disallowed Nissan and Toyota.
The result was just 38 starters, the smallest grid for nearly sixty years. It included three Mazdas, managed as in the previous year by Jacky Ickx, four Jaguars, three Sauber Mercedes, thirteen Porsches, three Cougars and a pair of works Peugeots, the first since the 1920s.
Derek Warwick in the second placed Jaguar
The qualifying was mostly wet, and it finished with the Peugeot 905 coupes at the front. But they had not been the fastest. The rules said that the championship cars had to have the first five rows to themselves, whatever their times. The fastest car was Schlesser’s Sauber Mercedes and consequently this started from the sixth row. Then Jaguar withdrew the fastest car in the world championship category, Andy Wallace’s XJR-14, lead the pole to Peugeot.
Peugeots led the opening laps before being overwhelmed by the three Mercedes, and for a long time the Mercedes stayed there and looked like winning.
The V10 Peugeots were both retired before a third of the race had passed. Jaguar was having problems with fuel consumption, and could not run their cars at full pace. But the quickest Mazda was harrying the leaders, the lighter weight helping its reliability.
Overnight the race was led by the Mercedes of Kreutzpointer,
which set the fastest lap. But the German cars hit problems; by daybreak one had
gone with gearbox and accident damage, and Kreutzpointer’s car had dropped down
with engine failure also following accident damage. Then with only three hours
to go, the Schlesser car was in the pits with an
overcooked
engine.
1991 Mazda
The screaming four-rota Mazda took the lead driven by Weider, Gachot and Herbert (who later collapsed with heat exhaustion). The Jaguars were second third and fourth, with the Schumacher Mercedes fifth. But only one car mattered – Japan’s first Le Mans winner.
1992
The ACO had erected miles of debris fencing to protect spectators and stop the traditional rush onto the circuit at the end. The spectators still turned up in their thousands, but this year they saw the smallest field since the early thirties, just 28 starters, and 14 finishers.
This was the sixtieth Le Mans, and was scheduled to be a showdown between Peugeot and Toyota. There were three 3.5-litre V10 Peugeots, three V10 and two V8 Toyotas and two Mazdas with V10 Judd engines rather than their rotary engines. There were five Porsches, including two 3-litre turbo 962s from Kramer, and a 3.5 V12 P351 BRM.
The Kramer Porsche
The Peugeot of Alliot took pole. But it was the other Peugeot of Warwick, Blundell and Dalmas that won the race. It overtook the early leader, the Mazda driven by Herbert, and it stayed there. The Peugeots regained the advantage as the Mazdas switched to a survival strategy, and Toyota fell away. The fastest Toyota, slowing in the rain, was hit from behind and forced off the track by a Peugeot at the beginning of the Mulsanne straight. Both cars were patched up, but eventually had to retire.
As the rain came and went the remaining Peugeots sandwiched the Mazda, the second 905 getting past, until it too had steering problems and an accident in the early morning. This let the Mazda back into second, and Toyota into third. The leading Peugeot had a scare when it misfired, but enough of a lead to hang on. The second Peugeot had engine problems to give the Toyota a chance of second, which it took, in spite of its own late pit stops and a late Peugeot charge. This car thus has to settle for third ahead of the Mazda.
1993
The 1993 race was again billed as Peugeot verses Toyota. In the end Peugeot not only won, but also dominated the race in a way not seen since Porsche’s heyday.
There was a new category as the 3.5 litre Group C prototypes were joined by a new GT division, which would be a pointer if things to come.
There were also some young drivers entered who would go on to be famous in F1 like David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine. It was Irvine who led off in a Toyota and looked comfortable, until he handed over to his teammates who could not find his pace. The second Toyota developed a misfire that cost them time, and then a gearbox problem put them out. Irvine’s car lost time too, with electrical problems. The third Toyota was being driven down the Mulsanne straight by Juan Manuel Fangio II, when it was hit from behind at the second chicane and the time taken to repair it dropped the car down the field.
Peugeot had problems too, but they were trivial in comparison. A broken oil pipe cost Alliot car nine laps, and the lead to the Boutsen car, which in turn lost it to a variety of problems. This put the third car in the lead. The Peugeot team manager issued instructions that they were not to race each other, so Peugeot finished 1-2-3 and Toyota 4-5-6.
In 1993 &1995 TWR entered XJ220C Jaguars, their last appearance in the modern era
Much further back the Neilsen/Brabham/Coulthard Jaguar XJ220C were first in the GT category, but they were disqualified weeks later for not having a catalytic converter fitted, as the road approved production cars did.
1994
Viper
Although there was an inauspicious start for the GT category, there was a chance that a genuine production car might win Le Mans. To help this the ACO came up with an ‘equivalency’ formula which was aimed at allowing the GT cars to compete head to head with Group C prototypes and each other regardless of capacity. They proposed fitting each car with an air restrictor to control maximum output. The object was to have one GT class allowing up to 600bhp (100 bhp more than the current Group Cs), and another up to 450bhp. The less powerful cars could be lighter, and there were other differences to try to level the classes. One being that GT cars could have 50% bigger fuel tanks compared to the Group C cars.
However if there is a rule, the teams will find a loophole, and the Dauer Porsches found it. They were ostensibly LM GT1 cars, and thus allowed 600bhp. They were also thinly disguised Porsche 962s, based on a road going version of the racecar.
The main prototype challenger was the Gulf sponsored Kremer Porsche spyders, the Courage Porsches and two Toyotas.
1994 Toyota
Derek Bell, driving what he promised was his last Le Mans, led briefly from the start in the Gulf car, but Toyota was the car to beat. The Dauer Porsche beat all the GT cars and prototypes by just keeping going, while all the other cars suffered problems. The best of the ‘real’ GT1s was the Viper of Rene Arnoux, Balas, and Justin |Bell, son of Derek. In GT2 the Palau Porsche Carrera RSR has a comfortable win while the Nissan 300ZX won the IMSA class.
But Toyota should have won. It led from Saturday evening, when the Dauer Porsches had drive shaft problems. With less than two hours to go the Toyota’s linkage broke cost them too much time in the pits. The Baldi/Dalmas and Heywood Porsche won, with Toyota second, and the other Dauer car third.
1995
Wallace's McLaren F1 GTR
In 1995 the rules worked better. The winning McLaren F1 GTR might have been a racing car, but it was a genuine production car, if you had £650,000 to spend. It was the fastest road car of all time, and it should have the measure of not only the GT cars, but the prototypes too. But it had never done anything resembling an endurance race, and this Le Mans was raced mostly in the wet. But the GTR triumphed. Of the seven that were entered, five finished and they took firs, third, fourth, fifth and thirteenth places. And they had led for all but eleven of the 298 laps.
On the grid however the fastest GTR was ninth behind two WR-Peugeot prototypes, two Courage prototypes, a Kramer Porsche and three Ferrari F40s. But from the start the GTRs were only racing between themselves. Derek Bell had a short spell in the lead on Sunday, he was out of ‘retirement’ to race with his son to drive the Harrods sponsored GTR with Andy Wallace. For a while they scented victory, but the McLaren of Dalmas, Lehto and Helary was catching them. With Lehtro less than a minute behind, Bell was suffering gear change problems, as the clutch was failing. It took him off course twice and eventually cost a pit stop that was long enough for Lehto to take the lead. They hung on, but only just.
The Kremer Porsche
The Kremer prototype had started from the back as it would not start on the grid, and proved almost undrivable in the wet. The Courage came close to winning. Early in the race Mario Andretti hit the barriers and lost some six laps in the pits. But with Helary and Wollek he drove it back into contention as the track dried on Sunday, and in the end they were second, less than a lap behind the winner. It was Wollek’s twenty-fifth Le Mans and this was the closest he ever came to winning.
Wallace and the Bells limped home third, and Bellm, Sala and Blundell came fourth in their gulf sponsored McLaren.
1996
McLaren topped the GT pre-qualifiers in 1996, but behind was a Porsche 911 GT1, a clever interpretation of the GT rules. McLaren were third and fourth, Porsche fifth, and McLaren sixth, seventh and eighth. However the quickest of all pre-qualifiers was a Ferrari 333SP prototype. Come the race however a Porsche was on pole, not a 911, but a hybrid, with a chassis built by TWR, powered by Porsche and run by Joest. It was the WSC95.
The Harrods McLaren
In the race it ran away from the whole field. It ran virtually without a problem, and the only car that got near it was the quicker of the works 911 GT1s. The McLarens were not fast or reliable enough, the best of them got into the top three only to lose time with a gearbox change. So a 911 GT1 took third too. The winner was the Porsche driven by Nielsen, Bscher and Kox.
In the prototypes, one Ferrari was out within three hours the other crashed early Sunday morning. Courage suffered from crashes, and many other cars failed too. The Joest WSC95 driven by Jones, Reuter and Wurtz only had to hold off the 911 GT1 of Stuck, Boutsen and Wollek to win, and despite a brake problem, it did, by a lap. Both Porsches had off the road moments that cost them time, if they had stayed on the road them maybe the result would have been different.
1997
Again the script said that the 911 GT1 should have won in
1997. In addition to the works team there were seven private Porsches making
nine GT1s against five McLaren GTRs. Then there was the dark horse in the form
of the Nissan R390 GT1.There were seven 911 clones in GT2 which faced the
Vipers, Corvettes, Mustangs and a Marcos.
The Newcastle United Lister Storm
In qualifying only Alboreto in the Joest Porsche were quicker than Boutsen in the McLaren. Both briefly led the race, before Wollock span the GTR and let in the Damas, Knellners and Collard GT1 into second by the second hour, and the lead by the third hour. As night fell the Wollek car was ahead again and stayed there through the night, rarely more than a couple of seconds ahead of their team mates, with the Joest Porsche shadowing.
The Joest Porsche
Then at breakfast time, Wollek span the leading GT1 in the Porsche curves and parked there. Damas retook the lead, and although the Joest Porsche was breaking lap records its need for pit calls to refuel favoured the GT1. At 2pm the Damas Porsche was still leading, but on lap 328 it burst into flames on the Mulsanne straight. The Joest car shared by Alboreto, Johansson and Kristensen took the lead and won by a lap from the Gulf McLaren of Raphanel, Gounon and Olofson with the BMW McLaren third. The Porsche factory had lost both the overall race and the GT1 Class, but they took the GT2 class with the Elf Haberthur Racing 911.
The circuit 1997-2001
Length:
13.605 km
A slight reprofiling of the Dunlop chicane, moving the turn in further away from
the bridge itself to accommodate a larger run off area/gravel trap, again mainly
for the safety of the bikes.
Distance record set by the 2000 winners: 5,007.988 km, average speed: 208.666
km/h.
Fastest lap was set during the 1999 race by Ukyo Katayama in the no.3 Toyota GT-One
with a time of 3:35.032, an average speed of 227.771 km/h.
For 2001, the profile of the "hump" at the end of the Mulsanne Straight was
lowered as part of the FIA recommendations in the wake of the Mercedes'
accidents in 1999, but this did not affect the overall layout
1998
Mercedes returned in 1998 with a rule-bending ‘production’ car the 5-litre 600bhp, V8 CLK-LM. The was also a new ‘road-car related’ Toyota GT One which was quickest in pre-qualifying, but failed to take pole, this went to Mercedes who set the car up for one quick lap, a fraction of a second faster than the best Toyota.
The race was held a week earlier than usual because of the football world cup, and started at 2pm because of the French Open tennis final. The Mercedes led briefly before being overtaken on the Mulsanne straight by Brundle in the Toyota. With only an hour gone the Schneider Mercedes was stranded at the pit exit with a failure of a steering pump drive, his team a hundred yards too far back to help. Less than an hour later the second CLK suffered an identical failure and with 21 hours to go Mercedes were out.
Brundle’s Toyota had a further hour in the lead before it too felt the stain, wheel bearings problems causing first a spin in the Ford chicane and then a lengthy pit stop, That allowed Boutsen’s Toyota in the lead, and it stayed there for four hours, during which both the prototype BMW went out. All the time Porsche were breathing down Toyotas neck.
Brundle clawed his way up the field, setting the fastest lap and got in the top ten, but the Toyotas were starting to struggle, all of them having gearbox problems, spins and off-road moments. Up front the factory GT1-98 Porsches took the lead through most of the night and towards dawn. While it rained during the night Porsche GT1 driver Alan McNish had stayed on slick tyres and been ferociously fast. He put a full lap on the other factory Porsche, until 6am when McNish’s car was overheating, and his team mates were in the pits having crash damaged repaired. McNish’s GT1 emerged from a twenty minute pit stop and began a battle with the Toyota which see-sawed for most of the rest of the race. They were never more than a lap apart, and swapped places during pit stops, but the Toyota still looked to have it won, until Boutsen stopped at Arnage with less than two hours to go.
Porsche won for the sixteenth time with McNish leading home Muller and the Nissan of Hoshino third.
1999
The 1999 start
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The 1999 race attracted more manufacturers than it had in many years, including Toyota, Audi, Mercedes, Nissan, Panoz – and BMW. The BMW team had all-new V12 LMR cars run by Schnitzer supported by two updated 1998 cars by David Price Racing for Price+Bscher and the Japanese team Goh. After pre-qualifying the works team had been paired down from three to two cars.
Toyota had three cars that were the fastest in pre-qualifying, and Brundle took pole with a lap of 3m 29.93a, six seconds faster than last year’s pole. Boutsen was second in his Toyota and Lehto third in his BMW, then Mercedes and Panoz. Newcomers Audi were ninth and eleventh.
During Thursday evening practice Mark Webber’s Mercedes CLR took off on the 200mph run from Mulsanne to Indianpolis, performing a back summersault and landing on its wheels before hitting the barriers. The front had lifted slightly over bumps and air rushing underneath the flat bottom of the car flipped it. Webber was virtually unhurt, and in race day warm-up he did it again, on the Mulsanne. Again he walked away and Mercedes withdrew his car, but opted to race the other two after making minor modifications to the front bodywork.
The race started like a sprint with Brundle and Boutsen’s Toyotas leading being chased by Schnider’s Mercedes and Dalmas’ BMW. At the first pit stops the leading Toyotas and Mercedes went in together leaving both BMWs 1-2, and with its fuel efficiency giving the others cause for concern. At ninety minutes there was half a second between the leading pair, and five seconds covered the top four - Mercedes, Toyota, Toyota, BMW.
After four hours there were still four cars on the lead lap with BMW duelling with Toyota. Then at 8.45 Peter Dumbreck’s fourth placed Mercedes was hounding Boutsen’s Toyota towards Indianapolis when, just like Webbers, his nose came up and he went into a horrifying series of twisting back flips, over the barriers and into the trees. Miraculously he survived. Mercedes withdrew its team and prepared for the inquest of whether they should of raced at all.
It was now a straight fight between BMW and Toyotas, swapping lap records, and the lead. Then just before midnight Brundle got a puncture on the Mulsanne and hit the first chicane. Three hours later Bousten had an accident in the Dunlop curves and was trapped in his car for almost half an hour. This left the number 17 BMW with a three-lap advanbtage over its teammate, the Audi spyder and the surviving Toyota.
Just before midday Lehto in the lead crashed approaching the Porsche curves when his throttle stuck open. This left the second BMW in front chased by the Toyota. For the hours the advantage see-sawed, until, with less than an hour to go Katayama suffered a tyre explosion on the Mulsanne. The chase was over, and the works BMW of Martini, Dalmas and Winkelhock reeled of the laps to win. Katayama rejoined to finish second. Peter Dumbreck’s amazing crash
The 1999 BMW |
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