The view from the racecar of the Le Mans race course, as seen in 1968
An evening pause: From the youtube page:
This amazing piece of ground breaking onboard footage allows us to ride onboard one of the Gulf sponsored JWA Ford GT40s for a lap of the Le Mans circuit in 1968. This early onboard coverage was such a big deal, Stirling Moss does the narration. Its cool to see the Le Mans circuit as it was, without chicanes and with primitive safety features.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
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Tom-
excellent find!
Stirling Moss: Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR
1955 “Mille Miglia” in Italy (992 miles)
https://youtu.be/fJsdw-pof1o
8:04
This is a 1956 lap with the Jag team. The technology is … old. This was the year after the horrible crash and some course improvements are noted.
https://youtu.be/IpRFagIbcPE
The Ford GT40 was so named because it was forty inches tall. You didn’t get into it, you put it on.
1) Indianapolis Curve aka Brickyard is so named because , like Indy, it was originally paved with bricks “The Le Mans Yearbook 1978 page 26: “…while Indianapolis itself (formerly brick surfaced like its American namesake)…””
2) What would happen if the owners of the White House want to paint it a different color ?
I can remember watching Wide World of Sports in 1966 when the GT40 won for the first time. It was a live feed – remarkable for the date (must have been via satellite – Bob, any idea of which bird could have been the relay ?). One thing I never forgot, were the cars on Mulsanne Straight PASSING the camera equipped helicopter that was going flat out to try and keep up !
Most Excellent!
Why I bought the Mazda. Not 200 MPH, not even by half, but thinking about hand and foot movement while watching. Appreciate Mr. Moss’ comment on the Arnage corner. That’s the sort of corner that will bite you, hard.
As the aerodynamics were not as well understood at the time they added the chicanes to the Mulsanne straight (for safety!) when top speeds started exceeding 250 mph.
A hilarious bit about the GT40 being used in 1968 is that it was surpassed in every way imaginable by the previous-year’s Le Mans winner, the Ford Mark IV (essentially the actual all-Ford “GT40” that won in 1967, the original GT40, the winner of the 1966 race being a Mark II version of this chassis, was a British Lola design that had to be almost entirely overhauled from an engineering and aerodynamics perspective by Ford Motor Company, through Holman-Moody and Shelby), and was actually a leftover Mark I, the first of the GT40 generation.
I also recall the 1967 Mark IV being the first automobile designed with a computer. After teething problems were fixed (The prototype J-car ‘supposedly’ killed Ken Miles at Riverside, I mention ‘supposedly’ because someone claiming to be Ken Miles shows up somewhere around 2009 in a Car and Driver article, saying he hadn’t been killed, merely maimed, but nothing was ever proven).
This car was pretty much drastically superior to the GT40, but in one of the oddest things to ever happen in motorsports, Ford spent an insane amount of money on this program, but shelved the Mark IV’s after running in only two events, Sebring (I’ve personally seen the yellow Sebring-winning car) and Le Mans. The older GT40’s were used for 1968 and 1969.
I seem to recall that the same GT40 won in both 1968 and 1969, before being put out to pasture by smaller and lighter cars, and this was even after a smaller 5.0 V8 was utilized. The monster 7 liter NASCAR engines were outlawed after 1967, which wasn’t a bad thing, as the bigger 7.0L engines pushed the GT40’s weight to around three thousand pounds (it was murder on the braking system).
The closing laps of the 1969 event were a thing of beauty, in that it was more chess match than brutal race, with a wounded GT40 driven by Jackie Ickx taking on a not-quite-similarly-wounded Porsche 908 driven by Hans Herrmann, with Ickx squeaking out a win by somewhere around 120 feet.
” Ickx squeaking out a win by somewhere around 120 feet.” After racing for about 3000 miles Other neat facts
What Are The Most Miles Driven During The 24 Hours Of Le Mans?
The winning car at the 2010 race, an Audi R15 TDI Plus, traveled more than 3,360 miles over the course of 24 hours. Romain Dumas, Timo Bernhard, and Mike Rockenfeller all took turns behind the diesel-drinking race car’s wheel.
What’s The Fastest Speed Ever Achieved At Le Mans?
Roger Dorchy holds the fastest speed at the track when he hit nearly 252 mph in a WM P88 in 1988. Alas, the chicanes since added to the Mulsanne Straight mean today’s drivers have little hope of beating Dorchy’s record.
How Many Miles Is A Single Lap Of Le Mans?
Known as the Circuit de la Sarthe, a single lap of Le Mans covers approximately 8.5 miles.
What’s The Fastest A Driver Has Lapped Le Mans?
The quickest lap around the track was recorded during qualifying by Kamui Kobayashi in 2017 from behind the wheel of the Toyota TS050 Hybrid. Kobayashi managed to circle the famed street circuit in just under 3 minutes and 15 seconds at an average speed of almost 157 mph. The fastest lap during competition was set by Mike Conway, also driving the TS050, in 2019 with a lap of 3 minutes 17.297 seconds.
Col Beausabre, I think it would have been Telstar it Intelsat, not sure which.