The 1983 24 Hours of Le Mans was a motor race staged at the Circuit de la Sarthe, Le Mans, France on 18 and 19 June 1983. It was the 51st Grand Prix of Endurance and was also the fourth round of both the 1983 World Endurance Championship and the 1983 European Endurance Championship. The 1983 race was held eight days before the 60th anniversary of the inaugural race held in 1923.
The Porsche 956 was the dominant car in the Championship series, as the company had released cars for customer sale. Although Lancia were quick in practice they were too unreliable in the race. From the start, the works Porsche team took the lead. As rival marques fell away with engine issues, the Porsches consolidated the top-ten. The Kremer car of Mario Andretti led the pursuit, running 2nd for a time on Sunday morning. The Ickx/Bell car had been delayed early in the race, but hard driving had got them back to the top-three. They briefly took the lead soon after dawn but Bell stopped at Mulsanne and lost five laps repairing an electrical fault.
With less than ninety minutes to go, the third works Porsche looked set for victory, after taking the lead in the fifth hour. However, when a door blew off the car Schuppan saw his temperature gauges spike. Al Holbert took the car out for the final stint at a careful pace, with Bell closing in relentlessly, although he was suffering from damaged front brakes. With half an hour to go, Bell unlapped himself to put himself on the lead lap. With two minutes to go, Holbert's engine seized as he passed the pits, having run out of water and overheated. However, by good fortune he was able to get it going again. He made it around one last time, to the finish line, and pulled off straight away. Bell came home just over a minute later running on his reserve fuel-tank. Neither car would likely have done another lap, which would have potentially given the victory to the Kremer Porsche that finished third, six laps back.
The crushing victory by Porsche saw nine of their cars in the top-10, also winning the Index Prize and the win in Group B. The works Mazda had a trouble-free run for a comfortable win in the new Group C Junior class.
Regulations This year was the second year of the Group C regulations and there were no changes made. The formula had an open engine capacity, and instead had weight and fuel consumption restrictions. There was a minimum weight of 800 kg put in for safety standards and fuel tanks were a maximum of 100 litres capacity. With no more than 25 fuel stops allowed in the race, it meant a maximum of 2600 litres from the start.Spurring 2012, p.94 With IMSA still using their own sliding weight-scale to balance engine capacity, the major American endurance races, at Daytona and Sebring, could not be part of the World Championship.
This formula attracted great interest from a number of manufacturers and the major privateer teams. However, the prospective costs were prohibitive for smaller teams wanting to compete in the top tier of racing. The FIA governing body took notice of this, and instigated a less expensive division called Group C Junior to encourage those teams. Here the minimum weight was reduced to 700 kg and the fuel-tanks were only 55 litres capacity. With the same 25 fuel stops, this gave those cars a maximum of 1430 litres.Spurring 2012, p.130Norris 1983, p.145
For its part, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) made no major changes either. The two 4-hour practice sessions now each included a 1-hour break to allow teams to retrieve stranded cars or make significant repairs or change their car set-ups. With the surge of entries in the new regulations, they could close the lists without needing the MSA classes and the former "grandfathered" classes.
Entries The new regulations had immediately proven successful and this year's Le Mans had an extensive range of entries. It was led by factory teams from Porsche, Lancia and Mazda and over a dozen specialist constructors meant there were 34 cars that could be classed as "works" entries. Porsche dominated the entry list with eleven Group C and eight Group B entries.Spurring 2012, p.129
Class Quantity Turbo/Rotaryengines Group C 51 / 38 27 / 21 Group C Junior 6 / 5 4 / 3 Group B 8 / 8 6 / 6 Total Entries 69 / 51 37 / 30 Note: The first number is the number of arrivals, the second the number who started.
Group C The Porsche 956 had made a victorious impact on its 1982 debut. The 1983 iteration was 20 kg lighter and had improved front suspension and the new Bosch Motronic engine-management system to modulate and tune the engine performance.Spurring 2012, p.132Clarke 1999, p.15 Autocar Jun25 1983Wimpffen 2008, p.80Norris 1983, p.134 Three race-cars and a test-car were entered by the works team. The lead drivers were the elite pairing of Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell, looking for a hat-trick of victories. Jochen Mass was in the second car, paired with the new wunderkind, Stefan Bellof who had just stunned the endurance world a fortnight earlier with a blistering qualifying lap-record at the Nürburgring in its last year of full competitive use.Wimpffen 2008, p.85Norris 1983, p.138 In the third car was the American pair of Hurley Haywood and Al Holbert along with Australian Vern Schuppan.
As Porsche promised, they released twelve chassis for customer sale. Based on the 1982 chassis, with Bosch mechanical control, they were quickly snapped up, albeit at a hefty £160,000 (DM640,000) each.Norris 1983, p.129 Eight of those cars were at Le Mans. Reinhold Joest had bought two, and had a surprise victory over the works team at the opening round at Monza. Winner in Italy, Bob Wollek, was paired with former Le Mans winner Klaus Ludwig and debutante Stefan Johansson, with the second car driven by Merl/Schickentanz/de Narvaez.Spurring 2012, p.136 Wollek had just come out of hospital after an operation for a pinched nerve on his vertebrae.Norris 1983, p.140 The team also fielded their 936CJ special from the previous year, once again driven by its owners, the Belgian Martin brothers.Spurring 2012, p.147 Another Porsche stalwart, John Fitzpatrick also bought two cars. Fitzpatrick entered himself as a driver in both cars – the first with Dieter Quester/David Hobbs and the other with Guy Edwards/Rupert Keegan. JFR also supported American Preston Henn's 956, entered from the IMSA series. Henn had Jean-Louis Schlesser and GT-veteran Claude Ballot-Léna as his co-drivers.Spurring 2012, pp.138-9
The Kremer brothers had achieved Le Mans glory in 1979 and established a successful range of modified Porsche 935 specials for customer sale. Their 956 was driven by father and son pair Mario and Michael Andretti, with F2 driver Philippe Alliot. The Andrettis had been thwarted by officialdom the previous year, disqualified on the start-line.Spurring 2012, p.134 And like Joest, the Kremers also had two of their 936 specials (the C-K5) in the race. Their team-car was driven by Derek Warwick/Frank Jelinski/Patrick Gaillard. The original model (that had run in 1982) had been sold to Richard Cleare, who had won the GT class in the same race. He teamed up with his same driver line-up (Tony Dron/Richard Jones) for this event. The final two 956 customer cars were entered by Richard Lloyd's GTi Engineering and Obermeier Racing. Lloyd had also graduated from running GT Porsches, with his Canon sponsorship. He was joined by up-and-coming young drivers Jonathon Palmer and Jan Lammers. German Jürgen Lässig had now formed his own team, along with Hans Obermeier and sponsorship from Hugo Boss fashion. His regular co-driver in the WEC was Axel Plankenhorn and for this race they were joined by female single-seat racer, South African Desiré Wilson.Norris 1983, p.142
It was apparent in the shorter endurance races that the primary opposition to Porsche's dominance would come from Lancia. After working the rules the previous year with their LC1, the company produced their Group C candidate. Designed by GianPaolo Dallara, it was built around the Ferrari 2.6-litre V8 used in its 308 GTB road-car. Fitted with twin KKK (Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch) turbos and a Weber-Marelli engine-management system, the engine could put out 650 bhp on 1.2-bar boost. The LC2 had a Kevlar and carbonfibre bodyshell designed by Pininfarina and was fast, but had proven fragile. Three cars were brought to Le Mans, once again built around their Grand Prix drivers: Michele Alboreto/Teo Fabi, Piercarlo Ghinzani/Hans Heyer (on loan from Joest) and Alessandro Nannini/Paolo Barilla/Jean-Claude Andruet.Spurring 2012, pp.134-5Clarke 1997, p.6 Motor Sport Jul 1983 In the early-season they had been shod with Pirelli tyres, but after proving troublesome they were swapped out for Dunlops.Wimpffen 2008, p.91 The Sivama team had raced Group 5 Lancia Montecarlos in the Championship the previous year. This season they bought three of the Group 6 Lancia LC1 chassis and set about bringing them up to Group C spec with new bodies and the turbo-engine enlarged to 1522cc. With no great difference in weight, the small engine could only get them up to 280 kp/h (175 mph). One was written off in an accident at Silverstone, but the other two arrived at Le Mans, led by current F3 champion Oscar Larrauri.Spurring 2012, p.149Wimpffen 2008, p.81
Ford had cancelled development of its under-performing C100 program in favour of a new Group C design. However, within a week of Karl Ludvigsen leaving as Ford-Europe VP, that program was also cancelled, as was improvement to the problematic Cosworth DFL engine.Spurring 2012, p.142Norris 1983, p.139 Irish gentleman-racer Martin Birrane wanted to move into Group C and bought one of the C100 cars that raced the previous year for his new Peer Racing team. In the absence of their parent company, the consortium of Ford France dealers put their support behind the Cosworth-powered Rondeau team. The M482 "ground-effects" project had had considerable development over the winter and the consortium purchased the three chassis. Max Sardou, who had done extensive aerodynamic work on his Ardex, the Lola T600 and March-BMW M1/C, was bought in to fine-tune the car aerodynamics. The team was managed by Pierre Dieudonné and a number of Jean Rondeau's team were brought in. Three-time winner Henri Pescarolo raced with Thierry Boutsen, newly promoted to F1 with Arrows. Jean Rondeau himself ran with the Ferté brothers, Alain and Michel while the third car had Jean-Pierre Jaussaud/Philippe Streiff.Spurring 2012, p.145Clarke 1999, p.17 Autocar Jun25 1983
Alongside these cars there were four other older-model Rondeaux entered. Two were works entries, and Jean Rondeau was able to entice 48-year old Vic Elford out of a 9-year retirement, with Anny-Charlotte Verney/Joël Gouhier. The other car (an M382) was sponsored by the local government (given car #72, the same as the Sarthe département) and the driver line-up led by Alain Cudini. There were two other M382s entered by privateers: Christian Bussi returned with his car, while Pierre Yver had upgraded from the M379C he ran last year.Spurring 2012, p.151 With limited resources, the small WM team opted out of running a full Championship season, instead choosing to focus on its home race, at Le Mans, with the new P83 model. But their persistence had paid off, with their Peugeot engine development now getting the full backing from the parent company. The 3.1-litre V6 turbo now put out 650 bhp tuned by Denis Mathiot Compétition, who was doing the set-up for the new Citroën Compétitions rally team.Spurring 2012, p.143 Le Mans local Yves Courage improved his Cougar C01 to become the C01B with revised suspension, but sticking with the Cosworth DFL. Another recent garagista, Alain de Cadenet, came on-board as a driver alongside Courage, bringing with him Murray Smith as team manager. Once again Michel Dubois was brought in as the third driver.Spurring 2012, p.150