The 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 47th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 9 and 10 June 1979. With no other major works cars this year, the Porsche team were the strong favourites to win. Their competition would be from Cosworth-powered Mirages and Rondeaus and a swarm of Group 5 and IMSA-class Porsche 935s. The other big talking point was the presence of Hollywood actor Paul Newman, driving for Dick Barbour Racing.
However, the Porsche 936s ran into problems early, as did the Mirages that inherited the lead. The race became a duel between the 935s of the rival teams from Cologne: Kremer Racing and Gelo Sportswear. Soon after midnight, heavy storms started sweeping the circuit. The rain stayed for virtually the rest of the race, dramatically slowing the pace, negating the speed of the 936s coming back through the field. Both Gelo cars retired with mechanical issues in the soggy dawn, and when the Wollek/Haywood Porsche developed a bad misfire soon after it looked like the Kremer 935 of Klaus Ludwig and the Whittington brothers had the race covered. They had a 13-lap lead over the Dick Barbour Porsche.
Then approaching 11am Don Whittington came to a stop on the Mulsanne Straight with a broken drivebelt. It took 80 minutes to get back to the pits, and by the time they got back into the race their lead was down to four laps. But the charging American team were foiled by a faulty wheel-nut taking 23 minutes to fix. Then in the last hour, the car slowed with a bad misfire. Stommelen pulled up just before the finish line and waited for the Kremer car to take the flag in victory. The Kremer brothers' finest hour was sealed with their other team-car coming home in third.
Porsche finished 1-2-3-4, and the Kremer 935-K3 was the first Le Mans win by a rear-engined car. The torrential rain in the second half of the race made it the slowest Le Mans since 1958.
Regulations In April 1978, the sports regulatory body, the CSI, was overhauled and replaced by the new international racing organisation FISA. The World Championship for Makes was revised to include both Group 5 and Group 6 racecars again, split into two categories: over and under 2-litres. FISA President, Jean-Marie Balestre was committed to bringing Le Mans back into the World Championship, but for now the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) chose to remain independent.
A change to the circuit was forced upon the ACO this year. Construction of the city's ring-road system meant the second Dunlop Bridge at the Tertre Rouge corner had to be demolished. The right-hand corner that led onto the Hunaudières straight was eased into a faster double-apex corner, shortening the overall circuit length by to 13.63 km. The only other change was to move the start-time forward two hours, to 2pm in Saturday, to allow the spectators more time on Sunday afternoon to vote in the first European parliament elections.Clausager 1982, p.183-4Spurring 2011, p.306Clarke 1997, p.86 Autocar Jun9 1979
A new efficiency calculation was used this year – the Index of Fuel Consumption. The total fuel used was measured as at the final pit-stop and then gauged against the cars' total distance covered, as litres per 100 kilometres. It was not exact, as no account was taken of the remaining fuel in the tanksSpurring 2011, p.9 after the race, expecting no team would fill in way too much fuel, or not enough.
Entries The ACO received 87 applications, from which 60 were accepted to qualify for the 55 starting spots. Porsche was the only manufacturer with a works team and made up 19 of the 55 starters. Entries again came from regular specialists Mirage, De Cadenet, Rondeau and WM. There were also exploratory entries from Formula 1 constructor March and the Japanese companies of Mazda and Dome.
Class Large-engines >2.0L classes Medium-engines < 2.0L classes Turbo engines Group 6 S Sports 13 / 12 16 / 14 2 / 0 Group 5 SP Special Production 9 / 9 - 8 Group 4 GTS Special GT 5 / 4 - 5 GTP Le Mans GT Prototype 5 / 5 - 4 IMSA GTX IMSA/Le Mans GT Experimental 11 / 11 1 / 0 6 / 0 Total Entries 43 / 41 17 / 14 25 Note: The first number is the number of arrivals, the second the number who started.
Group 6 and GTP The absence of the defending winners, Renault Alpine, made the Porsche works team strong favourites for the race win. They were now sponsored by the American oil tycoon David Thieme's Essex Petroleum.Clarke 1997, p.89 Motor Jun9 1978 The 1978 iterations of the Porsche 936 were rebuilt on two chassis that had both been coincidentally crashed by Jochen Mass. The cars were essentially unchanged although the gearbox was strengthened after last year's woes. This year, their talismanic driver Jacky Ickx was paired with Brian Redman. The pair had driven together at the previous year's Spa 24 Hours. Ickx had just returned from Canada where he had won the Can-Am race. The second car had team regular Hurley Haywood with Bob Wollek, who had been released for the race from his regular seat with Georg LoosSpurring 2011, p.316-7Clarke 1997, p.87: Motor Sport Jul 1979 as a late replacement for Didier Pironi.Clarke 1997, p.91 Motor Jun16 1978
Porsche's competition in Group 6 would all be equipped with the Ford-Cosworth DFV engine. Mirage felt they had a genuine chance of victory this year. They were unable to renew the engine deal they had had for two years with Renault and instead reverted to its reliable workhorse, the Cosworth engine. It helped entice the sponsorship of a consortium of 250 Ford-dealerships in France. The new M10 cars sported a new streamlined, long-tail spyder bodywork, with a 20% smaller frontal area. Team driver Vern Schuppan was paired with Renault winner Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, while veteran British endurance drivers Derek Bell and David Hobbs shared the second car.Spurring 2011, p.322-3
Dome Company had first appeared in Europe at the 1978 Geneva Motor Show with a road prototype. A racing version of the Dome Zero was entered. The distinctive low, angular wedge-shaped design came from Masao Ono who had worked on the Maki Formula One project. It was developed in England by a team led by former De Cadenet team manager Keith Greene. Two cars were built, with the original tested at the Fuji Speedway then debuted at the World Championship round at Silverstone It was driven by Chris Craft (also from De Cadenet) and Gordon Spice. They were joined at Le Mans by Bob Evans and former Maki driver Tony Trimmer.Spurring 2011, p.324-5 André Chevalley had bought and raced the Inaltéra GTP the previous year. This year he entered two Lola Type T286 cars. Alain de Cadenet continued his personal development of the Lola T380. The new LM78 now had a wider, longer chassis to improve road-holding. Having lost his regular co-driver Chris Craft to the Dome team, De Cadenet now got local Le Mans professional François Migault in his stead. This year the car was finished in time to compete at the Silverstone round, where they finished an excellent second. Two of his earlier cars were also entered by their British owners: Peter Lovett's JC Racing and Simon Phillips.Spurring 2011, p.327
Once again, Jean Rondeau hedged his bets by entering his cars in both the Group 6 and GTP classes. The three new cars had improved aerodynamics and suspension with Cosworths tuned by Swiss engine-specialist Heini Mader. Rondeau attracted veteran French drivers Henri Pescarolo and Jean-Pierre Beltoise for one car, and rally specialists Jean Ragnotti and Bernard Darniche, while he himself raced the GTP entry with Jacky Haran.Spurring 2011, p.315 The other French team in GTP, Welter Racing also had a new design. The P79 refined the aerodynamic shell and kept developing the 2.7-litre Peugeot V6 engine, now with twin KKK (Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch) turbos. Three cars were ready for Le Mans, with all-French crews.
The most curious entry in Group 6 was a lavish project from March Engineering, who had been working with BMW in Formula Two. The silhouette design by John Gentry was based on the BMW M1, but as less than 400 cars had yet been built, it could not run in Group 5, nor would IMSA allow it into the GTX category. GTP rules required all four wheels be the same size, whereas this car had 16" fronts and 19" rears. In the end, it got special dispensation from the FIA to run in Group 6, in the 5-litre class normally used for American V8 engines. The car would be raced by BMW works driver Dieter Quester, alongside Ian Grob and Guy Edwards who had paired up last year with the disappointing Ibec project.Spurring 2011, p.329Clarke 1997, p.93 Motor Jun16 1978
Group 6 (2-litre) Once again, there was a big field for the 2-litre category with fifteen entries, dominated as usual by Lola and Chevron, and using a mix of ROC, Cosworth or BMW engines. The French engine-builder team, Société ROC, had three of the B36. Another Chevron (with a Brian Hart-prepared Cosworth engine) was entered by the Scottish Mogil Motors team of Tony Charnell, Robin Smith and Richard Jones.Spurring 2011, p.320 The six Lolas were equipped with ROC, Cosworth and BMW engines – with the French Lambretta team with both a BMW and a ROC-engined car entered. The Lola-Ford of the Dorset Racing team had a special Cosworth BDX engine, developed by their local Swindon Racing Engines. Team-owners Tony Birchenhough and Brian Joscelyne were joined by Richard Jenvey and Nick Mason. The latter was the other big-name celebrity in the race, as the drummer for British band Pink Floyd (and avid Ferrari collector), though his status was overshadowed by Paul Newman.Spurring 2011, p.321 For several seasons, Jörg Obermoser had shown success with his ToJ cars in Europe, yet this was the first year they were seen at Le Mans with Frenchman Hubert Striebig entering his BMW-powered SC206, partnered with Alain Cudini and Hughes Kirschoffer.
Group 5 and IMSA GTX The Porsche works team had finished its development of the Porsche 935, leaving its representation in Group 5 and IMSA to their customer teams of which there were now many. The car was dominating the respective championships. The differences between the Group 5 and IMSA cars were slight, aside from drawing European teams to Group 5 and North American teams following IMSA. Although the cars were more powerful, their smaller tanks meant they would need more fuel stops, with only about 50–60 minutes endurance.Armstrong 1979, p.190
The Kremer brothers had made over 100 modifications to the standard 935-77 model in developing their next iteration, the 935-K3. Using panels made of composite materials they took off weight, and tweaked the body-shell, mostly made of kevlar,Wimpffen 2007, p.315 with their own aerodynamic refinements. The 3-litre engine was fitted with twin-turbos that could put out 740 bhp, right up to a massive 800 bhp on maximum boost. They were also fitted with an air-air intercooler, unlike the air-water variety on the regular 935.Spurring 2011, p.308 Kremer Racing entered three cars: two of the new K3s for team leader Klaus Ludwig, joined by the wealthy Whittington brothers (Don and Bill), former motocross riders from Florida in one, and DRM regulars Axel Plankenhorn and "John Winter", with Philippe Gurdjian in the other. They also had a standard 935 for Laurent Ferrier/François Sérvanin/ François Trisconi. The Whittington brothers had also entered their own 935 in the IMSA class but then cancelled that entry.