QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Testing racing cars on the M4, collapsing into ice baths after racing; four La Sarthe stars tell Classic Car Weekly all at the Goodwood Revival
We couldn’t find a UK racetrack where we could test at 212mph but we found a solution – it’s called the M4!’ ALAIN DE CADENET ON HIGH SPEED TESTING WITH BRABHAM IN THE 1960S.
‘It’s difficult to find a track for high-speed testing, but we did find a solution – the M4!’ ALAIN DE CADENET
Derek Bell, Jochen Mass, Gordon Murray and Alain de Cadenet used the Credit Suisse Historic Racing Forum at Goodwood on 8 September to recount their best (and worst) experiences of racing at the Le Mans 24 Hours to Classic Car Weekly.
Were there any differences in how teams prepared for Le Mans?
Derek Bell ‘Ferrari was my first team and I was given no preparation at all – I found this most disturbing. Porsche considered their Le Mans cars the future of their road cars, though, so they took things very seriously, pairing up drivers carefully.’
Alain, you decided that you wanted to enter a car into Le Mans yourself, but you took an unusual route.
Alain de Cadenet ‘Ferrari wouldn’t sell me one of its 312Ps, so I went to Brabham and asked him if he could make me a two-seater out of my BT33 [a contemporary Brabham monoposto]. In a matter of weeks [Jack Brabham] built the car, which was fast straight out of the box, doing 208mph!’
Gordon Murray ‘212!’ AdC ‘...212mph. It’s very difficult to find a racetrack in the UK where you could get up to that speed for testing, however, but we did find a solution – it’s called the M4!’
Gordon, how did it differ working on a Le Mans car?
GM ‘The big difference was the higher top speeds – and we couldn’t run much downforce. That was as true when I did Alain’s car as when we did the McLaren F1 LM in 1995. The thing that worried me, though, was that I knew what went wrong with an F1 car after just one and a half hours of racing. When I came to do the stress calculations on the Le Mans car, therefore, I doubled everything. I was terrified. Thankfully it ran very well and nothing broke.’
What unique challenges does Le Mans pose to a driver?
DB ‘It was so tough, physically. When we did it, there were only two drivers, unlike today, and we didn’t have airconditioning or paddle shifts. When we got out of the car we were so knackered that went and laid in a bed of ice!’
Jochen Mass ‘Other than the temperatures, though, our generation of Le Mans cars were very comfortable by racing car standards. They were softly sprung and had padded seats – it was unique in that sense, too.’
What did you do when the rain was pouring down and you couldn’t really see the track? Is it down to personal memory?
AdC ‘You get into a groove, like a magician – you look out for a marker on the side of the track as a reminder of where to brake. But you try not to think about it too much and rely on instinct.’