BENTLEY IN MOTORSPORT
If one thread links all Bentley’s motorsport activities since its first outing as a factory team in 1922, it is that, bar a disastrous Indy 500 entry that year, it has never entered a race it did not stand a chance of winning outright. Class honours is not the Bentley way.
Space precludes detailing every prewar Le Mans win, but they put Britain on the motor racing map. The sadness is that once the job was complete, Rolls-royce bought the company and that was that. It would be 70 years before a factory Bentley raced again. Once more it was Le Mans, but this time VW paid the bills. The three-year programme ended with a record-breaking win in 2003, the winning car travelling farther and spending less time in the pits than any in Le Mans history.
A new prototype to celebrate the centenary got canned post-dieselgate, so now Continental GTS race successfully in GT3. Look inside one and there, amid all the flickering screens and bewildering banks of controls, you’ll see the paddle shifters and door pulls from a Mulsanne. Even today, doing it the right way is still important to Bentley. Long may it remain