DOWN UNDER PRESSURE
Back in June 1928, the gathered masses at Circuit de la Sarthe marvelled at the thundering Bentley screaming across the Le Mans finish line in first place. The car’s drivers were Bentley director, Woolf Barnato, and his fellow ‘Bentley Boys’ thrill seeker, Bernard Rubin, who would end the race as the first Australian to win the daylong French enduro, which, in 1928, was enjoying its sixth staging. Amazingly, it would take a further fifty-five years for another Aussie to clinch top honours at Le Mans. I am, of course, referring to Vern Schuppan.
Vern’s victory very nearly didn’t happen. An overheating engine threatened to allow the no.3 Rothmans 956 (co-driven by Hurley Haywood and Al Holbert) to be overtaken by one of the sister 956s entered by the factory squad. It was a nail-biting finale, the Schuppan-holberthaywood machine bellowing smoke as Derek Bell approached fast from the rear, bit between his teeth at the closing stages of his final stint in a seat he’d been sharing with Jacky Ickx for the previous twenty-four hours.
Hopping out of the cockpit in order for Holbert to complete no.3’s last laps, Schuppan advised the American of the toasty temperatures causing interrupted airflow to the left-hand radiator. With the engine complaining of drastically overheating cylinder heads, finishing the race was considered something of a miracle, let alone the impressive feat of the no.3 car crossing the line seventeen seconds ahead of a frustrated Bell. The faulty engine, having made it to the end of an especially challenging race, immediately gave up the ghost.
The events of that day are as clear in Vern’s mind now as they were then. Beyond Le Mans in 1983, however, his career has been long and varied, taking in many different series, winning many different races and bagging many different championships. Of course, Porsche permeates his work like the name of a seaside resort runs through a stick of rock. Needless to say, we were delighted to get the rare opportunity to sit down with the man himself at his home in Adelaide and quiz him about the events leading up to his selection as a factory driver, as well as the goings-on surrounding that extraordinary win at Le Mans almost forty years ago. Enjoy the interview. Catch you next month.