Views

But on July 5 this startlingly daring – if controversial – roofed-in sportsprototype
at last made its mark in a fabulous motor race. This was the
Reims 12-Hours, run on the triangular 8.3km Reims-Gueux public road circuit,
in the Champagne country of northern France. This superfast course,
with its notoriously narrow roadway, hosted a race which the great Denis
Jenkinson of the British ‘Motor Sport’ magazine described as «…a flat-out
12-hour battle, won and lost through driving, pit control, mechanics, tactics
and team work; in fact the perfect long-distance motor race…».
The 12-Hours was revived that year for the first time since 1958. It
was unusual for its midnight Le Mans-type run-and-jump start; the cars
racing from midnight Saturday into the dawn, to finish at noon on Sun-
day. This truly staggering motor race, run at virtual Grand Prix pace
throughout – quite unlike the then-standard ‘nurse the car to finish’
philosophy of long-distance competition – was won by a brand-new
rear-engined Ferrari 250 Le Mans Berlinetta – chassis ‘5907 LM’ – piloted
by Formula 1 World Champion Graham Hill and his Swedish team-mate,
Joakim Bonnier.
Graham described the events of that Saturday night and Sunday
morning in his autobiography ‘Life at the Limit’:
«All the cars were lined-up in echelon in front of the pits for the start
of this race and the pit area was floodlit for the occasion. It was a very
colourful scene. All the town had come out, late as it was, to see the start
and all round the pit area was brilliantly lit, but the rest of the track was in
pitch darkness.
«We stood waiting for the seconds to tick away and then the flag
dropped and off we went. The start was tremendous. I managed to get
to the car fairly quickly, leapt in, started it up – you have to remember to
put the lights on as well – and away we rushed into the inky blackness.
I couldn’t see a damned thing, I went straight out of the pits sideways,
across the road with a great deal of opposite lock, drifted into the direction
I wanted to go and shot off in the lead, closely following by Richie
Ginther in the new 4.2-litre Ford GT.
«The Ford was going to give us a lot of trouble, but behind that
came John Surtees in another Ferrari» – an identical 250LM (actually
chassis ‘5909 LM’) run for the factory by Luigi Chinetti’s North American
Racing Team.»
«Having stood about in the very bright light of the pit area, it is most
frightening to find yourself rushing out at full bat into the blackness with
lamps which seem quite useless. It takes a while for your eyes to get
accustomed to the darkness. My first thought was: ‘Where the hell am I
going?’. Because all you can see is bright lights reflected in your rear view
mirror; they shine straight into your eyes, which doesn’t help matters at
all. Anyway, I had made a pretty good start and I was able to pick my way
among the cornfields fairly well.
«Going down towards the hairpin, and just before we turned sharp
right and came back to the pit area, I suddenly had a rather nasty feeling
that somebody was gaining on me at a fantastic rate. I kept well to the
right and, lo and behold, John Surtees went by me like an express train,
straight up the road towards Reims, missing the corner completely. Well, I
thought, that’s handy! I’ve got rid of him for a while.
«Well, of course, Surtees didn’t waste any time getting turned
around and rejoining the race. In fact he lost only a few seconds, but
Ginther and I started having a ding-dong. Surtees caught us up and
then we had an almighty thrash in the dark with speeds of up to 180mph
– on this very narrow road. One moment we would be bursting into
the brightly-lit pit area and then rushing out again into the darkness.
Unfortunately, just after the pit area, which of course was extremely
bright, we went over the brow of a hill and the road turned right into
the very fast right bend – almost flat-out in the dark. We were just lifting
a fraction and the car was getting into a great hairy old drift. With all
this slip-streaming going on as well, you had to be careful that the draught
from the other cars didn’t unsettle your car. We were having a tremen-
dous race. It was really an exciting fight and motor racing par excellence.
It was also pretty hair-raising.
«We managed to hold our lead and drew out a little bit, leaving the
other two to scrap away behind us. I came in and handed over to Jo. The
race went on all through the night but eventually the Ford packed up
with some sort of trouble…
«The tremendous duel went on between Jo Bonnier and myself in
Ronnie Hoare’s car and the works car of Bandini and Surtees. There were
just no holds barred.
«The pit stops were going to be decisive, because obviously it is no use
driving round and knocking fractions of a second off if they are all going
to be thrown away during the pit stops. If a pit stop lasted a second longer
than it should, it was going to be difficult to make that up on the road.
«With just two hours to go, with myself in our car and Surtees in the
other, I had a lead of about 40 seconds, and I had to come in for one
more pit stop; Surtees had to make one more as well, but I wasn’t quite
I brought the car into the pits and refuelled it in 66 seconds. This, of
course, immediately cancelled-out our lead and turned it into a deficit
of 22 seconds with Surtees in the lead.
«Bonnier took over from me and went out and the gap got to about
40 seconds – because obviously when you leave the pits, you lose time
joining the circuit and getting up the speed again; with a heavy load
of fuel he was not able to lap at the same speed as Surtees was lapping
with a lighter fuel load.
views magazine | 129