Sport: Circus at Le Mans

The classic test for sports cars is the 24-hour race at Le Mans. It is also the race the professionals dislike most. “I hate Le Mans,” growls Britain’s Stirling Moss. “It’s not a race but a circus.” Three hundred thousand spectators flock to Le Mans, spend more than $1,000,000 on other amusements as the sports cars roar over public roads through the 24-hour grind. They roam through 500-odd fair stands, quaff more than 100,000 liters of wine, beer and soft drinks, watch professional wrestling matches just 50 yards from the track, ogle strippers and snake dancers, cram all-night dance halls and, when they run down, catch a few winks in 20,000 sleeping tents booked to capacity at $5 a tent.

Drivers also complain of the race’s free-for-all makeup, which mixes skilled professionals with rank amateurs, high-powered racers with little doodlebugs competing for class championships. And still lurking in the minds of all is the tragedy of 1955, when Pierre Levegh’s Mercedes crashed into a wall, spewed wreckage into the crowd, killing 87 people.

Safety First. Since the 1955 accident, sponsors of les vingt-quatre heures have plowed more than $600,000 into track improvements. Spectators can now watch from the protection of concrete tiers. Engines are top-limited at three liters’ displacement (smaller than that of a Rambler), and no driver can be on the track longer than three hours at a time without relief. All cars must have windshields and wipers. But manufacturers, in their frantic search for speed, devised windshields that flip down at high speeds to avoid extra wind resistance. As they well know, a victory at Le Mans means a difference of millions in a year’s sales.

This year at Le Mans, Ferrari, Jaguar and Aston Martin were once again the cars to beat. Ferrari’s three-car factory team was favored on the basis of sheer speed, while the Jags and Astons pinned their main hopes on a recurrence of the 1957 race, when mechanical trouble took the Ferraris out of the running. “Our Astons have 40 to 50 h.p. less than the Ferraris,” said Aston Martin’s Stirling Moss. “On speed we can’t touch them.”

Few Survive. The race turned out to be one of the safest in history, with no fatalities. But cars died like flies. Moss got his Aston out front in the early going, but dropped out with engine trouble at the five-hour mark. Before the race was half over, all the Jaguars were out. Two factory Ferraris were knocked out by mechanical trouble, but the third, piloted alternately by Defending Champions Phil Hill of Santa Monica, Calif, and Belgium’s Olivier Gendebien, roared on through the night, built a three-lap lead over two pursuing Astons.

But with less than four hours to go, the Hill-Gendebien car developed engine trou ble. After that, it was no contest. Plugging steadily onward, two factory Astons finished one-two for the first Aston Martin victory in Le Mans history. The new champions: Carroll Shelby of Dallas, and Britain’s Roy Salvadori. Only 13 of the original 54 starters finished—smallest number ever to complete the rugged vingt-quatre heures.