“Two years later Jabby Crombac came to tell me that Matra wanted me to drive for them at Le Mans. I told him no. But in the end I agreed to do it. I saw it was the right team and the right car, and that there was a chance to win.”
But soon there was another sticking point.
“I was so surprised,” admits Pesca, “when they told me I would be driving with Graham Hill. At first I said, ‘No, I don’t want him.’ I was concerned about how he would cope with the conditions, the dangers. Le Mans is so different from F1. It’s a road race, the most dangerous race at that time. I said, ‘What if it’s raining in the night, or there’s fog in the morning, do you think he will be prepared to take risks?’”
![Graham Hill with Jean Luc Lagadere and Henri Pescarolo on the podium at the 1972 Le Mans 24 Hours](https://msm.tjlabs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Graham-Hill-with-Jean-Luc-Lagadere-and-Henri-Pescarolo-on-the-podium-at-the-1972-Le-Mans-24-Hours-800x450.jpg)
Hill and Pescarolo on the podium, either side of Matra director Jean-Luc Lagardère
Gabriel Duval/AFP via Getty Images
Pescarolo’s worries were understandable. Although Hill had plenty of experience of Le Mans – he numbered Stirling Moss, Richie Ginther and Jackie Stewart among his previous co-drivers there, and had finished second in 1964 alongside Jo Bonnier in Maranello Concessionaires’ Ferrari 330P – he hadn’t started this enduro event since 1966, and, at 43, his powers appeared to be waning.
“I was still a young driver,” says Pescarolo. “Graham Hill was a legend. I had never even spoken to him. That would have been impossible for me. But eventually I said, ‘Okay, I will drive with him.’
“And so he came to the team, became my team-mate – and in a very short time a real friend too. It was strange. It was as if it had always been like that. It was so easy from the first contact. He was such a fantastic guy. And he was bloody quick of course.” In all conditions, too. “When I looked at his lap times during the night, and in the rain, I thought, ‘Okay, I can sleep now.’ His speed in the night was one of the reasons we won.
“And we were good together as a team. That helped. We spent the week before the race together, staying in the same château, and it was a fantastic time for me.”