Porsche 917's secret advantage: winning Le Mans in 1971 — 'whatever it took'

It was a record that stood the tests of time and distance for almost 40 years: 3315.21 miles in a 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Yes, significant changes to the circuit were made immediately afterwards and attitudes towards safety have changed out of all recognition since – but, still, 40 years.

And it’s only been beaten once more since 2010.

The car that set it back in 1971 was far from being the fastest Porsche 917 that day. It did, however, hold a secret advantage.

“Nobody knew anything about the chassis,” says Gijs van Lennep of the be-finned short-tail run by Martini Racing (to all intents and purposes a works team), and which he shared in victory with Dr Helmut Marko. “Even we only heard about it after the race.”

Magnesium-alloy tubing: lighter and stiffer than the aluminium norm, but a gamble all the same.

“The first chassis they made broke after a couple of hours of testing at [Porsche development centre] Weissach,” says van Lennep. “That second chassis they drove, I think, for 10 or 12 hours. It was difficult welding at the joints, so they had put a sort of sleeve over it and welded on that. The third was ours.”

“So we had the lightest. The saving was about 40kg. The last story I heard from Stuttgart a few years ago was that we had a bigger oil tank [in order] to meet the minimum weight. More oil, yes, but, of course, right in the centre of the car, and so good for the handling.”

This option was not offered to the Gulf-backed sister squad – officially a works team but feeling increasingly ‘privateer’ – but likely it would have refused it. For team manager John ‘Death Ray’ Wyer was in the business of winning rather than innovation.

Indeed, given a choice he wouldn’t have run the long-tailed version of the 917 either. He didn’t think it truly race-ready. But team driver Jackie Oliver had denied him that by being stunningly fast in one at the official Le Mans Test: 3min 13.6sec – the first 250km/h lap.

Van Lennep had had his 917 ‘moments’ at Le Mans, too, crashing in 1970 in a car ‘fixed’ after an accident for co-driver David Piper: “The steering was not straight and at 320km/h a tyre burst because it was too hot. That was the end of that one.

“You knew that it was a dangerous racing car because your feet were in front of the axle – and there wasn’t much else there. You didn’t want to hit anything. But I never had that [type of] accident so I can’t tell you about it.

“But 917 was fantastic. There were no big changes during my time; the biggest happened between 1969 and 1970. I loved it. But I was young. Lots of car control. The rear axle was welded up and you could steer on the throttle like a go-kart.

“You had to brake hard, exert a lot of pressure, and the steering was quite heavy. After 40 laps at the Norisring, say, you were knackered. But Le Mans had long straights and so was not as tiring. And there was a bump before the Kink so, even if you were asleep, you knew you had to steer right.

“My car was running beautifully in 1971. Though we were a little worried about the cooling fan: when it broke all its locating bolts it would fly off and that would end the engine.” Such a failure had sidelined Martini’s long-tail, which Elford was sharing with Gérard Larrousse. “So at every pit stop a mechanic changed one bolt. That way we didn’t lose any time and, after four pit stops, we had all new bolts.

“Then, with five hours to go our brake discs began cracking. That was the first time we had holes [drilled] in them and they were cracking around the outside. If we stopped to change them we couldn’t win. So we decided not to brake anymore – or to do less of it at least.

“At the finish I took the [drilled] ignition key out – and that was the end for that car. It’s in the museum now. You can’t drive it. Only push it. It’s too thin, too light. It had a gear knob made of balsawood.

“Whatever it took. We wanted to win.”