[LM24] Greatest Fightback

[Victor_RO]

Originally Posted by isynge

Just watched the 1984 footage and at the end there's the point made that the winning Joest 956 was 31st at the end of the first hour.

So - is there scope for a greatest fight back thread - what's the furthest back at the end of hour 1 (or hour 6 maybe?) that's resulted in a win or a genuinely surprisingly result?

Happy to sponsor a very small prize to be awarded at the members meeting in 2013...

One year previously ('83), the review video mentions that the #1 Rothmans Porsche (Ickx/Bell) was 44th or something by the time of the first round of pitstops, around the 1h mark, and it wound up finishing second, less than a minute behind the dying #3 Porsche which ran the last lap without any water in the engine.

[isynge]

As floated in the "what do we talk about?" thread, I watched the footage of the 1984 reace and at the end there's the point made that the winning Joest 956 was 31st at the end of the first hour.

So - what's the furthest back at the end of hour 1 (or hour 6 maybe?) that's resulted in a win or a genuinely surprisingly result?

Happy to sponsor a very small prize to be awarded at the members meeting in 2013. Criteria are - how far back were they at any given position between the end of hour 1 and the 6th hour (so ruling out Ickx's 1969 stroll across the track and taking his time strapping in, making him dead last at lap 1 - unless someone wants to argue that case?) and is there something notable about the position and manner of fightback. As with so much, I'd see this as being completely qualitative / subjective and in no way something to be taken particularly seriously.

Does one of the mods want to shift any subsequent posting from the previous thread into this one e.g. Victor's submission?

[vincegail]

Remarkable:
-1998 McLaren nr. 40 driven by Steve O'Rourke, Tim Sugden and Bill Auberlen, starting only 24th on the grid, but by staying out of trouble and out of the pits (just 40m05s), they steadily worked their way up to 4th overall.



Greatest comeback
-Jackie Ickx 1977
After his own car died on him, he joined Jürgen Barth and Hurley Haywood in their Porsche 936. That car had just got its fuel injection pump changed, which cost 28 minutes. At 21 minutes after 8pm, Jackie eased himself into the second 936. Ickx's greatest drive was about to begin.

Nearly 3 hours later, Ickx emerged from the car with a new lap record and a place in the top 6, albeit 8 laps down the leading Alpine-Renault of Jean-Pierre Jabouille and Derek Bell.

Ickx took over from Haywood some 90 minutes later for another double stint lasting nearly 3 hours, which took him up to 3rd, and the deficit down to 6 laps. Renault in the meantime, has suffered its first engine failure and were getting nervous. Ickx had been taking giant chuncks out of the Alpine's advantage, sometimes as much as 10 seconds a lap.

Norbert Singer: "Renault started to push when they probably didn't need to"

The Renaults started to go faster and faster, and broke down one by one.
The second-placed Alpine, driven by Patrick Depailler and Jacques Lafitte, dropped behind Barth after hitting gearbox problems just after half distance, and would subsequently retire with a blown engine. The same faith befell the leading A442 five hours later.

The Porsche had gone from the bottom of the leaderboard right to the top in 15 and a half hours. But the fightback had taken a toll on Ickx. "He looked a 100 years old after the race," says Manfred Janke, Porsche Motorsport Boss at the time. He put so much into it, pushed himself to the limit. It was the kind of thing you can only do once in your life."

Ickx and Barth shouldered most of the driving between them. Haywood hadn't proved up to the job and only did 2 stints before he was put in the car again to take the finish, just for marketing reasons (him being an American).

Like all good Le Mans tails, this one had a final twist.
After just a handful of laps, Haywood came back in the pits, 45 minutes still left to go, smoke billowing from the Porsche's flat-six. The engine was effectively dead, but was so far ahead of the second-placed Mirage, that it only had to take the chequered flag to be declared the winner. Cylinder number 3 was blanked off and Barth limped around for 2 laps.
Arguably the greatest comeback in Le Mans history was complete.

(I may have stolen this story a little bit from Autosport's pre-Le Mans guide of 2002)

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by isynge

Does one of the mods want to shift any subsequent posting from the previous thread into this one e.g. Victor's submission?

Done Ian, but of course it goes before your's as this works chronologically.

[isynge]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

Done Ian, but of course it goes before your's as this works chronologically.

Astonishing! Some things are even beyond the powers of moderators...

[gregtummer]

It didn't win, but it was stunning to watch the pace of Peugeot #1 at the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans.

He eventually unlapped himself before blowing up!