1980 24 Hours of Le Mans
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1980 24 Hours of Le Mans |
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The 1980 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 48th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 14 and 15 June 1980. It was the seventh round of both the World Championship for Makes and World Challenge for Endurance Drivers. With neither the Porsche nor Renault works teams contesting the big Group 6 sports-cars for outright victory, it left the prospects open for a privateer victory from Joest, Rondeau or De Cadenet, or from Group 5 again, if they were to fail. The wet weather throughout the race further added to the uncertainty, reducing the advantage of the more powerful cars. The race started in a downpour and the rain continued off and on throughout the race. The first half of the race saw a number of the favoured teams hold the lead for extended periods, until one by one they suffered delays or mechanical issues. By dawn it was the Joest Porsche special (driven by Jacky Ickx with Reinhold Joest) that held a 2-lap lead over Jean Rondeau in his own car, and John Fitzpatrick in the Dick Barbour 935. But when Joest pitted at 10am having lost top gear, the half-hour stop cost four laps and put the Frenchmen into the lead. Hard driving by Ickx got him back onto the lead lap again. A sudden squall at 1pm sent both cars aquaplaning off at the fast Dunlop Curve, fortunately without doing any major damage to either. When another rain shower appeared in the last hour, Ickx dived for the pits to put on wet tyres, while Jaussaud bravely stayed out on his slicks. This time Ickx could not make up the lost time and the French took a significant victory: Jean Rondeau gained the unique achievement of winning Le Mans driving a car of his own manufacture, with his other team car coming in third. The introduction of the new Group 5 and Group 6 categories in 1976 had not helped sports-car racing – it forced most manufacturers to choose between one or the other. The World Championship for Makes was stuttering and the small fields left the spectators disinterested which, in turn, dissuaded sponsors to invest. The strongest competition was found in the IMSA series in North America. After five years of going alone, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) returned to the World Championship, becoming the series' premier race, and easily with its biggest field. True to its founding objective to stage a test of endurance and technical innovation, this year the ACO introduced a number of new regulations designed to encourage greater reliability and efficiency over raw speed. However, there were a few unforeseen repercussions that caused controversy. All cars were now limited to a maximum fuel tank volume of 120 litres, and refuelling would run at a fixed rate of 50 litres per minute. This meant that pitstops that used to take around 30–40 seconds would now take over 2 minutes. Alternative fuel-types were also now permitted. A minimum distance of 25 laps had to be done between fuel and oil stops (effectively a fuel economy of 280 litres per 100 km, or 8mpg). A maximum of four pitcrew would be allowed to work on a car at a time. This year, entries had to have either two or three drivers. Qualifying would be done by the average time of each car's drivers. The FIA qualifying rules were that each car had to be within 130% of the pole time and also within 110% of their class leader – although, the ACO allowed a team to drop their third driver for the race if they wanted a better grid position or, more importantly, were at risk of not qualifying. Formerly this was done on the Wednesday and Thursday however this year only a single, 5-hour session on Thursday would count toward qualification. The idea was to flush out amateur drivers who may be a liability to other drivers from being too slow. However, it did not take into account the vagaries of the weather and with constant rain on Thursday, it left only a very short window in the twilight for teams to get all their drivers qualified. The other significant change was the ban on replacing the major components after the start of Qualifying until the end of the race. This applied to engines and gearboxes, while allowing a single turbo replacement. This was put in to stop the use of fragile, high-powered "qualifying engines" to get a high grid spot then swapped out before the race. But again, this compromised the race for cars that might have unforeseen issues with their race-engine during practice Where we have not had a model of the car through the business as raced I've added another example of the car as an illustration (where I have one)
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| Last Edit: 08/05/2022 | Page Created 06/052022 |
