Few racing drivers have had as many adventures, plenty of them hair-raising, as Duncan Hamilton. The Briton, known for both his stories and his win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1953. He was always closely associated with the Jaguar brand, although did race a Ferrari during the 1956 World Sportscar Championship.

After winning Le Mans for the first time in 1951 with the C-Type, and then losing in 1952, Jaguar wanted to taste more 24-hour success in 1953. With that goal in mind, the British marque entered three works cars: #17 for Peter Walker/Stirling Moss, #18 for Duncan Hamilton/Tony Rolt and #19 for Peter Whitehead/Ian Stewart. There was also a spare car which also carried #18. That car was used in practice, which wasn’t legal back in 1953. Ferrari protested and the entry was disqualified.

According to Hamilton, he and Rolt spent that night bar hopping and were having a coffee at 10am the next day when Jaguar founder William Lyons told them the good news – a 25,000 franc fine had been paid and they were allowed to start the race. It was just six hours until the start, so the pair jumped into a hot bath and drank a lot more coffee. Rolt drove first and took a lead that Hamilton then defended. By his own admission, Hamilton later gave up on coffee and switched to brandy. The alcohol would have helped when a bird smashed through the windshield at full speed and broke his nose. Both the driver and car held on to win by four laps from Walker/Moss.

A week later Hamilton raced his own C-Type in the Portuguese Grand Prix. He crashed slammed into a power pole on the first lap, which sent him flying out of the car and into a tree before he landed on the track. The impact cut power to the hospital where Hamilton was taken. But he survived…

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by Jacob Queißner

Photographs: Motorsportimages

‘When the Group C endurance racing programme started in early 1982 the new Porsche 956 was already a fantastic car. We knew that from the first time we drove it.’

Derek Bell

The Porsche 956 and 962 aren’t just the most successful racing cars in Porsche’s illustrious history, but also the most victorious prototypes in the near-seven-decade history of the World Sportscar Championship.

There are numerous books on the origins and racing history of Porsche’s famous Group C racers. But there’s never been a book that specifically documents the developments of the very first Porsche 956 – and therefore the thought process that drove the beginning of the Group C era and the problems that had to be overcome.

Like most of the cars, 956 001 is part of a valuable private collection. And it’s thanks to the owner in England that this book came into existence. He enthusiastically made the car available for photographs and had its originality checked by Porsche in Weissach. The support of Walter Näher, who passed away far too young, and “Mr 956” Norbert Singer deserves a special mention. With their help it was possible to sift through countless original documents from the development and testing phase for 956 001.

The start of a new era

If you’re following the current difficulties of managing the Balance of Performance between the LMH (Le Mans Hypercar) and LMDh (Le Mans Daytona hybrid) classes in the World Endurance Championship and IMSA, you’ll hold the greatest respect for the makers of the Group C rules back in 1982. Once the vehicle dimensions had been determined, the primary objective was to meet the fuel consumption limits. And the engineers were given free technical rein to achieve that objective.

Porsche accepted the challenge. On June 22 in 1981 the executive board of Porsche AG decided to build a Group C car. Working to those basic dimension specified by the rules Horst Reitter had the first drawings on the page by the end of the month. On that basis a 1:5 model was created and Singer took it into the wind tunnel at the Stuttgart University in early August. It was clear from the outset that the task at hand was to strike the right compromise between top speed through external aerodynamics and cornering speed through ground effect.

Porsche was entering new technical territory in several ways. The 956 was the brand’s first monocoque racing car and first ground effect racing car. But despite the challenges development progressed rapidly. The first test chassis, which was never numbered, was ready by November 1981. Porsche 956 001 followed soon after…

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by Thomas Nehlert

Photographs: Porsche, Rob Powell, Sammlung Peter Hoffmann, DPPI, Alexander Babic

It was about 4am, right before sunrise on June 25, 1967, near the French town of Reims. Engines had been roaring through the fields since midnight. The 12-hour sportscar race, being held for the eighth and final time, was well underway. A white Lola T70 Mk3 GT held a healthy lead. The car, chassis number SL73/102, belonged to Irish businessman Sidney Taylor. Frank Gardner was at the wheel, a professional driver from Australia who at the time was leading the British Touring Car Championship. Waiting in the pits was his co-driver, a reserved, highly-technical man who was about to win the Formula 1 world championship and fight for outright honours in the Can-Am series in North America. His name, Denny Hulme. The New Zealander had just turned 31 years old and had been racing in Europe for seven years. 

At around 4:30am Gardner came into the pits. The pulley for the water pump drive was broken. Mike de’Udy, a British privateer, handed the Taylor team one from his T70 as a replacement. Hulme jumped behind the wheel and rejoined the race in sixth place. When he came into the pits just after 8am the coolant temperature was alarmingly high. He got through a few more laps before needing to retire with a failed head gasket and valve damage.

It was only luck that the car got that far at all. In qualifying the front suspension on the Lola failed on Hulme’s second lap. ‘I’m glad I was still breaking the car in at that point,’ the Kiwi later explained. ‘Because of that I wasn’t doing much more than 160 km/h and I could bring the car to a stop in a field without any major problems or damage.’ After a quick repair he managed to qualify the car third.

Back to square one

Decades have passed since that weekend in Reims and the car made dozens more race starts. It contested its last race in 1971 before being converted into a road car by Klaus Lehmann in Germany. In 1976 it was acquired by Swede Jan Svanbäck, who then sold it the same year to compatriot Anders Hedborg. He sent the car to Lola in England to be restored in 1982. In 2018 Hedborg died and the Lola ended up at a French dealer called “La Galerie des Damiers”. By that the stage the car was in terrible condition. The engine was incomplete, the car had a modern rear view mirror and wasn’t fully assembled…

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by Jacob Queißner

Photographs: Mike Hayward Collection, Privat, McKlein, Motorsportimages