At the beginning of November, our book about the Bentley Speed 8 was honoured by the Royal Automobile Club at the “Motoring Book of the Year Awards” as the best motorsport book of 2023 in the category “Motorsport Books Without Price Limit”. In our article, author Andrew Cotton outlines the genesis of the book and some of the key stages of the Speed 8 programme.
Bentley returned to Le Mans in 2001 for the first time in more than 70 years, and in 2003 the make recorded its first victory at La Sarthe since 1930. Tom Kristensen, Rinaldo Capello and Guy Smith followed Wolf Barnato and Glen Kidston into the record books as winning drivers. The incredible comprehensive story of how the programme evolved has now been recorded.
The Bentley Speed 8 book, published by Sportfahrer, carries never-before-seen images and details of the project, including wind tunnel testing which produced one of the best-looking Le Mans cars ever designed. Bentley opened its archive to me with full details of the programme, from the start of the project to a new car being designed to take the W12 engine destined for the all-new Mid-Size Bentley, to beyond the win, when Bentley investigated a future racing programme.
The book firmly lays to rest the misconception that the Bentley Speed 8 was merely an Audi R8 with a roof. In fact, the Bentley contributed more technology and design cues to the successor of the R8, Audi’s first diesel, the R10.
Bentley’s plan was to race the W12 engine that went on to power the Continental GT. There was a programme to install the engine into the chassis of the Audi R8C, a closed coupé designed and built in the UK, but the cooling requirements were too great, and so a new car had to be designed for the task.
Following a single test of the engine in the back of a Lola in Germany, the idea to race the W12 engine was halted. Bentley had everything that it needed to start a Le Mans programme, including a development partner, the Norfolk-based RTN which had previously run the Audi R8C, a team to run the car, Richard Lloyd’s Apex Motorsport, and had a chassis. What it needed was an engine, and a reason to go racing…
More in the current issue!
by Andrew Cotton
Photographs: Bentley, Julian Broad, Mathieu Bonnevie, Endurance Racing Legends