Sportscar Heroes: Vic Elford, Part 1, Le Mans

As we hear the news that legendary and multi-talented racer Vic Elford has passed way we present again a three part interview with Vic conducted at Sebring in 2002 by his friend and fan Malcolm Cracknell, DSC’s founding editor.

Parts 2 and 3 will follow in the coming days

What a thrill to find that Vic Elford was the Grand Marshal at the recent Rolex 24. Mark Howson commented in his round-up from Daytona that Cracknell’s 2002 interviews with Vic Elford had been lost in DSC’s “server disaster” of early 2003. Well, after much digging through old hard drives, they’ve turned up.

Vic Elford proved himself over many years of racing and rallying to be one of the greatest drivers of all time. ‘Quick Vic’ was a justly deserved moniker.

We caught up with him at Sebring for the 50th, and it seemed perfectly natural to start this series with the man’s recollections of Le Mans in the 917s – in 1969, 1970 and 1971.

“1969 was the first year of the 917, and I fell in love with it at the Geneva Show. I started lobbying Porsche there and then to take it to Le Mans, but their attitude at that stage was to regard it as a test car: they wanted to concentrate on the 908s. But I kept on and on at them that Richard Attwood and I would drive it very, very carefully, and that we believed that it could finish the 24 Hours if driven that way. Eventually, Ferdinand Piech relented, and Porsche prepared two 917s, ours with a blue nose, the Rolf Stommelen car a yellow nose. In those days, we had our personal colours, and mine was blue.

“We drove it with kid gloves. Rolf Stommelen (with Kurt Ahrens) put his car on pole, and I was alongside him for the Le Mans start, in echelon. It was an incredible car, especially in that first year – it was so fast. We didn’t have to race the rest of the entry, because we had a top speed advantage of about 25 mph. Our top speed was about 220, but it certainly did use all the road.

“We had to lift off at the Kink – but you didn’t just lift, you had to ease off the throttle very gently. If you snapped off the gas, the back rose up and it steered itself. We were ever so gentle with it. We’d gone into a new area of aerodynamics and it wasn’t developed at all at that stage. Even at 200 through the Kink, it wandered all over the place. We had to be gentle approaching Mulsanne Corner and Indianapolis too – gently off the throttle, gently on the brakes.

“The opening lap of the ’69 race saw poor John Woolfe lose his life at White House. There were no Porsche Curves then of course: over the hump-backed bridge, we used to just touch the brakes on the approach, then change from fifth to fourth…..while the car was in the air. We took the next corner, a fast right, in fourth, then stayed in fourth for the fast left-hander, which was White House. The car used to slide towards the wall on the exit there, and it needed a good flick of the wheel to straighten it up. John Woolfe probably didn’t get that flick quite right.

“What isn’t generally known is that Rolf Stommelen drove Woolfe’s (short-tail) car in Practice, and set the sixth best time, which counted for the grid. Woolfe then made a great start, and he just got swept along with the Porsches and Ferraris, at a speed greater than he would have driven in Practice. Then it all went wrong for him…

“Rolf’s car broke at about six hours, but we kept going until 21 hours, and all that broke was a 10 cent oil seal in the gearbox. We lost the clutch as a result, but we were leading by 50 miles…….”

…which set up that amazing finish between Ickx and Herrmann, of course.

“For 1970, there were two distinct Porsche teams – John Wyer’s Gulf cars and the Porsche Austria team (Porsche Konstruktionen KG). John Wyer didn’t believe in the long tail, so our (Kurt Ahrens and I) #25, and the Larrousse / Kauhsen psychedelic car were the only long tails in the race. My pole position lap was the first ever lap of Le Mans at an average speed of over 150 mph.

“Porsche had been developing the long tail, and although I trusted it, no one else did. The short tail was certainly more proven, and easier to drive.

We had to be totally precise with the long one, you couldn’t get away with the slightest mistake, you had to be absolutely right all the time.

“Jo Siffert got around me at the start, but onto Mulsanne, I simply drove past him: we still had about 25 mph over everyone else. I remember getting to Mulsanne Corner and glancing in the mirror to see the 917s and the 512s just coming over the Hump.

“On the way back to the start-finish, the short tails would make up time on me, but they couldn’t catch me by the time we reached Tertre Rouge, so I just cleared off down the straight, building up a gap with every lap. In the rain, even at night, our car was flat through the Kink in 1970, so that was a big improvement over the previous year, but we went out after several problems, finally retiring with a broken distributor.

“The short tail of Attwood / Herrmann won, with the standard 4.5 litre engine.

“1971 was the last chance for the 917s because the FIA outlawed the five-litre cars after that. John Wyer was finally persuaded to run two ‘langhecks’, against his will, but he had one short tail too, for Attwood and Muller.

“The winning Porsche Austria car set a distance record that still stands, but all the long tails broke: it was the same problem, a bad batch of bolts holding the engine fans in place, and one by one they whizzed up into the air, leaving us (I drove with Gerard Larrousse) with no cooling. It happened to us at Arnage, and by the time we got back to the pits, the engine was cooked.

“That ’71 car was the peak of the car’s development. We could run flat out all the way from Mulsanne Corner to Indianapolis, through the two slight kinks, but I had a different tactic from everyone else at the fast right before Indianapolis: I used to take that one flat, then brake like crazy to take the left hander. My theory was that it was better to lose time in slow corners than in fast ones. My line at the left hander was far from ideal, but I was sure my line was quicker through that whole section.

“I was often fastest at Le Mans, so I must have been doing something right……”

All archive photos from the excellent www.vicelford.com

Vic Elford
Reflections on a Golden Era in Motorsports
By Vic Elford
Published by David Bull Publishing
www.bullpublishing.com
ISBN 1 893618 52-8
$39.95 / £19.99

I’m not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but the almost simultaneous release of books by Vic Elford and John Horsman (Racing in the Rain) make almost perfect companions, showing two perspectives of the Porsche 917 era.

But Elford’s book, just like the Horsman one, is much more than the 917 era. Vic got his start in rallying and the early pages cover his rise in a sport that is very different from what it is today. His early success in rallying led to a unique arrangement with Porsche to rally their then-new model, the 911.

His success with the 911 then led to road racing for Porsche and later Chaparral, Alfa Romeo and many others, including Formula 1.

While many will instantly want to read what one of the true legends of racing has to say about the 917 era, they would be remiss if they did not read the entire book, from cover to cover. His recall and insight into the happenings of an era long gone are fascinating and make for entertaining reading. I know, I read a good portion of the book on the flight back home after Petit Le Mans. Usually flights back home are meant for sleeping, but not this time…

My initial impression of the book was one of slight disappointment, as at a quick glance, it appeared to be light on photography. While there is a nice selection of black and white images scattered throughout the book, as well as a section of colour images, I was expecting more. Well, there is more to this book than images. It is here that I truly believe that publisher David Bull made the correct choice by concentrating on text, as the stories that Vic relates to are vivid descriptions of a long-gone era in motorsports. But it is not just the history that he deals with, he even takes the time to share his views on the current state of the sport. Well thought out and insightful.

There are not many books on the people involved in sporscar racing, but lately, we have indeed been fortunate to see a surge of interest in documenting the origins of our sport. Let’s hope this continues. Are you listening, Jacky Ickx, Brian Redman, David Hobbs…?

If you enjoyed this story please take a look at the Go Fund Me page established to help Vic with his current medical expenses

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