Celebrating the weird and wonderful monsters of sportscar racing

Nissan R90CK Group C - Blundell’s 1100bhp banzai lap

Exactly how much horsepower Mark Blundell had under his right foot when he claimed pole position for Nissan at the 1990 Le Mans 24 Hours can never truly be known. But it was probably in excess of a monstrous 1100bhp. That goes a long way to explaining his six-second margin at the top of the timesheets.

The 3.5-litre twin-turbo V8 in the back of his Nissan R90CK was a big-boost qualifying special designed to give 900bhp or perhaps more. But the extra horses he had at his disposal when he set out on arguably the most famous single lap in Le Mans history early in final qualifying on Thursday night resulted from a technical problem.

The factory Nissan Motorsports Europe squad had been struggling with an overboosting issue throughout qualifying. A wastegate jammed shut on Blundell’s out-lap aboard a T-car specially brought along for a pole shot. The top management from NISMO – Nissan’s motorsport division, which also developed the engines in Japan – ordered NME team manager Dave Price to tell his driver to abort the run.

Instead, ‘Pricey’ suggested to Blundell that he might as well continue. So the driver ripped out the radio lead from his helmet and set out on a brutal lap that makes compelling viewing on YouTube.

“That was probably the most reactive lap I did in my career,” says Blundell. “When you watch it, everything happening was new to me because we’d never run with that level of power. In fact, we’d barely run at all, because we’d been struggling to get the thing to work properly through qualifying.

“I had to use all my skills as a racing driver to the utmost to try to understand the car I had underneath me. Every time I came to a braking zone it was all about judgement, because I had no references with that amount of power.”

Blundell's remarkable qualifying lap was, he reckons, the most reactive of his career due to the enormous power at his disposal

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Blundell knew he was in for a wild ride as he accelerated past the pits at the start of the lap: “It was spinning the wheels in fourth gear up to the Dunlop Curve. If you watch the in-board lap, you can see how vicious it was. And don’t forget those cars were the purest of the pure – a manual gearbox and no power steering or traction control.”

What is a matter of record is that the Nissan stopped the clocks at 3m27.020s. That was a tad over six seconds ahead of Oscar Larrauri’s previous mark that day, which put his Brun Porsche 962C second on the grid

Blundell had a massive moment out of the Dunlop Chicane as he began his lap. It continued in the same vein.

“The car was a bit of a handful in Tertre Rouge, and the Porsche Curves were a bit hairy, but the hardest thing was judging those braking distances on the chicanes on the Mulsanne Straight,” he says. “I was told afterwards that the car maxed out at 237mph on the Mulsanne. The Nissan was never the most compliant car over the bumps, and I really had to force it through the chicanes.”

The 237mph figure was a calculation by Nissan’s engineers because the official speed trap missed Blundell’s run. Another guesstimate was 1128bhp for the engine. Those numbers may or may not be accurate. What is a matter of record, however, is that the Nissan stopped the clocks at 3m27.020s. That was a tad over six seconds ahead of Oscar Larrauri’s previous mark that day, which put his Brun Porsche 962C second on the grid.

And Blundell’s run was on race tyres. He reckons that there could have been “another three or four seconds in the car” had he been on qualifying rubber.

“But whether they would have lasted with 1100bhp going through the rear wheels,” he says, “that’s another matter.”

Porsche 935/78 Group 5 - A whale of a time with Moby Dick

Despite finishing only eighth at Le Mans in 1978 with Schurti and Stommelen at the wheel 'Moby Dick' is seared in legend

Photo by: William Murenbeeld / Motorsport Images

When Porsche lowered the latest – and, as it turned out, final – version of its 935 Group 5 concept onto its wheels in early 1978, there was an exclamation from the crowd of engineers and mechanics. “Why, it’s Moby Dick!” was heard from the throng. No one remembers who said those words, but the name stuck. The German marque’s 935/78 is always referred to as a fictional monster of the deep.

The reasons why Porsche’s ultimate Group 5 silhouette racer was likened to an ocean-dwelling mammal were obvious. It was lower, longer and wider than its predecessor, and it helped that on that fateful day it was still in plain white.

Key to the concept of the car, as well as its unofficial name, was the 80mm that had been cut out of the bottom. Norbert Singer, who led the 935 programme at Porsche’s Weissach motorsport headquarters, was exploiting a rule that had been put in place for its rivals. BMW and Ford had argued that their Group 5 machinery was disadvantaged by front-engine layouts, which resulted in a rules change ahead of 1978 to allow for major modification to the floorpan to accommodate their exhaust systems.

“The words were there in the rules, even if they weren’t written for us,” says Singer. “Our interpretation of the rules was that we could cut the floor by 80mm.”

The rulemakers had to agree. The 935/78 was also 200mm longer than the previous iteration of the car, in the name of aerodynamic efficiency. Yet it would be incorrect to call Moby Dick a Le Mans special: it had just as much downforce as its predecessor.

Moby Dick did, however, prove its credentials on the second of only four race appearances in 1978 at Le Mans. Rolf Stommelen put the car third on the grid behind the best of the Porsche 936 and Alpine-Renault A442 Group 6 cars. The thing hit 227mph through the speed traps on the Mulsanne Straight, only a fraction slower than the best of the Renaults. Not bad for a production-based car.

Porsche had opted against a full programme with its new monster, deciding to leave its customers to chase glory in the world sportscar championship in the absence of opposition from another manufacturer. It would race only twice more after finishing a distant eighth at Le Mans in the hands of Stommelen and Manfred Schurti following a myriad of problems.

Moby Dick did, however, spawn imitations built by Joest, Kremer and a number of North American Porsche specialists, but none looked quite as much like a whale as the original in plain white.

Porsche 917/30 Can-Am - Donohue finds his unfair advantage

The 917/30 was the ultimate Can-Am racer and ultimately led to the championship's collapse

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Porsche had won six of the nine races after it put its full weight behind its Can-Am programme in North America when the 917 coupe had been legislated out of world championship sportscar racing for 1972. George Follmer had won the title in a Penske-run 917/10, but the German manufacturer was worried about what arch-rival McLaren might come up with for the following season. The result was a 1000bhp behemoth that didn’t give anyone else a look-in.

“You’re always thinking about what you need to do to stay on top, and we knew that the McLaren was a little bit faster than us on the straights,” recalls long-time Porsche engineer Norbert Singer.

The 917/30 might have been even more of a monster. Porsche had the idea of increasing the width of the rear tyres from 19 inches to 22. It even experimented with such a set-up by welding two 11in front wheels together

That was despite Porsche increasing the capacity of the twin-turbo flat-12 from 4.5 litres to five over the course of the 1972 season. Now Porsche increased the capacity again. This time it went up to 5.4 litres, increasing the power output into four figures and beyond, and calling for a fuel capacity of approximately 400 litres.

But revisions to the 917/30 weren’t only about brute force. Singer, who led the aerodynamic programme over the winter, came up with a less-draggy shape inspired by the 917LH – or langheck – taken to Le Mans in 1971.

“We really wanted to reduce the drag, because just adding horsepower doesn’t really gain you a lot in top speed,” explains Singer.

The 917/30 might have been even more of a monster. Porsche had the idea of increasing the width of the rear tyres from 19 inches to 22. It even experimented with such a set-up by welding two 11in front wheels together! The Can-Am Porsches stayed on 19in rear rims, but still dominated. Mark Donohue claimed pole aboard a Penske-run 917/30 for all eight races and won six of them after 917/10s had taken victory in the first two.

Eagle 700 Group C - A canary, an eagle… but no flying

Eagle 700 promised enormous power, but failed to deliver at Le Mans in 1990 and was too slow to make the cut

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Amateur sportscar driver Paul Canary already had one unsuccessful attempt on the Le Mans 24 Hours behind him when he pitched up at the Circuit de la Sarthe in 1990. Nine years after his ageing Chevrolet-engined McLaren M12 Can-Am machine clothed in coupe bodywork failed to qualify, the American fielded another oddity in the French classic – an ex-IMSA GTP car powered by a monster of an engine. The V8 in the back of what was now a Group C car had a cubic capacity of more than 10 litres.

A car named the Eagle 700 on the entry list had started life as a Chevrolet Corvette GTP racer of 1988 vintage, which really made it a Lola T88/11 with a General Motors engine in the back. What made the Eagle different to the cars raced in North America by Hendrick Motorsports and Peerless Racing, from whom Canary had purchased his chassis, was that hulking great engine in the back. Canary’s creation was named after the Eagle Engine Co, the supplier of a big-block V8 that was said to produce 900bhp.

It was a low-budget affair. The total bill, including buying the car and getting it to France, was just $500,000, Canary admitted at the time. It showed. The car managed just a handful of laps over the two days of qualifying. A best lap on the way to non-qualification of more than two minutes off the pace suggested it never delivered those promised 900 horses. The Eagle was perhaps more of a sleeping monster.

Cannibal-Chevrolet IMSA WSC - Beauty in the eye of no beholders

The 'Cannibal' certainly wasn't a looker and struggled to the finish of the 1995 Daytona 24 Hours in 40th position

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Has a racing machine ever been quite so ugly as the mid-1990s Cannibal IMSA World Sports Car ‘prototype’? Even the man who conceived the car has to answer no to that one. Bruce Trenery admits that when he set eyes on it for the first time, he told his team-mates that it was the “ugliest thing I’d ever seen”.

It wasn’t meant to be that way for the unusual front-engined machine that pre-dated Panoz’s ‘wrong-way-around’ prototypes by four years. When Trenery had the bright idea of turning a tubeframe Trans-Am Oldsmobile Cutlass that he’d already raced in IMSA’s GTS class in 1994 into an open-top WSC contender for the following year, he got Jack Kampney, who’d had a hand in the Greenwood Chevrolet Corvettes of the 1970s, to produce a design. But he was in for a surprise when the real thing rolled off the truck at the 1995 Daytona 24 Hours.

"A lot of people made fun out of it, but we had a lot of fun in it. In terms of points per dollar spent, I reckon we were ahead of everyone" Bruce Trenery

“Jack came up with this fairly beautiful design: we had all these lovely drawings, which were really nicely done,” recalls Trenery, who trades in exotic cars, racing and otherwise, through his Fantasy Junction business in California. “Inevitably, the car had been late and we didn’t make the pre-race test. The rear end of this thing was staring out at us from the back of the truck. Jeffrey [Pattinson, one of his team-mates] and I were laughing so much we were crying. Maybe you could just about see the resemblance to the drawings, but the reality didn’t look like the conception.”

The Cannibal had an ugly time of it out on the track, too.

“The hood kept blowing off for a start,” says Trenery. “The other problem was that no one had envisaged a front-engined WSC car, so the rules said the exhausts had to exit out the back of the car. At our first pitstop, some fuel got spilt and caught alight on the hot exhausts. We got the thing to the finish line, but it was kind of an ordeal.”

The Cannibal’s 40th place finish, proudly wearing Autosport stickers as a result of its participation in a short-lived scheme known as Team Mobil 1 Autosport, wasn’t the end of the car. Trenery had conceived the Cannibal as a cost-effective entry into the WSC division that had been introduced at the start of 1994. The car would contest a further nine IMSA races through to the end of 1998, and finished every one.

“A lot of people made fun out of it, but we had a lot of fun in it,” says Trenery. “In terms of points per dollar spent, I reckon we were ahead of everyone.”

Eagle-Toyota MkIII IMSA GTP - Brute force smashes the opposition

Enormous turbo lag on the MkIII required drivers to plant the throttle before turning into the corner

Photo by: William Murenbeeld / Motorsport Images

All-American Racers’ Eagle-Toyota MkIII was a beast of a machine that cut a swathe through the IMSA GT Championship in the early 1990s. Massive power and enormous downforce helped the GTP prototype to 21 victories in 27 race starts from the end of 1991 through to the conclusion of the 1993 season. That included two wins in the Sebring 12 Hours and one at the Daytona 24 Hours. Most significantly, however, it finally ended Nissan’s domination of the IMSA series in its first full season in 1992.

The Eagle’s 2.1-litre, four-cylinder turbo engine produced in excess of 750bhp in race trim. But the key to the success of the car was front-end aerodynamics that still set a benchmark for prototype design. Chief designer John Ward came up with the idea of a stand-alone diffuser in the nose to cure the understeer that afflicted its predecessor, the MkII (or HF89).

Andy Wallace, who notched up back-to-back Sebring wins in a car shared with Juan Manuel Fangio II in 1992 and 1993, describes the MkIII as a brute.

“It had a lot of downforce,” recalls the Briton, who was loaned out to Dan Gurney’s AAR squad by Toyota’s European Group C operation for which he’d signed ahead of 1991. “In the quick stuff, it was a case of turning in and just trying to keep your head up. It was nailed to the road, but the g-forces put a lot of strain on the old neck muscles.”

Wallace’s choice of word to describe the Eagle also reflects the lag from a small-capacity engine blown by a massive turbo.

“You’d hit the throttle and there’d be nothing, nothing, nothing and then whoosh, you’d be at the end of the next straight in the blink of an eye,” he recalls. “The lag was incredible. At a corner like the old hairpin at Sebring, you had to be on the throttle before you’d even turned in.”

There was more than 750bhp available in qualifying spec – if the engine developed at Toyota Racing Development held together. Wallace found that out when he was given some extra boost in one of his two Sebring assaults. Out of the hairpin he heard a bang from behind him and saw flames in his mirrors.

“Once I’d turned everything off and got it stopped, the team asked me to take off the engine cover and report back what I could see,” remembers Wallace. “I told them I was looking at cylinders one and two and then four, and a big gap where three used to be. You could say the MkIII was a bit uncultured compared with a car like the 3.5-litre TS010 Group C car. But it did the job it was designed to do. It was a really effective racing car and brilliant fun to drive.”

Cadillac Spider - The original sportscar 'Monstre'

Bizarre aluminium bodywork spawned 'Le Monstre' nickname for the Cadillac

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No story about the monsters of sportscar racing would be complete without the tale of a car that has gone down in history labelled as one. The weird and wonderful device in which famed American sportscar driver and entrant Briggs Cunningham made the first of nine starts at the Circuit de la Sarthe in 1950 was nicknamed ‘Le Monstre’ on its arrival in France. It’s easy to see how the slightly cruel name was arrived upon.

Le Monstre has left its mark in history for its looks rather than its results: it finished 11th on its only race appearance. It didn’t help that Cunningham, who co-drove with Phil Walters, had to spend 20 minutes digging the car out of a sandbank

Cunningham, a wealthy entrepreneur, had been challenged to take an American car to Le Mans by friend and associate Luigi Chinetti, who’d already sold him one of the earliest Ferraris imported into North America. The result was a car officially known as the Cadillac Spider courtesy of its Series 61 chassis and running gear, but forever known by the moniker spawned by the bizarre aluminium bodywork that clothed it. As strange as the body might have looked, there was science behind it: the shape was developed in a 1:12 scale windtunnel more usually used to evaluate crop dusters by engineers at the Grumman aircraft corporation.

Le Monstre has left its mark in history for its looks rather than its results: it finished 11th on its only race appearance. It didn’t help that Cunningham, who co-drove with Phil Walters, had to spend 20 minutes digging the car out of a sandbank after going off track in the opening hour. But Le Monstre did whet Cunningham’s appetite for European racing and car manufacturing. Just two years later, he took fourth overall and first in class at Le Mans driving a car bearing his own name.

In its only race, 'Le Monstre' finished 11th at Le Mans in 1950 with Cunningham and Walthers

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