The ‘slow’ Porsche that started a Le Mans legend

Richard Attwood thought he had got it wrong. After having the fastest car in the 1969 Le Mans 24 Hours and being robbed of victory by unreliability, he now believed he'd been too conservative for the 1970 race.

Porsche was still searching for its first win in the French classic. The handling of its initially evil 917 monster had been sorted, but Attwood's main focus when asked which version he would like had been stability and reliability.

That's why he'd gone for a short-tailed 917K - with a straightline speed handicap but better handling - with a four-speed instead of five-speed gearbox and proven 4.5-litre engine. He also had Hans Herrmann, a safe pair of hands rather than pacesetter, as his co-driver.

"A really bad car became a really good car," says Attwood of the 1970 version of the 917. "In 1969 you couldn't relax, it was moving all the time, unbelievably stressful.

"After my first two hours in 1969 I had been in a lot of pain. If it had broken earlier I'd have been a very grateful man. Every car was flat through the kink on the Mulsanne, except the 1969 917, but they did a lot of work and sorted the whole thing out."

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And by June 1970 they'd moved performance on a great deal too, with the arrival, among other things, of a 4.9-litre engine and a better long-tailed variant. That helps explain why Attwood was worried after practice.

His car was slow, if any 917 can be described as such. He and Herrmann were not allowed to use first gear. When combined with the 4.5-litre's relative lack of torque, that made pulling out of the slow corners tough going.

"I think we were losing three seconds at Arnage, three seconds at Mulsanne Corner," recalls Attwood. "We were losing down the straight - probably the only place we weren't losing out was in the corners."

"It may have looked like we were holding back, but we couldn't go any faster. Before the start I didn't think we had a chance" Richard Attwood

In a 2010 interview with Autosport, Herrmann claimed that the duo drove conservatively, but Attwood recounts they had little choice.

"It may have looked like we were holding back, but we couldn't go any faster because I'd chosen the configuration - it was my fault," he says. "Before the start I didn't think we had a chance."

By contrast, the fastest car in practice was the 4.9-litre long-tailed sister Porsche Salzburg car of Vic Elford and Kurt Ahrens Jr. Elford, Attwood's 1969 partner when they'd got within four hours of victory, took the opposite approach, going for the fastest combination available.

He duly secured pole in 3m19.8s, whereas Attwood and Herrmann found themselves down in 15th, 12.8 seconds slower. And between the two Porsche Salzburg entries were some impressive combinations.

Having been beaten in 1969 by an ancient Ford GT40 run by the JW Automotive/Gulf operation, Porsche had hired John Wyer's team to run the 917s for 1970. Porsche Salzburg was the somewhat controversial 'second' factory team.

JWA's Le Mans entry was formidable. Pedro Rodriguez/Leo Kinnunen and Jo Siffert/Brian Redman led the attack for the team that had won the previous two editions of the 24 Hours with Ford, and had the new 4.9-litre engine. The 'back-up' David Hobbs/Mike Hailwood entry had a 4.5-litre unit. All were 917Ks - with JWA's own aerodynamic tweaks - Wyer believing their better handling would help the drivers over 24 hours.

Porsche had already stamped its authority on the world sportscar championship before round eight. The 917K had won four of the seven rounds prior to Le Mans, with the Targa Florio and Nurburgring 1000Km events being taken by the more nimble Porsche 908/3.

Nevertheless, Autosport still described chief rival Ferrari as "a force to be reckoned with". Given the fact that the famous Italian team had scored nine wins in the 24 Hours and had 11 examples of its fearsome 512S (four of which were coda lunga long-tailed factory entries) in the 1970 Le Mans field, that was a fair observation.

The fastest in practice - the Nino Vaccarella/Ignazio Giunti car - was only 0.2s off pole and there were six Ferraris in the top 10. They were heavier than the Porsches but faster down the Mulsanne Straight than all the 917s except the special long tail.

It should have been an epic confrontation. And that's without counting the works three-litre prototype cars from Matra and Alfa Romeo.

"It was a most charismatic time," recalls Attwood, now 80. "It was a battle of the titans, because you had Porsche v Ferrari. It was a great era."

For 1970 the traditional Le Mans start was abandoned - drivers now had to be in their cars, which were still parked diagonally, with their seatbelts fastened. Appropriately for what was to follow, Ferry Porsche dropped the flag, and Elford and Siffert set the pace from the off.

Appointed 'hare' Arturo Merzario led the Ferrari charge, but that was hit almost immediately when the engine failed in Vaccarella's car. Herrmann started the race and Attwood watched the early stages with some amazement.

"I thought it was absolutely insane," he says. "They were driving like it was a grand prix and I think everyone thought they had a chance to win, which they did."

Elford/Ahrens and Siffert/Redman swapped the lead back and forth, while the Rodriguez 917 went out before nightfall when the cooling fan drive sheered.

Then the most ridiculously unfortunate incident all but finished Ferrari's challenge. Down past Maison Blanche, four Ferraris found a slow Reine Wisell, struggling to see out of his 512S's oil-covered windscreen. Sam Posey avoided him, but Derek Bell, Clay Regazzoni (in for Merzario) and Mike Parkes weren't so fortunate. Regazzoni hit Wisell, Parkes hit them both and Bell over-revved his V12 amid the mayhem.

"After only 11 hours, we were in the lead. That's how ridiculous it was" Richard Attwood

Four more Ferraris - two of them works cars - were out, leaving the Jacky Ickx/Peter Schetty 512S in a battle against the odds.

Porsche wasn't immune either, JWA losing a second car when Hailwood crashed. And so, after four hours, Attwood and Herrmann were already up to fourth, albeit three laps behind the leaders.

Ickx rose as high as second when the intermittent rain got heavier in the evening, but he was still not 100% fit following his fiery Spanish Grand Prix accident. During the night he crashed at the Ford chicane, the 512S killing a marshal before bursting into flames. Ferrari's serious challenge was over before half distance, while the Matra team was already out thanks to defective piston rings.

Siffert and Redman, having been at or near the front throughout, now seemed the likely winners. The combination of 4.9-litre engine and short tail with central aerofoil was probably the right one, but then Siffert missed a shift in traffic and damaged the engine. Incredibly, JWA's effort was over.

"After only 11 hours, we were in the lead," says an incredulous Attwood, who was suffering from mumps during the weekend. "That's how ridiculous it was."

Almost as remarkably, at half-distance they led by three laps of the 8.4-mile Circuit de la Sarthe. But the conditions provided another hurdle to overcome.

"There was a huge amount of rain," reckons Attwood. "I believe they would postpone the race now."

The duo stayed on wet tyres longer than necessary, even when conditions improved, just to be safe. That proved wise as the opposition continued to hit problems. Elford/Ahrens had fallen back, not helped by a slow puncture that wasn't identified immediately, but were still trying to recover on Sunday morning and the race remains a highlight for Elford.

"That was the ultimate Le Mans car," enthuses Elford, who put in a Herculean stint during the night. "The first couple of times down the Mulsanne Straight I thought it was a lot shorter!

"At the kink I was doing over 220mph, and the first couple of times I was lifting a little bit. I convinced myself it was going to be flat-out and it was. When I came out the other side it was easy - I'd not changed the attitude of the car at all. With a lift I had been changing the balance of the car, when I went without lifting it was glued.

"It rained a lot that year and I was flat-out through there in the rain and the dark with no problem. That's probably my ultimate 917 experience."

Unfortunately, it wasn't to last. A broken inlet valve put the car out in the 17th hour. One of the great sportscar drivers of the era had been thwarted again.

Attwood and Herrmann really just had to keep going and their lap times went up - perhaps explaining Herrmann's account. But then another downpour shortly after midday added to the challenge of the remarkable race.

"We had to maintain the lead, which was difficult - if you're chasing someone it's much easier because you don't think about what can happen," adds Attwood.

"There were many times where the car hit water and you'd wonder whether you still had it under control or not.

"The race came to us. We didn't win it, we were gifted it" Richard Attwood

"But we didn't have to drive it particularly competitively. The next car was a 917 so Porsche was covered and they didn't allow the second car to race [us].

"At the time Le Mans was an endurance run. The driver was a very big, essential part of finishing at Le Mans. Today it's a completely different race. Every stint is flat-out and reliability is unbelievably good.

"The race came to us. We didn't win it, we were gifted it."

They had nevertheless survived a treacherous 24 hours. Herrmann, so many times a class winner with Porsche, brought the car home to win by five laps. He had avenged his defeat the previous year at the hands of Ickx and soon announced his retirement.

The difficulty of the event was underlined by the fact that only seven cars finished - nine others were running but had covered insufficient distance to be classified. It was that sort of race, one in which Porsche topped every class.

But it was the big one that mattered. After the debacle of 1969, Porsche had finally scooped its first overall Le Mans victory, the first of a record-setting 19. Even if it was with the 'slow' 917.