The road to Le Mans

The time is nigh. As you read (or listen), tens of thousands of our countrymen and women will be polishing bonnets, buffing rocker boxes, checking levels and finalising routes to the same destination. Le Mans week is with us.

By an enormous distance, the Le Mans 24 Hours is Britain’s best attended overseas sporting event. Some have felt inclined to call it a British motor race that just happens to be held in France, but that’s not true, either literally or figuratively. But it is wildly popular among the Brits.

My first was in 1988 when Jaguar ended the longest unbroken winning streak in Le Mans history, the XJR-9LM denying Porsche its eighth straight win. I can remember the chants of ‘Jaguar! Jaguar! Jaguar’ from the stands opposite the pits on the Sunday afternoon every time the lead car of Andy Wallace, Jan Lammers and the late Johnny Dumfries came past, still ahead of the hard-charging 962C of Derek Bell, Hans Stuck and Klaus Ludwig that Porsche had built specifically for this single race.