A lap of Le Mans – in a Martini-Porsche 911 Carrera RSR

Classic Driver certainly got lucky this time. We were offered a spin on the track before the start of the Le Mans Classic... with Le Mans winner Jürgen Barth at the wheel of the Porsche 911 Carrera RSR that won the 1973 Targa Florio…

While Porsche’s long-anticipated return to the Le Mans 24 Hours in June wasn’t quite the hoped-for success, the marque’s presence at this year’s Le Mans Classic reminded us of the unrivalled number of victories that Porsche has enjoyed here over the years. The Classic saw huge numbers of privately owned Porsches in action, from 356 and 911 right through to 917 and 935, representing the entire spectrum of Zuffenhausen’s finest. Even Porsche itself had brought several legends from the museum to Le Mans – and Classic Driver was thrilled to be offered a passenger ride round the circuit in the 330HP Martini Porsche 911 Carrera RSR in which Herbert Müller and Gijs van Lennep won the 1973 Targa Florio.

Race legend at the wheel

At the wheel was none other than Jürgen Barth, the legendary Porsche racer who – together with Jacky Ickx and Hurley Haywood – won the 1977 Le Mans 24 Hours. Barth was at the Le Mans Classic to race a 1967 Porsche 907: on Friday, in qualifying, it suffered a puncture at over 250km/h. "Lucky", was the driver’s dry comment about the outcome of that little occurrence. We feel quite relieved that our lap of Le Mans in the Martini Porsche is very definitely a paradelap. And the driver is clearly well within the limits of safety, sliding casually through the Dunlop chicane and, on one occasion, steering with his knee while he takes pictures of the other Martini cars with his smartphone. On the Mulsanne Straight, we were stunned by the thought of the speeds that were reached in the 1970s, before the chicanes were added. There is a fabulous onboard video from 1977, in which Jürgen Barth’s Porsche 936 seems almost to be flying past the villages on the Hunaudières.

That 'backside' feeling

We ask Barth what has changed since his victory at Le Mans. "The high-tech racing cars of today make the need to ‘drive with your backside’ – a level of sensation that was required in those days – redundant. If a rev-counter failed, we still had to sense the precise moment at which a gearchange was needed, or two laps later we’d find ourselves in the pitlane with engine failure." He threads our car elegantly through the Porsche Curves and, too soon, we’re at the end of our lap. Too bad: we were just getting into the groove of this high-speed interview technique.

DOWN & OUT CAFE RACERS W650

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MotoGP : Météo mitigée pour la première journée du HRC à Brno / Constructive first day in Brno despite temperamental weather

Après un fantastique doublé au GP d'Allemagne, Marc Márquez et Dani Pedrosa étaient de retour en piste aujourd'hui, à Brno, pour la première de trois journées d'essais privés.

Malgré un ciel globalement ensoleillé, la piste tchèque est restée mouillée pendant un bon moment suite à une grosse averse survenue à 11h30 ce matin. Les pilotes du team Repsol Honda n'ont eu d'autre choix que de travailler sur leurs set-ups pour piste mouillée et Márquez a subi une petite chute dans le virage n°5 en perdant l'avant.

La piste a petit à petit séché et permis aux pilotes de reprendre leur programme d'essais, malgré une adhérence encore réduite. Márquez et Pedrosa sont restés sur leurs machines de 2014 aujourd'hui et ont tous les deux couvert 49 tours chacun.

Mercredi, les deux Espagnols poursuivront leurs tests et pourraient étrenner le prototype Honda de 2015.

Marc Márquez :

« La journée s'est bien passée. Il a plu ce matin, nous avons pu essayer des choses pour piste mouillée et j'ai eu une petite chute. La piste était sèche pour l'après-midi mais le grip n'était pas très bon. L'important est que nous ayons eu des températures plus élevées à la fin, avec un peu plus de gomme sur la piste, ce qui nous a permis d'essayer des modifications pour notre set-up. Espérons que les conditions s'améliorent pour demain. »

Dani Pedrosa :

« La séance d'aujourd'hui a été mitigée. Il a beaucoup plu à midi et nous avons donc pu rouler sur piste mouillée. Après le déjeuner, l'asphalte avait séché mais la piste était sale et n'offrait pas beaucoup de grip. Nous n'avons malheureusement pas pu essayer beaucoup de choses aujourd'hui. Espérons que nous puissions continuer à travailler et mieux profiter de la piste demain. »

Fresh from their fantastic 1-2 finish in the German GP on Sunday, Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa were back on track in Brno on Tuesday on day one of the three-day test.

Although the weather was bright and sunny first thing, a heavy rain shower at 11.30am drenched the track and left the Honda riders no option but to try some wet settings on their RC213V machines, Marc suffering a small crash in turn five after losing the front.

 

The track slowly dried and by mid-afternoon it was dry enough to resume the testing program, but with very low grip. Marc and Dani remained on their current 2014 machines for the duration of the day working on general bike settings with both riders recording 49 laps each.

 

On Wednesday, the plan will be to continue their schedule and also test the 2015 machine for the first time.

 

Marc Marquez:

“Today went fairly well, in the morning it rained and we were able to test out a few things on a wet track and I had a small crash. By the afternoon it had already dried out, although the grip levels weren't too good. The important thing is that right at the end we had higher temperatures and a little more rubber on the asphalt, so we could try some initial changes to the setup. Let's hope that conditions are better tomorrow"

 

Dani Pedrosa

“We had a mixed session on this first day. It rained a lot at midday, so we were able to ride in wet conditions. After lunch the asphalt had dried out, but the track was still really dirty and didn't offer us much grip. So unfortunately it wasn't really a day in which we could test too many things. Let's hope that tomorrow we can make better use of our track time to continue working"