Race
The start was the probably wettest ever at Le Mans. Ickx laid back in his roadster until he could actually see something else than the fog created by closed-cabin cars: Porsche 935s, BMW M1s and Rondeau coupes.
John Fitzpatrick was leading with Dick Barbour's Porsche 935. Hans Stuck had shoved his BMW M1 from 26th to second by 17:00. At that time Jean Rondeau had two of his made-in-Le Mans cars in the top 10.
When the rain decreased Ickx and Joest picked off one car after another. By the end of the third hour, Joest found himself in the lead. When Ickx was back in the car he broke the fuel injection pump belt. But Joest had planned wisely; there was a set of basic tools and a spare belt in the car. Ickx restarted just 14 minutes later but this was enough to lose the lead.
At nightfall, a Rondeau was leading the race but Ickx began the chase. By 01:00 Sunday, the 908/80 was on the same lap as the leaders. Two hours later, they were ahead and began to leave the coupe behind. After numerous lead changes caused by refuelings and scheduled maintenance on the cars around 07:00, the Joest Martini Porsche had built a solid lead.
But the Joest team had underestimated the Rondeaus, as they didn't expect the Cosworth to be reliable. As a result, Joest and Ickx did not run fast enough and at 10:00 when the 908/80 had a gearbox failure, like the works 936s in 1977, they had not built up a large enough lead. The Rondeau of Jean Rondeau himself and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud gained the lead with a gap of three laps over the second placed car. Ickx had to begin a third chase.
When Jaussaud took over from Rondeau with an hour and a half remaining, the Rondeau had still a two laps advance but the Porsche was running faster. With 35min left to race, the rain returned. Ickx pitted for wet tyres while Jaussaud kept the slicks. Jaussaud had made the right choice and remained in the lead. However there was a final surprise: As the rain became heavier in the last lap, Jaussaud lost the control of his car. By luck he did not hit anything. For the first time a driver had won Le Mans on a car bearing his own name. At the end of the race Ickx announced his retirement, which he reversed a few months later.
Read more about this topic: 1980 24 Hours Of Le Mans
Famous quotes containing the word race:
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were,—if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)