Originally Posted by
Steve Holmes
Enduro racing back then was different, outright pace was less important and there was a huge difference between qualifying pace and race pace. During the race we had a target number of laps per hour and pretty much ignored what the works teams were doing, not that we could do much anyway. The limiting factor for the turbo cars were the regulations covering fuel tank size and no fuel stops in the first 20 minutes which effectively prevented them having the wick turned up too far in race mode. Even so one of the Martini Porsche works cars ran out of fuel out on the track after 19 minutes so that was one down! No safety car to get the thing back to the pits then.
So the answer to your question is the handling was pretty poor, the car really was maximized to get down the Mulsanne as fast as possible and be simple, strong and robust enough to run at a constant pace for the whole 24 hours. Real Tortoise and the Hare stuff.
The '77 car which John and I built and was a new design only using some Lola components like uprights etc was a much better car all round and in fact won an endurance race at Silverston later in its career whereas this car's lap times anywhere other than Le Mans were real slow. Incidentally that short nose was all the rage at the time but the '77 car had a much longer nose, long tail and the wing lower than the engine cover and was much better through the air with no reduction in downforce.
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