Events · 4 min read · 602 words
Why did Le Mans drivers run to their cars at the start?
From 1925 to 1969, the 24 Hours of Le Mans began with drivers sprinting on foot across the track to their cars, jumping in, firing the engine and driving off. The "Le Mans start" was pure theatre and it became the race's signature image. It died because it was lethally unsafe in the seatbelt era, and its end is one of the sport's great protest stories: Jacky Ickx walked to his car in 1969, strapped in properly while the field drove away, and won the race anyway.
How the running start worked
The cars were parked in echelon along the pit wall, angled and empty. The drivers stood in painted circles on the opposite side of the road. When the French tricolore dropped, they ran, and the first corner arrived with fifty-plus cars accelerating through a cloud of half-seated drivers still closing their doors.
The format rewarded a peculiar skill set. Fast starters practised the sprint and the jump; some cars were ordered with the ignition and starter positioned for it. Porsche famously placed the ignition key to the left of the steering wheel so the driver could turn the key with one hand while engaging first gear with the other, a layout the company kept long after the reason for it disappeared.
Why it had to end
The problem was not the sprint itself but what it made drivers skip. By the late 1960s cars had seatbelts worth wearing, and a driver who took the time to buckle a full harness gave away half a minute to rivals who drove the opening lap loose in the seat. The incentive was exactly backwards: the most dangerous minutes of the race, cold tyres and cold brakes in maximum traffic, were driven unbelted.
It contributed to at least one death. Willy Mairesse crashed on the opening lap in 1968 when the door of his Ford GT40, unlatched in the start rush, opened at speed on the Mulsanne; his injuries ended his career and he took his own life the following year. The pattern was visible to everyone in the paddock.
Ickx's walk, 1969
At the 1969 start, Jacky Ickx, then 24 years old, staged his protest. While the other drivers sprinted, he walked across the road, settled into his Ford GT40, fastened the harness completely and left the pit straight last. On the first lap, privateer John Woolfe crashed fatally at Maison Blanche, unbelted.
Ickx and Jackie Oliver then drove those 24 hours into legend, beating the Porsche 908 of Hans Herrmann by around 120 metres in the closest finish the race had seen. The argument was over: the winner had made the safety case and the scoreboard agreed with him. Ickx went on to win Le Mans six times, a record only Tom Kristensen has beaten.
What replaced it
In 1970 the drivers started belted in, cars still parked in echelon, and from 1971 the race adopted the rolling start behind a pace car that it still uses today. The modern 24 Hours begins with the field sweeping through the Dunlop curve in formation at racing speed, which produces its own spectacular first lap without asking anyone to drive unstrapped.
The old start survives everywhere in the culture: in the Steve McQueen film, in the name of every "Le Mans start" at club events and karting enduros, and in Porsche's left-hand ignition. The race the WEC era inherited kept the theatre and deleted the roulette, which is the right trade, and it only cost a tradition that was always more beautiful in photographs than it was in a cockpit.
Last updated · le mans start · running start · jacky ickx 1969 · tradition · history