“Hans started Le Mans in 1970 and I had the pleasure of spectating. It was as frantic as a Grand Prix and I just couldn’t believe it – so many cars had a legitimate claim to the win, and I knew the race couldn’t go on like it had started. And, of course, it didn’t. All sorts of silly things happened: there was an accident involving three Ferraris, Jo Siffert over-revved his engine and Mike Hailwood failed to stop for wet tyres in good time. I wasn’t interested about where we were because we were so outperformed. And then after 10 hours, someone told me we were in the lead. I was dumbfounded. The greatest difficulty was then defending that lead for 14 hours in the most difficult conditions. I can’t describe how wet it was and it felt like we were driving so slowly. There was a lot going on, but we ran a scheduled race, our pitstops were exactly as planned and I can’t remember any trouble at all. To me, it was just another race, but Le Mans has become much bigger now.” Richard Attwood Winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970 | |
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