1970 24 Hours of Le Mans

1970 24 Hours of Le Mans
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The 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 38th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 13 and 14 June 1970. It was the eighth round of the 1970 World Sportscar Championship season. As the race saw the factory teams entering four Ferrari 512S and five Porsche 917K, plus another nine of these 12-cylinder powered sports car entered by privateers, and provided the background for the Steve McQueen movie Le Mans, the 1970 Le Mans race is also called Battle of the Titans.

Much of the racing footage of the motion picture was taken from a competing car, as the #29 Porsche 908/02 had been fitted with movie cameras.

During June 1969, Enzo Ferrari sold half of his company to Fiat to finance the construction of the required 25 cars to compete with the Porsche 917; the Ferrari 512, powered by a 5.0L V12, was introduced for the 1970 season. Despite a lack of factory drivers, as Ferrari had only two F1 pilots permanently under contract, the Scuderia entered four works cars. With another seven cars entered by customers, a total of eleven Ferrari 512S entries were accepted for Le Mans, plus a 1969 Ferrari 312P in the prototype category, in which three other factories competed.

More Armco was added to the track in the spots that originally weren't as dangerous as other spots where Armco was added the year previous.

Disappointed by the poor results of the 917 in 1969 and facing a new competition, Porsche contracted John Wyer and the Gulf Team to become the official Porsche team, and also the official development partner. During tests in Zeltweg, Wyer's engineer John Horsmann had the idea to increase downforce to the expense of drag, a new tail was molded with aluminum sheets taped together. This worked well as the new short tail gave the 917 better stability. The new version was called 917 K (Kurzheck).

Wyer was surprised to discover that another team was carefully preparing Le Mans with close support from Porsche. As in 1969, the Porsche Salzburg team was a de facto second works team under control of members of the Porsche family. The Martini Racing team also gained some support from Porsche AG; obviously Porsche had made major efforts to win the race with competing teams.

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