[LM24] Bentley and Le Mans

[Peter Mallett]

LE MANS, June 21, 1930: Bentley is out to win the famed 24-hour race for the fourth time running. Between it and victory stands a Mercedes SSK driven by Rudolf Caracciola, Germany's greatest driver until the Schumacher era.

The strategy is simple: Sir Henry "Tim" Birkin will run his 4.5-litre Blower Bentley on pure benzole to provide power to match the pace of the supercharged 7.0-litre SSK, despite knowing that such a move means the engine is almost certain to break.

The less stressed Speed Six Bentleys will run behind, waiting to mop up should Birkin break the Mercedes. He sets about his task at once, to lie second behind the Mercedes by the third lap.

On the long Mulsanne Straight, he inches up on his rival despite a tyre throwing a tread under the strain. Undaunted, he approaches the Mulsanne hairpin at more than 125mph while the Mercedes occupies all of the narrow strip of road ahead. But there's always the grass - and Birkin has two of his three remaining tyre treads on it as he pulls off the overtaking manoevre of the decade.

Caracciola, as he later graciously concedes, never even sees the Bentley coming. On the third lap Birkin sets a new outright track record before first a tyre and then, later in the race, the engine give up. By then, however, the job is done. The Mercedes is broken and Woolf Barnato's Speed Six claims Bentley's fifth and final win at Le Mans.

With thanks to "Electronic Telegraph".