|
Briggs Cunningham asked me to drive one of his Corvettes at
Le Mans. I'd raced a number of Briggs' cars: a Fiat-Abarth
double bubble in my first Sebring (1957); a Porsche 550 RS;
OSCAs of several dimensions; Formula Juniors by BMC and
Stanguellini. I'd driven them at places like Watkins Glen,
Daytona, Cumberland, Lime Rock, Elkhart Lake, Nassau and
Montgomery, an upstate New York airport course. Airport
courses were the norm then. Indeed, I'd driven nearly every
thing Briggs had in his racing assemblage. Even his D-type.
Though that memorable Jaguar had slipped from my mind
because I had not actually raced it, just driven it. Years later the
now deceased Gordon Martin, a writer about cars for the San
Francisco Chronicle reminded me. He said I had given him one
of the most memorable rides of his life in that D-type at
Thompson. I didn't ask what made it memorable preferring to
assume I had dazzled him with my skill and insouciance.
I was excited at the prospect of driving a Corvette in the 24
Heures du Mans and had no doubt I could do it. Apparently
Briggs thought so too or he wouldn't have put my name on the
entry list. Years later someone gave me a copy of that entry that
he had found at a swap meet, but I can't find it now.
The entry was for 1960. The team was finally composed of
Briggs, John Fitch, Dickie Thompson, Bill Kimberly, Fred
Windridge and Bob Grossman. Zora Arkus-Duntov was down
as a reserve driver. Zora never drove that year but then neither
did I. Some 40 years later in jest I accused Bob Grossman of
stealing "my" ride. We'd bumped into each at the New York
Auto Show and spent a fine few hours recalling our racing
days. Bob and I had shared Bill Harrah's Ferrari GTB in a race
at Elkhart Lake and he had bought my Ferrari Berlinetta after
my forced awareness that an owner-driven race car was a fool's
carriage. Bob was so profusely apologetic about taking my Le
Mans seat that I hastily reassured him I was only kidding.
"Maybe it was Bill Kimberly who did it," I said, kidding about
that, too. I knew what had happened.
I did not race a Corvette at Le Mans for Briggs just as I had
not raced an OSCA for Luigi Chinetti (though he kept nominating
me for his North American Racing Team – NART). Nor did
I drive at Le Mans for the Porsche factory team, though invited
by Huschke von Hanstein, the team manager, to do so. The reason
in each case was the same, summed up in a report from
Luigi Chinetti after he had championed my cause with
Monsieur Accat, the dour head of the Automobile Club de
l'Ouest. That club had organized racing at Le Mans since its
inaugural there in 1906. Luigi had particular clout at Le Mans.
At that time he was the only three-time winner of the race, once
having driven all but some 15 minutes of the 24 hours himself.
That in 1949.
Luigi's influence with the Le Mans organizers went for
naught. I remember that moment. It was outdoors, I think near
scrutineering. A general hubbub of people moving about. I
watched Luigi some 30 feet away locked in gesture-filled conversation
with a squat, imperious man I knew to be the gran
fromage. Luigi walked back to where I was rooted and shrugged his signature shrug. "Monsieur Accat said, ‘This is an
invitational race and we do not choose to invite women.' "
Another shrug, this with his mouth, too.
I matched his shrug. Of course I was disappointed. I was
disappointed every time I was denied a drive or entry or access
because women were not chosen to be invited. But I had a
secret superstition that mitigated the blow. Maybe, my thinking
went, my exclusion was a life-saver in disguise. What if I
crashed full bore into a tree or skidded off a cliff? Heel-hand to
forehead: "Cheeze, I didn't have to be here!"
Hey, it made it easier to accept rejection.
My non-drives at Le Mans had started earlier. I think the
first one was with Porsche. Porsche's entries then were not the
race-dominating bolides of later years, but 1500 cc cars that
through efficiency, reliability and nimbleness often proved to be
lion tamers. Baron Huschke von Hanstein was a colorful displaced
east German whose victory in the last prewar Mille
Miglia was freshest on his resume. He, like Luigi Chinetti,
believed in the abilities of women drivers and had championed
a number in races and rallies before the war and after. He had
lent me a factory Porsche Carrera for a three-hour race the day
after Sebring in March. The invitation to race at Le Mans followed
from that. |
