Where Heroes Are Born: Le Mans Sports Car Race

Matt Bubbers October 13, 2015

The town of Le Mans in northern France is overrun by people. And cars. Huge crowds clog the main streets to watch professional drivers parade through the city. Fans climb up the sides of buildings, beer in hand, to get a better look.

We’re all here, on an otherwise quiet weekend in June, to watch the 83^rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which might be the most famous — and most prestigious — race in all of motorsports, matched only by the likes of the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500.

Those who follow racing know that heroes are born at places like Le Mans. This is where drivers get truly tested, where the trophies are biggest and the competition is at its most fierce.

Because that faint hope of finding a hero is what motorsport is all about.

This year at Le Mans, the cars are faster than ever before, and more complex, too: futuristic prototypes powered by oil and electricity and kept running with supercomputers and tireless mechanics. It’s no longer an endurance race. It’s a 24-hour sprint to the finish, making the race more grueling than ever.

Porsche takes the lead early. The team — three cars, nine drivers — wants to claim its first overall win in 17 years. No one is more excited about this than Jacky Ickx, who won Le Mans four times at the wheel of a Porsche between 1976 and 1982.

Ickx is now 70 years old and every bit as handsome and rakish as all the old Kodachrome photos suggest. He’s got a sweater tied over his shoulders, below a full head of windswept grey hair. Walking into Porsche’s VIP tent at Le Mans, he’s immediately, immovably surrounded. He glad-hands and smiles and indulges. The former champion struts around the paddock like he owns this place — and, for fans of a certain age, he does. In total he’s won Le Mans six times, a record that stood until Tom Kristensen won his seventh in 2005.

But Ickx, unlike Kristensen, has gone from being one of the greats to an honest-to-god hero of motorsport. It’s an impossible — and impossibly small — list to pin down, but it’s easy to agree on at least a handful of names: Fangio, Clark, Stewart, Senna. Badasses, all. Honest-to-god heroes.