Petit Le Mans – or: In Search of Lost Time

Le Mans was just around the corner. That always makes me wistful. Because I always wanted to race there myself (if I’d actually made a career as a driver). And because Jo Gartner died there thirty-nine years ago, on the Mulsanne Straight. Just after three in the morning. A mechanical failure on his Porsche 962, probably a broken rear suspension. There’s no TV footage of the crash, only a ghostly one-minute-twenty-seven-second clip on YouTube. The white headlights crawling for more than two hours behind the pace car after the accident. A snapped telephone pole, the splintered branches of a tree. The Porsche first slammed into the pole with unimaginable force, then shot off into the woods. The eeriest part was the debris scattered everywhere. On one piece you could still make out Jo’s name and the red-white-red Austrian flag.

Still, I can’t seem to let go of Le Mans – the mother of all races. I’m there every year, even if only as a chronicler.

On the A8 – heading toward Armin’s cozy home, the Carrera GT ironing out the left lane in sixth gear – a completely nonsensical idea hit me: we’d use the car for our own personal Le Mans. Twenty-four hours in circles. Somewhere around here. A loop ten to twenty kilometers long (the Circuit de la Sarthe measures 13.6 km). We’d swap every two hours – one drives, the other rests at Armin’s place. I got so excited I blurted it out right away. Armin’s answer: “My time’s too precious for something that stupid.”

But at breakfast the next morning, after his first sip of coffee, he said, “I’ve slept on it. When do we start?” The casual tone in which he said this didn’t match the eager look he gave me over the rim of his cup. First we needed to find a good route. A former colleague from the area volunteered to help and handed us a roadbook that really packed a punch. Short version: “Start in Weilheim an der Teck. Out of town, turn right toward Bissingen. Long curves to Nabern, then a short straight to the B465. Hard braking before a right-hand kink onto the B465 toward the A8. On the A8 toward Munich, flat-out to exit 58. Switchbacks back to Weilheim. About 20 kilometers.”

We started at 4 p.m. on a Saturday – just like the real 24 Hours. Armin took the first stint. Since it’s about 30 kilometers from his house to Weilheim, he left at half past three. “So who actually wins?” he asked as he was heading out.

→ Read the full story in the new ramp #69 "More Than Machines".