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<\/a><\/div><\/div>\nThe 787B\u2019s success at the 1991 Le Mans race weekend was a decade in the making. In 1967 Mazdaspeed started life as an independent motor racing team launched by one of Tokyo\u2019s largest Mazda dealerships: Mazda Auto Tokyo. Run by the indefatigable Takayoshi Ohashi, the team first entered Le Mans in 1974 and returned 13 times over the next 18 years. In 1983 Mazdaspeed became a subsidiary of Mazda Motor Corporation, and by the end of the 1980s Takaharu Kobayakawa \u2013 programme manager of the Mazda RX-7 \u2013 was responsible for Mazda\u2019s motorsports activities; he and Ohashi would oversee the Le Mans initiative.<\/p>\n
A regulation change meant Mazdaspeed knew the rotary engine that powered the car would be banned for the following season. It was now or never for the 787B. Elsewhere, Ohashi scored a small, but critical, victory in securing an amendment from FISA (the motorsport governing body at the time) allowing the 787B to run in its standard configuration, while the competition was required to add ballast as part of a new regulation. Finally, in the no. 55 car the three hot-shot F1 drivers \u2013 Johnny Herbert, Volker Weidler and Bertrand Gachot \u2013 gave Mazda hope that an overall win was possible.<\/p>\n
The majority of the race was uneventful. A strong start saw Weidler carve through the pack and the car worked faultlessly through the night. With three hours to go, the Mazda no. 55 car was in second place. Suddenly, the first-place Mercedes-Benz suffered a fault and retired. The race was now Mazda\u2019s to lose. The no. 55 stayed out front, securing the first overall victory for a Japanese team at Le Mans. And the team\u2019s other 787B \u2013 the no. 18 and 787 no. 56 \u2013 prospered in the race, too, finishing sixth and eighth respectively, a huge achievement.<\/p>\n
JOHNNY HERBERT THE DRIVER WHO CROSSED THE FINISH LINE FIRST<\/p>\n
\u201cI was exhausted and dehydrated. It was only adrenaline that got me to the 24 hour mark\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnny Herbert belongs to an exclusive club of winners who never made their Le Mans victory podium. Rather than celebrating the trophy presentation with Mazdaspeed, he was unconscious at the track medical centre. The race had taken its toll. Over the weekend Herbert had struggled for sleep, and nerves had meant only instant noodles would both stay down and provide sustenance.<\/p>\n
As the final few hours of the race progressed, Mazdaspeed team principal Takayoshi Ohashi and consultant team manager Jacky Ickx radioed Herbert asking him to extend his driving stint to the end of the race. With victory so close, Ohashi was unwilling to risk the uncertainty of an extra pit stop and driver change. Herbert agreed, but exhausted and badly dehydrated it was only adrenaline that got him past the 24 hour mark and confirm the win.<\/p>\n
Herbert insists the excellent 787B was a product of a team operating at the peak of its powers. Ohashi was \u201cvery shrewd and had a great sense of humour\u201d. <\/p>\n
He had spent the previous decade enrolling some \u201cbrilliant engineering minds\u201d and embraced a truly international recruitment policy, getting in the likes of British car designer Nigel Shroud and Belgian six-time Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx as an advisor and consultant team manager.<\/p>\n
Herbert had been introduced to the Mazdaspeed team by Mazda driver David Kennedy in 1990. Recovering from injuries sustained in a near career-ending crash in 1988, he was highly regarded and had good Formula 1 (F1) experience. Herbert says the Mazda was \u201ca lot easier than an F1 car\u201d to drive, with downforce and g force both significantly less aggressive. The cabin of the 787B was beautifully laid out and comfortable, and \u201cthe rotary engine was absolutely fantastic\u201d. He remembers it as \u201csilky smooth\u201d and, crucially, bulletproof in terms of reliability. Herbert laughs when he recalls the gearbox as the \u201cslowest in the world\u201d, but it was designed for endurance over speed. While contemporary Le Mans teams can change a gearbox in less than two minutes during a pit stop, in 1991 the \u2018box had to last the full 24 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cMazdaspeed was a very small team compared to the might of the competition, such as Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar,\u201d says Herbert. But by June 1991 the team was \u201cin a perfect position because it had been through a huge learning process\u201d over the previous years. Seasoned drivers such as Pierre Dieudonn\u00e9 and Yojiro Terada (among others) brought experience to the Mazdaspeed driving roster and, despite being considered underdogs, there was no doubting the \u201chard-earned\u201d nature of the victory that would come.<\/p>\n
Thirty years after the event, Herbert\u2019s memory of the race is unclouded. He remembers the camaraderie with his fellow drivers as they competed to get as much speed from the car while sticking to the prescribed fuel economy figures (1.9 l\/km of fuel). He remembers the \u201cbeautiful\u201d scream of the 787B\u2019s engine \u201cas it ricocheted through the main grandstand and the paddock complex\u201d, and through the night he remembers watching trackside race fans asleep in their chairs and sleeping bags, lit up by the 787B\u2019s exhaust flame as he downshifted through the Indianapolis corner.<\/p>\n
Mostly, though, Herbert remembers the \u201chuge smile\u201d that spread across Ohashi\u2019s face as their main competition, a Mercedes-Benz, overheated and retired, seeding the race lead to the no. 55 787B. As the the 24 hour mark was reached and the victory confirmed, Herbert recalls the fans rushing onto the track to confirm an \u201cextremely popular\u201d win. The no. 55 car became an icon, and that it took \u201c27 years for another Japanese team to win Le Mans\u201d is testament to the scale of Mazda\u2019s achievement.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thirty years ago, at 4pm on Sunday 23rd of June 1991, as Johnny Herbert flew down the Mulsanne Straight in his orange Mazda 787B, he received crackly news over the team radio. Herbert and his Mazdaspeed teammates \u2013 Mazda\u2019s motorsport subsidiary \u2013 had won the brutal 24 Hours of Le Mans, endurance racing\u2019s most famous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27850,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25809\/revisions\/27850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}