Motorsport: Swiss days at Le Mans

 The numbers speak for themselves: around 550 vehicles from six eras of Le Mans history with drivers from all over the world raced in front of a total of 123,000 spectators on the 13.6 km long, legendary Circuit de la Sarthe. Where Neel Jani won the 84th edition of the 24 Heures du Mans with Porsche three weeks ago, other Swiss drivers took to the podium as overall winners of the Le Mans Classic, which has only been held every two years since 2002.

Christian Traber made the start in the field of pre-war cars. With a lot of preparatory work at home in the Graber sports garage in Toffen and on site, his team got the thermal problems of the original 4.5-liter engine in the 1939 Talbot Lago under control to such an extent that Traber and the American Spencer Trenery were able to win all three heats over 43 to 46 minutes each, spread over 24 hours.

One hundredth of a second decided the victory
The closest decision was made in the 1966 to 1971 racing cars: Bernhard Thuner and Belgian Eric De Doncker fought a thrilling duel for the lead in all three races with their Lola T70 Mk3. When the three races were added up, a tenth of a second ultimately decided the overall victory in favor of the garage owner from Geneva! Toni Seiler from Zurich, who also drove a Lola Ford V8 Coupé, finished third on the famous podium. Overall, the fastest man of the weekend was German Marco Werner, who is based in Kreuzlingen. He also won all three races and the overall classification for cars up to 1981 in an open-top Porsche 936 with a 2.1-liter turbo engine.

You can read more about the Swiss team's performance in the detailed report from our colleagues at Zwischengas.com.

www.lemans.org
www.zwischengas.com
Photos: Peter Wyss