Le Mans, 1998.

I'll go ahead and say it. For nearly ten years, the 24 hours of Le Mans, has been a snooze-fest. Oh, I'm sure that if you're there it's still a great party, and the lower classes have been fun to watch. But for those of us watching from afar, it's been terrible, especially at the top with Audi dominating for the better part of a decade, due largely, I think, to the scrapping of a successor to the car that wins here.

1998 at Le Mans was a great race, it featured some of my favorite cars ever to make an appearance at the Sarthe. The ultimate version of Porsche’s GT1 contender squared off against Mercedes CLK-LM, Nissan’s R390, and Toyota’s amazing, flame-spitting TS020. In many ways this was the swansong of the GT1 era, so it’s fitting that this is really the only win by one of the factory GT1 specials. The list of cool cars goes on with the Long-tail Mclaren F1s, BMW’s F1 powered roadsters. Panoz’ GT1 coupe, tons of Vipers (When are those going to return to Le Mans?), and of course, Ferrari’s 333SP.

One of the first things to become apparent is that Nissan had not kept pace with GT1 development. Regarded the year before as spoiler’s for the GT1 class because of its Group-C derived chassis and engine, the R390 was, by ’98 looking a bit old hat next to the Toyotas and Porsches.


Catch the BMW spinning into frame at Mulsanne about a third of the way in.


Great shot near the end of this clip with one of the Nissan’s showing a lot of the characteristic brake-glow, also a great shot of one of the Toyotas shooting what must be three feet of flame from its exhaust.




That was the last overall win for Porsche at Le Mans. The 1999 Porsche LMP project was scrapped, possibly to pave the way for Audi's R8 prototypes. It would go on to live again as the Carrera GT road car, but lost something by having its racing heritage cut short. 1998 really was a special year at the Sarthe. All this, and not a diesel in sight...