1930 24 Hours of Le Mans

The 1930 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 8th Grand Prix of Endurance that took place at the Circuit de la Sarthe on 21 and 22 June 1930. It saw the first appearance of a German car and the first entry from female drivers.^[1]

In the smallest ever field in the Le Mans history; there were only 17 starters. This was a race of two halves. At the start the Mercedes of Rudolf Caracciola/Christian Werner was pursued by the supercharged ‘Blower’ Bentley of Tim Birkin. Twice he passed the white car on the Mulsanne Straight and both times he was thwarted by a rear-tyre blowout. Then Sammy Davis chased in a works Bentley. When that car was put into the sandbank at Pontlieue corner, it was the other works Bentley of Woolf Barnato and Glen Kidston taking up the Germans’ challenge. The lead changed a number of times into the night, until at 1.30am when the Mercedes was retired with a broken dynamo and a flat battery.^[1]

After that it became a procession for the remaining Bentleys, although both the privateer Blower Bentleys retired on Sunday.^[1] The two works cars carried on and cruised to another formation finish. Barnato had won his third consecutive Le Mans, from three starts. Talbot finished third and fourth and took the lucrative Index of Performance prize by the narrowest of margins (0.004) from the winning Bentley. The Bugatti of Marguerite Mareuse and Odette Siko had a trouble-free run and finished seventh, stealing the contemporary headlines from Bentley.^[2]