1985 24 Hours of Le Mans

The 1985 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 53rd Grand Prix of Endurance, as well as the fourth round of the 1985 World Endurance Championship. It took place at the Circuit de la Sarthe, France, on 15 and 16 June 1985. The works Porsche team returned, with a Group C version of the 962. As favourites, they could expect from their customer teams and the works Lancias. In qualifying, Hans-Joachim Stuck set a new lap record in his works Porsche, with an average speed over 250 km/h for the first time. Mercedes returned for the first time in 30 years, as engine supplier to the Sauber team. The return was short-lived though, as the car got airborne in practice and crashed. With tighter fuel regulations this year from FISA, the teams would have to be more mindful of fuel economy and speed. However, from the start the Joest and Richard Lloyd Racing teams had the measure of the field. Working in tandem, Klaus Ludwig and Jonathon Palmer took turns leading and slipstreaming behind the other. Then at 9pm Jean-Claude Andruet had a major accident when his WM had a tyre blow out a high speed at the Mulsanne kink, sending him into the Armco barriers. Andruet was uninjured, but the race went behind the pace-cars for a half-hour as repairs were done. Just as the race resumed James Weaver pitted the RLR Porsche with an engine misfire. Traced to a faulty sensor, they returned to the race in 7th.

Thereafter, the Joest Porsche was untroubled, with Ludwig and Barilla driving a perfectly-judged race combining speed with economy that none of the other teams could match. For only the second time, the same car-chassis won a consecutive Le Mans, following Ford in 1968-69. Ludwig took his third overall win. Palmer and Weaver came back through the field and were second in the RLR Porsche. Third was the works Porsche of Derek Bell and Hans-Joachim Stuck, seven laps behind the winners. Both Lancias finished this year, in 6th and 7th, and the first non-turbo was the EMKA-Aston Martin, coming home in 11th, 14 laps ahead of the Tullius/Ballot-Léna/Robinson Jaguar in 13th.

In his final Le Mans, Jacky Ickx finished an anticlimactic 10th as the lowest placed Porsche, after a race of constant delay. Despite the tighter fuel restrictions, the winning car covered 190 km (115 miles) further than they did winning the previous year. They recorded the second-fastest race speed ever at Le Mans, only exceeded by the 1971 race and also won the Index prize.