Funny how perspectives change. Reporting the Le Mans 24 Hours for Motor Sport in 1971, Andrew Marriott mentioned that Jenks opted to miss the event for the first time in 20 years, because he wasn’t impressed by an entry list containing little of substance beyond nine Ferrari 512Ms and seven Porsche 917s. Sounds delicious now, but that wasn’t necessarily the case in period…

“The field was made up,” Andrew wrote, “by a large number of make-weight Porsche 911s, which proved thoroughly boring to watch and probably rather boring to drive, except when you had a 512 lapping you on one side and a 917 on the other.”

The Gulf-liveried JW Automotive 917s seemed to have the race under control until shortly before half-distance, when Pedro Rodríguez/Jackie Oliver suffered a seized hub, then a split oil pipe, while Richard Attwood/Herbert Müller needed to pause for a gearbox rebuild.