Muddy Tracks and Hailstorms: The Epic Tale of Bentley's Debut at Le Mans

May 21, 1923: a lone 3-litre Bentley leaves London bound for the Continent. At the wheel is Bentley dealer John Duff; by his side is Frank Clement, the only professional racing driver the factory ever employed. In the back sit Arthur Saunders and Jack Besant, mechanics from Bentley’s experimental department. Together with the few spares and tools they carry strapped to the cars, they amount to the entire resource of a team which will try to win the new Grand Prix d’Endurance at a track to the south of the cathedral city of Le Mans. No matter that the car is privately owned and entered, nor that it will be the sole foreign competitor, ranged against a legion of French works machines. History has already shown that John Duff is not a man easily put off by adversity.

In September the previous year, he had decided to attack the British Double 12 record — two 12-hour runs on consecutive days at Brooklands — with his own short-chassis 3-litre. He drove single-handed.

The late Walter Hassan, Bentley boy and designer of Jaguar’s V12 engine, remembered the event well: “Duff really was tough. After the first 12-hour run he had to be lifted from the car and carried to the Hand and Spear in Weybridge and it didn’t seem to us that he could carry on the next day. But he never questioned it.”