The 1972 Le Mans 24 Hours will not go down as one of the more exciting events, but it will have its place in history for featuring the first victory by a French car since 1950, when Louis Rosier and his son won with a Lago-Talbot. This year it was Matra that won, success coming at last after a number of tries. It was very much a ‘typical’ Le Mans, about the only thing missing being the stifling Sunday morning heat. This year the weather fluctuated from heavy rain to brief sunny periods, but never became stable. As so often happens, Saturday afternoon opened with a ‘sprint’, then things settled down, then troubles began with continuous retirements through the night. Inevitably when 55 cars set out to race for 24 hours some of them crash, and equally inevitably when racing cars crash someone gets hurt, or worse, and this year’s event was overshadowed by the tragic death of Joakim Bonnier. The bearded Swedish driver who had been racing since 1954, was 42 years old and had probably raced in a greater variety of events and cars than most people. His Lola T280-Cosworth V8 was in collision with a GTB Ferrari at 150mph and was projected into the air, over the guard-rails and into a wood, where the car literally burst asunder. Vic Elford, who was following in an Alfa Romeo said he thought Bonnier made a slight error of judgement, other people reckoned that the inexperienced Swiss Ferrari driver moved over to let the Lola through, and got in difficulties on the loose edge of the track and skidded back into its path. Whatever happened, it was an accident, unfortunate and unforeseen. It all happened shortly after 8am on Sunday on the flat-out right-hand bend before Indianapolis, and at the time the Lola was in eighth position having been delayed the previous afternoon by gearbox trouble after leading early on.
During the months preceding the race it looked as though it was going to be one of the classic events, for the Matra team was putting all its efforts into it, even to the point of foregoing all other sports car races. It entered four cars, and backed its chances every possible way with variations of body shape, engine power, known engine reliability, fuel consumption, tyre sizes, gearbox variations and so on, the arrangement of the variables meaning that whatever conditions prevailed for the race, one of the four cars would be at an advantage for one reason or another. The eight drivers selected also seemed to cover every contingency, being Amon/Beltoise in car number 12, Cevert/Ganley in car #14, Hill/Pescarolo in #15, and Hobbs/Jabouille in #16, and it was such a complete team effort that all prize money was to be pooled and shared eight ways, so that anyone who felt they had the wrong car for the conditions could not grumble about the pay. As far as the glory was concerned there was no discussion, it was to be for Matra and France. The pre-race testing was remarkably thorough and no expense was spared in the workshops, the laboratories, or the test-track and the Paul Ricard circuit near Marseilles was used for 24-hour test runs. 

Without any question Matra was out to win and the reason it chose 1972 for this onslaught was because at last the FIA rules were on its side, with a 3-litre limit on all sports and prototype cars. It will be recalled that a limit of 3-litres was brought in for 1968 by a certain amount of jiggery-pokery in order to help Matra win Le Mans, but an oversight on the sports car regulations, as distinct from the prototype regulations, allowed Porsche and Ferrari to build 5-litre ‘production’ sports cars, which soon became 5-litre ‘works’ cars and the 3-litre prototypes could not hope to beat the Porsche 917 or Ferrari 512, and as it took two years to re-write and implement new rules to get rid of the 5-litre cars, this year was the first one where 3-litre prototypes could be certain of winning. As always Ferrari was not slow off the mark and its 3-litre prototypes have swept the board all this season, so that its entry of three cars for Le Mans – for his own factory team, plus an extra one for Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team – introduced a big factor into Matra’s plans, but even though they did not participate in any earlier races against Ferrari, they were very confident, especially on the reliability score. The first little skirmish of this interesting confrontation took place back in March at the Le Mans test weekend and Ferrari was fractionally faster than Matra, but clearly more fragile. It was hoped they would enter a car apiece in the 4-hour race that weekend, but they both withdrew saying they could not spare the time.
Added to the Matra versus Ferrari battle was the entry of four Alfa Romeos by Autodelta, two cars from the Gulf-Mirage team and two Lola T280 cars from the Bonnier team. It all fell very flat though when Ferrari withdrew its cars a week before the event, for a number of reasons; among them were the facts that its flimsy F1-style cars were not built for 24-hour races, the flat-12-cylinder engines failed to stand up to long flat-out tests. Ferrari had won the 1972 Manufacturers’ Championship anyway, so a failure at Le Mans would do more harm than good, and by withdrawing it left Matra with a hollow victory—if it failed to win Matra would have been the laughing stock of racing. Added to all that Enzo Ferrari is still a law unto himself and always will be. As the race drew nearer it became very obvious that Alfa Romeo was not going to provide much opposition, and it reduced its entry to three, and at the last moment the Gulf-Mirage pair were withdrawn as John Wyer did not reckon the Cosworth V8 to be suitable for Le Mans, and the new Weslake-Ford V12 was not ready.

The moment of history. Prior to the race Henri Pescarolo (right) wasn’t keen on sharing with Graham Hill, but was proven wrong when Hill produced a fine display