24h Le Mans
24 HOURS CENTENARY – MAKES, MARQUES AND IMPRINTS⎮While Aston Martin made its 24 Hours of Le Mans début in the interwar period, the 1950s was the golden era for the marque at the French endurance classic, culminating in the win for Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby in 1959. We look back at a success story patiently built over a decade.
Originally founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford, Aston Martin was revived after the Second World War when the firm was bought by British tractor manufacturer, David Brown. Brown’s initials became synonymous with the marque’s most prestigious models, including a number of cars that raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans from 1949.
The first car featuring Brown’s initials was the DB2 coupé, designed in collaboration with the Italian coachbuilder Touring and powered by a new 2.6 L straight-six engine developing 105 hp, or over 120 hp for the version seen at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The DB2 finished in the top ten of the overall classification four years in succession: seventh in 1949, fifth and sixth in 1950, third and fifth in 1951, and seventh in 1952.
The DB3S, introduced in 1953, retained the straight-six engine layout with output increased to 225 hp (2.9 litres). British driver Peter Collins placed second at Le Mans in 1955 and ’56 with Belgian Paul Frère and Stirling Moss respectively. In 1958, brothers Peter and Graham Whitehead achieved the same result.
The Aston Martin that finally took the marque to the top of the Le Mans podium was created in 1956. The British manufacturer remained faithful to the straight-six engine for a model that it named DBR1. Its first appearance in the 24 Hours that year resulted in retirement, but two decisions made by the ACO were to have a crucial impact on the car’s development: restriction of engine size to three litres in 1958, followed by the advent of a preliminary testing day in 1959.
The forerunner to today’s Test Day gave Aston Martin the opportunity to make a raft of improvements, mainly to the gearbox and aerodynamics, and thus make up ground on Ferrari in terms of pure performance.
The 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans was the setting for an intense battle between the Italian and British camps. Stirling Moss and Jack Fairman in the DBR1 took control of the early stages before giving way to the Ferrari of Dan Gurney/Jean Behra. The successive retirements of Moss/Fairman (sixth hour) and Behra/Gurney (10th hour) left Olivier Gendebien and Phil Hill in the lead shortly before the half-way point. It appeared that nothing could stop the 1958 winners from taking their second consecutive victory. However, engine trouble scuppered the hopes of the Belgian/American pair less than four hours from the chequered flag.
The surviving DBR1s of Roy Salvadori/Carroll Shelby and Paul Frère/Maurice Trintignant, who up to that point had played a safe race while maintaining a top ten position, swept home for a one-two finish. The winners had one scare when vibration struck the car after Salvadori had lost a piece of tread from the left rear tyre, but they held firm to clinch Aston Martin’s sole overall Le Mans win.
This decade-long ascent to the summit of Le Mans owed much to Brown’s intuition. At Spa-Francorchamps in 1950, he sensed the organisational skills of a British engineer who he asked to become his sporting director – John Wyer. Wyer, of course, subsequently became part of Le Mans legend in the late sixties and early seventies under the sky blue and orange colours of Gulf Oil, but, before that, Brown made him Managing Director of Aston Martin. Wyer nonetheless continued to keep a watchful eye at the 24 Hours of Le Mans over the company’s racing team who, from 1959, were under the responsibility of Reg Parnell, who had driven an Aston Martin there six times between 1950 (sixth) and 1956.
During this period, Brown’s boys had former and future winners of the French endurance classic in their ranks other than Shelby and Salvadori. Trintignant won at Le Mans in 1954 with Argentinia’s José Froilán González, also in a Ferrari, before becoming the first Frenchman to win a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix, at Monaco in 1955 and 1958. In 1960, Frère won the race for Ferrari with Gendebien. While neither Collins nor Moss ever tasted success at Le Mans, they did notch up 19 Grand Prix wins between them, while Jack Brabham claimed his first Formula One world title in 1959, the year of Aston Martin’s Le Mans win.
Hollywood made a nod to the 1959 triumph in the superb opening night-time sequence of James Mangold’s 2019 film Ford v Ferrari (aka Le Mans ’66), in which Carroll Shelby is played by Matt Damon.
Since the mid-2000s, Aston Martin has met with renewed success at Le Mans in prototypes and, especially, GT racing – to feature in another chapter to be published shortly.
PHOTOS: LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), CIRCUIT DES 24 HEURES, 1950–1959 24 HOURS OF LE MANS – FROM TOP TO BOTTOM (© ACO archives): three Aston Martin DB2s at scrutineering for the 1950 race; the #8 DB3S, shared by Roy Salvadori and Reg Parnell, in 1954. Salvadori went on to win in 1959 when Parnell was sporting director; the DBR1 of Stirling Moss and Jack Brabham in 1958; after placing second for Aston Martin in 1955 with Peter Collins, Paul Frère partnered Maurice Trintignant for a repeat performance in 1959; Carroll Shelby in the dungarees he wore during the 1959 race.
