“La sieste”

Jean-Pierre Beltoise takes a nap “la sieste” on the curved sidepods of his beautiful Matra MS 650 during the 1970 Tour Auto (photo above). The Tour de France Automobile started in Bandol on September 19, covered a total of 4,525 km, and finished in Nice on September 27, 1970.

The Matra Sport team entered two MS650 prototypes for the crews Henri Pescarolo/Johnny Rives and for Jean-Pierre Beltoise/Jean Todt, and logically appeared to be the overwhelming favorite.

Among the competition were the two Porsche 911 ST 2.4s of Gérard Larrousse/Maurice Gélin and Guy Chasseuil/Christian Baron, but the Porsche 914/6 of Claude Ballot-Léna/Jean-Claude Morenas was expected to be fast as well.

Two factory Alpine-Renault A110 1600S cars were at the start driven by Jean-Pierre Nicolas/Michel Vial and Jean-Luc Thérier/Maurice Nussbaumer, but they were not going to see the finish, and it was logically Matra that will win and score the double with Beltoise/Todt (winners, thanks to their well-deserved nap) who were ahead of Pescarolo (photo below) helped by journalist Johnny Rives.