Psychedelic night

The Porsche 917LH of Gérard Larrousse and Willy Kauhsen, and its psychedelic Martini Racing Team livery, a car that was reaching 380 km/h in the Mulsanne Straight, is being taken care of during a nightly pitstop, at the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours (picture-above).

Larrousse and Kauhsen finished in second position, 5 laps behind the Salzburg-Porsche 917K of Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood, who wrote history by taking Porsche’s first Le Mans overall victory.

The 917LH (Langheck) featured a spectacular new long tail body which had very low drag (picture-below), yet more rear downforce than the 1969 long tail which was not very stable at high speeds. Eventually, some 65 examples of the Porsche 917 would go on to be built in total. At first, it was developed in two versions – the 917K (for Kurz = ‘short’ in German) and the 917 LH (Langheck = ‘long tail’), although it would be the former that would be the most successful.