Ford M10
The Ford M10 was a sports car prototype from 1979.
It wasn't until late in 1979 that Grand Touring Cars decided to take part in the Le Mans 24-hour race again . John Horsman , the former racing director of John Wyer Automotive and team principal at Grand Touring Cars, revived his good contacts with Ford - in the 1960s, John Wyer’s team had won the Le Mans race twice with Ford GT40s - and organized sponsorship money to finance the operation. The French Ford dealers acted as sponsors, so the M10 was officially called the Ford M10. Internally, however, the car ran under the typing Mirage M10 .
Two aluminum GR8 chassis, around which two new racing vehicles were built, served as the basis for the car construction. After the end of the collaboration with Renault and through the sponsorship commitment with Ford, the Cosworth engines, which had already been used in earlier Mirage vehicles, were used again. The engines were disassembled and serviced at John Judd in the UK, while the racing cars were built in the USA. A new brake cooling system was used. With each braking process, water was sprayed onto the brake discs from a water tank via small nozzles in order to provide additional cooling. However, the tank had to be refilled with every pit stop. The pilots also had the option of adjusting the brake balance in the cockpit with a lever.
Long-serving Wyer and Grand Touring Car drivers were hired as drivers. Derek Bell had in 1975 won the 24-hour race with the GR8. David Hobbs drove Mirage racing cars as far back as the 1960s and finished third at Le Mans in 1969 with Mike Hailwood . To Vern Schuppan , the longtime factory rider, the Frenchman was Jean-Pierre Jaussaud , who the year before on a Alpine A442 had won the 24-hour race.
After extensive test drives, the team came to Le Mans well prepared . As the favored Porsche 936 had technical problems at the beginning of the race, the M10 from Bell and Hobbs led the race for the first three hours. But then the M10 got problems too. A cylinder on the leading M10 had to be replaced, and that night Vern Schuppan had an accident in the second M10, but returned the car to the pits, badly damaged. On Sunday pouring rain set in and both M10 lost a lot of time due to unscheduled pit stops. The Schuppan / Jaussaud car had to be parked with an engine failure. The Bell / Hobbs car could not be started at the last stop. A few minutes before 4 p.m. it was possible to get the vehicle going again because you had to cross the finish line to be classified. Shortly after the pit exit, however, the car finally broke down. This was the first time that a Mirage prototype was not counted at Le Mans.
literature
- John Horsman: Racing in the Rain. Bull Publishing Ltd., Phoenix 2006, ISBN 1-893618-71-4 .
