to 3rd by 10pm when Piper spun it in the Esses, nudging the barrier and damaging the front suspension. By a strange coincidence, all three Matras retired with leaking piston rings within ten laps of each other, when Brabham and Cevert had been leading the prototypes, and running as high as 7th. The French challenge had dissolved within four hours. It was now that the skill of Jacky Ickx came to the fore. While others proceeded with caution he made up time, bringing the Ferrari up to third despite his body's discomfort. When the Elford/Ahrens Porsche had to pit with wayward handling (that was traced to a slow puncture, and dropping them to 5th) he moved up to second at midnight. Soon afterward, van Lennep was motoring down the Mulsanne Straight in his 917 at close to 290 km/h when a tyre blew out, possibly due to the earlier damage. His skill kept it on the ground and off the wall but the chassis damage was too severe to continue. The de Adamich/Courage Alfa Romeo was leading the Prototypes, in 6th, until a long pit stop before midnight delayed it. On its next shift Courage ran out of fuel approaching the pits and had to get out and push it. When it arrived it had five people pushing and needed a jump-start to resume – all illegal in the regulations, but the officials either could not or did not see it. At 1.45am Ickx's epic charge came to a tragic end. He was trying to unlap himself from Siffert when the Ferrari's rear brakes failed approaching the Ford chicane. He crashed into a sodden sandbank and was launched over it, bursting into flame and killing track marshal Jacques Argoud and injuring another. Ickx himself was unharmed. With all 4 works Ferraris out, the Ferrari challenge to Porsche was effectively over. The Siffert/Redman JWA Porsche continued to run strongly, building up a huge 10-lap lead by 2am. That was until Siffert accidentally missed a gear-change lapping back-markers and broke the engine. So at half-time, the lead had passed to the Porsche-Salzburg's third car of Herrmann/Attwood (176 laps) that had been lapping consistently and moving up steadily from its lowly grid position of 15th. Martini's psychedelic longtail was second, three laps back. But soon after water got into electrics and it lost time, dropping two places. Elford/Ahrens had pushed back up to