in downforce. In the end, Porsche chose to only race two of their three 917s. Woolfe had busted his engine in practise grabbing 1st instead of 3rd but was able to get a replacement one from Porsche. The Porsche 908s of Jo Siffert and Rudi Lins were third and fourth then came the Ferraris of Rodriguez and Amon with 3:35 laps. The best Matra was Servoz-Gavin in 11th (3:36.4) and Ickx put the top Ford in 13th. The underpowered Alpines were well off the pace of their contemporaries with qualifying laps in the 3:45s putting them midfield. The top 2-litre car was the Gosselin/Bourgoignie Alfa Romeo in 27th (4:09.8) with the first 911 doing 4:28.2 to qualify 35th. NART had a bad practice when its Dino collided with its Daytona stablemate approaching the Mulsanne corner, putting both cars out for the race. A curious incident happened in practice when Bonnier pitted his Lola and got out covered in blood and feathers. Apparently he had hit a bird and it had been sucked through a cooling vent into the cockpit. With the proviso that all cars had to qualify within 85% of the pole-sitting car's average speed for safety reasons, it meant that several cars failed to qualify. Race Start After a sunny week, race-day was overcast, but dry with a huge crowd in attendance for the start. At the drop of the flag it was Stommelen, with a big power-slide, who was first under the Dunlop bridge. In yet another deadly year of motorsport Jacky Ickx, mindful of the accident that had ended the career of his former teammate Willy Mairesse's on the first lap of the previous year's race staged his own one-man protest. He rebelled against the traditional Le Mans starting procedure to run across the track to their cars, climb in, start the car, and move the car as quickly as possible to pull away from the grid. Instead Ickx walked slowly to his car, properly put on his safety belts, and only then moved the car. Doing so effectively relegated Ickx to the back of the starting grid. His concern was borne out almost immediately. On the very first lap, the twitchy handling of the Porsche 917 and the inexperience of one of its drivers resulted in a major accident: the death of British gentleman-driver John Woolfe. Woolfe's purchased his 917 for £16000 (US$40,000) only days