pressure. This put the Montjuich Ferrari into the lead for an hour until it in turn broke its gearbox right on halftime. The Marko/van Lennep Martini Porsche took first, with a five-lap lead now over the Matra of Beltoise/Amon, delighting the partisan crowd. Eighth-placed Guy Chasseuil crashed the French Sonauto Porsche 908 at Maison Blanche. Although the car caught fire, the driver escaped uninjured. Coming up to 5am, Rodriguez was racing toward Indianapolis corner when he was sprayed with hot oil. He got back to the pits but the engine was ruined. Given the Porsche 911's reputation for reliability it was surprising that by 1am, after 9 hours of racing, already nine of the eighteen entries were out of the race. Morning At 6.20am the Matra went into the pits with a misfire. Changing the sparkplugs, then the fuel meter, let the Attwood/Müller Porsche back into second place. With all the other cars' delays the Piper Ferrari had steadily moved up the order. They had just got to third around 9am when it lost another clutch. At 9:40am, Amon coasted to a stop at the end of the Mulsanne straight. The faulty fuel-meter had finally packed up and run him out of fuel. Soon after the Siffert/Bell Porsche was retired from sixth after it had been delayed further with a cracked crankcase. This had moved the NART Ferrari of Posey/Adamowicz up to third and the Ligier prototype into fifth. But then the Ligier's gearbox seized. JW Automotive gave them Hewland parts to repair it but three hours were lost in the process. Finish and post-race The order stayed pretty static through the afternoon and the race came to a subdued, incident-free end. Marko and van Lennep won by three laps from Attwood and Müller who had eased off their charge back up the field. The two Porsches were the first cars to cover over 5000 km in the race, easily beating that milestone. Putting it in context, it was equivalent to crossing the Atlantic, from Le Mans to Maine in 24 hours. It was a distance record that stood for a remarkable 39 years until beaten by Audi in 2010. What was significant this year was that virtually no car had a trouble-free run, with a number of engine, gearbox and suspension rebuilds required keeping all the pitcrews very busy. Only two makes were among the classified finishers. Third place,