Le Mans icons gather at Hampton Court Concours
Hampton Court Palace
1st - 3rd September 2023
The Hampton Court Concours is a significant event on the global concours calendar and attracts some of the most important cars from collections across the world. This year was a significant year for us as there was a special Le Mans class introduced to honour the year of the Le Mans centenary.
We entered our 1988 Le Mans runner up, Shell Dunlop 962-010. This car was built specifically to win the 1988 24 Hours of Le Mans and entered with the period’s ultimate driver line-up of Hans Stuck, Derek Bell and Klaus Ludwig. With a high boost engine capable of 880bhp it took a dominant pole position, three seconds ahead of the next fastest car (another 962…) and six whole seconds ahead of the fastest Jaguar.
Whilst comfortably leading the race, 010 inexplicably ran out of fuel and had to coast back to the pits on just the starter motor! This lost a large chunk of time and although closing the gap towards the end of the race, more issues meant that the team couldn’t secure the win but came home just 2 minutes and 30 seconds behind the winning Jaguar and with the fastest lap of the race. Read the full story of the car below:
Following its static display at Goodwood Festival of Speed the car went off to the specialists at Katana Ltd for a swift recommission. This enabled us to drive the car around the stunning palace gardens as part of the concours parade. Although the Porsche 962 was certainly not designed for 5mph palace parade laps, it is surprisingly easy to manoeuvre at low speeds.
The 962 sat amongst incredible company including ten Le Mans winners, four of these in the ultra exclusive club of double Le Mans winners. The class ranged from the 1924 Bentley 3 litre, the second ever car to win Le Mans to the ‘modern’ 2003 Le Mans winning Speed 8 and covered all eras in between!
The 962 was appropriately parked next to the Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9. This car raced directly against the Shell Dunlop car in the 1988 Le Mans 24 Hours finishing 4th, 11 laps behind the 962 and winning Jaguar.