1989 - Le Mans - The start of the race 

Arttu Lignell 4 reals....legendary.

If only recording technology was as good as it is today

Magic.

Adam Thomas mine too!! The Minolta and Sauber 🔥🔥

The car driving here was actually the 89c-v. The 88c-v never made it to lemans

787B and the Nissans were good shouts too!

Ikr

Always aiming for the C9 in order to beat the rest

@@stewartgrindlay9760 I Never Drove the C9 in Gran Turismo 4 😈

@@SuperiorNo1 You have never "drove" anything on a boring playstation, a button turns it off, LMAO, snowflakes and their shitty SIM racing...you Muppets were born too late🤣

And JGTC cars from GT3 as well

The thing with those famous chicanes is that it was mainly a request from the drivers saying it was way too dangerous

You read my mind. (3 years in advance)

@@YOUENNNN It’s my understanding that the FIA would no longer sanction a circuit with a straight longer than 2 km or 1.2 mi, which is basically the length of the longest straight at the Ring.

@@Tom_Hadler yessir 👍

@@YOUENNNN wasn't it only because of the bumps of the straight, afraid of the lift? If they can make that part fully flat with no bumps, there will be no problem

And the Tickford tuned Aston Martin.😎 Plus, the pink Porsche 962 is Richard Lloyd Racing, not Joest.

@@6lemans10 Actually, the pink 962 was entered by Joest in 1989 along with 2 other liveries for Blaupunkt, Matsuda Collection (the pink brand) swapped their sponsorship deal to RLR's 2 cars for 1990. The 3 cars that started for Joest in 1990 were sponsored by Mizuno, Primagaz and Blaupunkt.

@@marks7197 Stand corrected.

@@6lemans10 A small detail, unlike the huge amount on here that persist with all the Mazda 787b was banned nonsense. Gran Turismo has plenty to answer for!

Joshua King It feels weird... I mean LMPs with GTs is bread and butter. You can't have one without the other.

Group C could easily field 30 or more top cars, the equivalent of today's LMP1. No need for slow GTs.

@@ernestogasulla7763 imagine a field with 30 LMP1 cars... the dream

@@casscroute8706 no need to dream about it... watch videos of the late 80s and 90 - 91 editions, they were all Group C. Of course, with today's regulations, that's impossible.

@@ernestogasulla7763 *50

@@mohamedalkaboom huh

better than now

Nothing brutal about them. That's why they were so good. Their torque curve made them easy to drive (in relative terms) compared with a lot of the others with race inspired engines and peaky power. They proved surprisingly good in the wet and in fact, won their first race in the wet at the Nurburgring.

I'm still sad that they didn't take part in Le Mans 1990 with the C11.

uh no, Jochen Mass said himself the cars, the C9 particularly(in stark contrast to the C11), felt as if it was "always on the edge." The car had enormous amounts of torque, and alot of downforce, but it had a very large diffusor and rear wing to achieve this, it wasn't exactly efficient in that sense compared to a 962. As a result, it was very pitch sensitive and equipped with VERY stiff suspension and virtually no travel at the rear. and because of the lack of any downforce whatsoever until much higher speeds, and the really high torque, the car was very easy to spin, specifically at slow turns. But they sheer power and straightline speed, along with absolute rock solid reliability, is what helped them be so dominant. So yes, they actually were rather brutal.....

I have since read that comment. It should be pointed out that Sauber-Mercedes always had first rate drivers. Call me a wet blanket but I'm just sick of that word "brutal" especially when compared to the Jaguar which was even harder to drive.

blunder15 had they kept Group C going.. I wounder how they would be today... had they kept evolving the cars, advancing them .. and obviously making them faster.... so sad

+jcynavarro Today's LMP1 cars are just as crazy, 1250bhp quoted for the Nissan if you combine the hybrid system ( although it wasn't working at LM! ), ~1000 for the Toyota. No ground effect tunnels but everything else works so well that they're considerably faster anyway - compare laptimes at Spa, it's not changed all that much. Honestly I think what's been hurting bespoke motorsports ( as opposed to production-based ) is better computer analysis. Cars just don't break anymore, there's less the driver can do to break it other than drive it into something, and look what little difference limiting the number of *tyres* did to this years' 24h.

+blunder15 FIA motorsport is for pussies. They killed it. :(

blunder15 I personally think it was when they added the chicanes on the mulsanne straight

Máté Ágoston What a load of crap. By the end of Group C there were probably fewer than 10 cars available for any race. It had simply become too expensive and teams like Sauber abandoned it for F1.

Sure ! Aston got very short side exhaust pipes , they shake my belly !!! Sauber's sound were muffled by turbos .

​@@sportscarsmovies I liked the sound of the Sauber with it's twin turbos - it 'burbled along'. It wasn't as loud as the Aston Martin.

No point in being the fastest if you're not there at the finish.

There's power and there's reliability.

Orvieta The one that combines the two factors the best usually wins. Just for the record, there is no way I believe the claims made here for the LC2. Group C was a fuel allocation formula. They simply weren’t optimised for that kind of output. Max race power would have been about 700hp. To get 1,450 out of it would more than quadruple the stresses, necessitating major strengthening of components which would reduce their efficiency at their rated race output. This would not have been an acceptable outcome.

@@thethirdman225 you are correct, but wasn't the Lancia a Group 6 (not C) car allowed to race alongside Group C? I still don't believe the 1000plus HP, just saying.

@@ernestogasulla7763 The Group 6 car, which was sometimes known as the LC1, was a 1.4 litre, 4-cylinder turbo. It was good for about 420 hp. To conform to Group C regulations, it had to weigh 815 kilos... See the problem? LOL! Anyhow, it wasn't eligible for the Group C championship but raced alongside Group C Porsches etc. in 1982 and 1983 prior to the arrival of the LC2.

+Morte Parla The drivers in this race were the instigators of the chicanes. Chief among them was Jean-Louis Schlesser. It wasn't just the speed that was the problem. It was the relative differences between the fastest and slowest cars and the fact that it was so long that at night, it became mesmerising for some. None of the drivers felt that the racing was improved by having a 5.8 kilometre straight. Fans like the idea of big numbers but even with the chicanes in 1990, the Nissan still hit 366 km/h, which was faster than most of the field in 1989.

Since i started to know Le Mans when i was a child, well before my passion grew to a real maniac love, i was already asking myself why they put the chicanes on the most emblematic straight in the world! I know, safety comes firts of all, but cmon, in 1990 they just ruined the Le Sarthe circuit in only 1 step! The Hunauderes WAS Le Mans! This new configuration stopped the areodynamic progress of the cars, that now can barely reach 340 km/h with DRS. We, real lovers of the REAL motorsport, we should COME TOGHETHER AS ONE and do a serious petition to sign, and then send it to the A.C.O.! LET'S MAKE LE MANS GREAT AGAIN!

@@Finkelfunk Come on dude, I FUCKING KNOW that the areodynamic progress hasnt stopped with the introduction of the chicanes, the Porsche curves, the Dunlop chicane and La Chapel. I know, I might be nostalgic, but for me, as well as for the majority of Le Mans enthusiasts, the 24 Hours was special because it was just all about speeds, a race that didnt existed in the rest of the world. Yes, its still the greatest race in the world for me and for all the real petrolheads, but just because Le Mans keeps living of its past too. And its that FAST past that has made Le Mans what it is today. For "areodynamic progress" i was meaning "areodynamic efficiency", the CX of the cars, not the "downforce", that is what modern cars are based today. That might be the new progress, the adaptation of the cars to the new configurations of the track, which, in the years, has become slower and slower. Yes, its still a superfast circuit for modern canons... but its not what it was. What it made it special. In conclusion: we can't go back in time, you can't stop the progress of safety, but I'm also sure that nowadays we can join lost things like high speeds (maybe with purpose-made bodies - long tails and so on...) with a proper downforce. In that way we can reduce the power and increase the speeds. A lot of energy is lost today to push car bodies ahead as they are compressed to the ground. And, let's be honest... compare a LMP1 to a prototype from the past. It will be like comparing a brick to a space ship... and i repeat. Im nostalgic. But what im saying its not impossible. So why don't get back a little bit of that lost charm without being anacronystic?

Finkel - Funk Absolutely. Great post. The object is to win races, not to be the fastest guy in a straight line. As you rightly implied, anyone can do that. I’m still trying to work out how removing the chicanes would make the racing any better. I’m also sick and tired of people blaming the administrators of the race - the ACO - for something the drivers wanted. Message to all those aficionados of the long Mulsanne straight without chicanes: the drivers didn’t want it any more. Even in 1973, Francois Cevert wrote that the old Mulsanne was dangerous. It took another 17 years before it was changed and in that time there were at least two people killed. That 5.8 kilometre straight was an anachronism. Get over it. It belonged to the 1950s when top speeds were about 250 km/h and deaths in racing accidents were accepted as par for the course. The only reason to have such a long straight is for spectators to impress each other with big numbers. It contributes nothing to the racing whatsoever. And anybody daft enough to think that 340 km/h isn’t fast needs to get their head examined. I see this crap all the time. The claims about the 917 top speed (which are mostly wrong BTW) and the whining questions like, “Why can’t we do that now?” And “It’s all the fault of the rule makers/greenies/nanny state/communists under the bed” and “Why can’t we go back to real racing?” This should be posted on every thread about Le Mans.

GRANDICELLI CHANNEL Why don’t they get a bit of charm back? _Because the drivers don’t want it, that’s why._ Now let’s try being a little bit realistic and move on. By the way Cx is cross sectional area. What you are referring to is Cd which is coefficient of drag.

Anthony Kernich tbh, I see the Group C a bit overrated, rarely you did get more than 2 brands fighting for victory. But still, glorious days and unforgettable machinery !

Strictly speaking the Sauber C9s dominated that year, as easily as Audi later on. But I do miss Group C too.

@@ducedevlstear2471 The point is that the cars themselves were absolutely insane marvels of engineering.

I feel what you say... xD

Wenn du denkst, es wäre heute langweilig, dann hast du weder die WEC, noch Le Mans in den letzten Jahren gesehen. Im übrigen sind die Schikanen aus gutem Grund da.

Indeed, and that car you see, the Minolta Toyota here, is actually the 89C-V xD. The 88 was from 1988 and never participated in Le Mans. They are very similar, but not the same car.

jcynavarro Nope, close to or possibly 250 mph. This was the last Le Mans before they installed the chicanes on the Mulsanne Straight, the year before a WM Peugeot reached 253 mph!.

*Year after

They were doing between 135-140mph

Those figures are exaggerated. In race trim, they were doing about 350 km/h. The record WM Peugeot that did 405 km/h was optimized for straight line speed but horrible in turns.

Yes the slower are towards the back.

OhItsThat I don't think there were any GT cars as such back then, they didn't come back in til 93

OhItsThat No GT cars that year, just Grp C1/C2/IMSA

There were none. Group C was much more popular than LMP1, it was easy to fill the grid with the top class.

55 cars entered . 2 divisions : C1 and C2.

​​@@sportscarsmoviesNot quite true, the 3 Mazda were in the IMSA GTP class. Of the 55 starters there were 38 C1, 14 C2's and the 3 Mazda's.

Crius100 The 88C-V was in there too

@@UltraSonic17 88c, the 88c-v only ran the jspc i'm pretty sure. Though the 89c-v is pretty much an 88c-v longtail

No GT those years . The field was full with C1 and C2 .

Group C was becoming too popular. FIA had to stop it, "protecting" F1.

@@ederss7 that is true .