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American LeMans
LM24: The Last American Standing
Sunday marks the 13th anniversary of the last American to stand as the overall winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Davy Jones relives his historic 1996 win for Joest.
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted June 13, 2009   Le Mans, (FRA)
IMSA GTP legend Davy Jones finally won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Reinhold Joest's team after years of trying with the TWR Jaguar program. (Photo courtesy of Davy Jones)
It’s a club that any homegrown racer would dream of joining. Phil Hill, Al Holbert, Carroll Shelby, Mark Donohue, AJ Foyt, Hurley Haywood, the Whittington Brothers, Masten Gregory, Price Cobb, Dan Gurney…

Davy Jones won the 1996 24 Hours of Le Mans, becoming just the eleventh driver from the United States to add his name to lore of Le Mans winners. Thirteen years later, the Chicago-native still carries the honor of being the last American driver to stand atop the podium at La Sarthe as an overall winner.

Teamed with Le Mans rookie Alex Wurz and 1989 race winner Manuel Reuter, Reinhold Joest’s odd American/Austrian/German trio would upset the factory Porsches with a heavily modified ex-TWR Jaguar XJR-14 converted to Porsche-power.

Jones had raced at Le Mans many times before with Tom Walkinshaw’s Jaguar teams and came close to winning in 1990, but after Jaguar withdrew from top level sportscar competition, the IMSA GTP star appeared to have his account closed at Le Mans without the win he wanted so badly.

He didn’t know it at the time, but from his many incredible performances in 1992 in the Jaguar XJR-14, Jones would find himself on the shortlist to drive the open-topped version of the car four years later.

“Porsche, along with Joest, picked up the XJR-14s, which were the old Bud Light Jaguars I drove in the [IMSA] GTP series,” Jones said. “Porsche had their new GT1 chassis they figured would win, but also worked with Reinhold Joest to have a secondary team at Le Mans.”

The TWR Porsche WSC-95 chassis, as it became known, was originally commissioned by Porsche for the 1995 IMSA WSC series, but was mothballed before it could race due to rules changes hastily implemented at the behest of the WSC entrants. In the low dollar WSC era, the entry of a factory Porsche program was simply unwelcome.

Seeing an opportunity to use the car for Le Mans, Joest persuaded Porsche to provide him with the one car and had a second built for a two-car 1996 entry at La Sarthe. Jones was impressed with the conversion work carried out by all the parties involved.

“Once TWR had converted them over to flat bottoms, chopped the tops off, changed a few things with the aerodynamics of the car and installed the Porsche gearbox and engine, it looked like a serious car. I don’t think anyone believes it looked better than the XJR-14, but it had its charm.”

Through Jones’ TWR connection, his name was strongly promoted by Walkinshaw’s leadership group. Joest had also been on the receiving end of Davy’s skills in the GTP series when they competed in Porsche 962s and knew the caliber of driver they’d be getting.

“Ralf Juttner from Joest got hold of me because they knew I was very familiar with the car and asked if I would participate with them at Le Mans. So we started our first testing, I think it was in April of ’96. We did a couple day, two or three day test with Paul Ricard. And in the one car, it was myself, Manuel Reuter, and Pier Luigi Martini. In the other car it was Alboreto, Alex Wurz, and Didier Theys.”

Had Joest’s initial driver lineup gone forth as planned, it’s possible the 1996 race would have had a different outcome, but thanks to Jones, Joest was willing to modify the driver pairings after he suggested a slight alteration.
Teamed with Manuel Reuter (pictured) and Alex Wurz, Jones the American/Austrian/German trio went from complete strangers to a tightly-knit unit almost instantly. (Photo courtesy of Davy Jones)

“We did a multi-day test at Paul Ricard and it went really well. But I took a liking to Alex Wurz. Although he never raced at Le Mans and hadn't done any sports car stuff, he was real eager to learn. And when you explained things to him, he applied it. He was just a really good teammate. He was somebody that you wanted to have as part of your driving team for a 24 hour race. I liked Pierluigi Martini, he's fast but he’s a Formula One driver and had that kind of mentality that he wants to make sure that every lap is the quickest lap. And so I spoke to Mr. Joest about having Alex as my teammate for Le Mans in place of Pierluigi which he respected and did for me.”

With his preferred lineup in place, the 1996 event got underway smoothly for Jones. “Practice went real well and the car was rock solid. Pierluigi qualified the car in pole, I qualified our car fourth. He and I started both cars and at the end of the first lap, I was leading and I just continued to put distance between us in the opening stint. They had mechanical problems before too long and it was pretty much just our car against the factory Porsches.

The pace from Jones and his teammates was impressive, which was a challenge due to their choice of tire compound. “I think the key for us winning the ’96 24 Hours at Le Mans was that we made a decision that we were going to run on the hardest compound Goodyears, which were 430s. And we were going to triple-stint straight from the start. That really leapfrogged us ahead of everybody else. Le Mans has the rule where you put fuel in the car first, and then after you finished fueling the car, then you can change the tires. It seems like all we did was come in , get our fuel and leave. It wasn't until I think into the night when everybody else kind of caught on to what we were doing. They started doing that through the night, but by then it was too late.”

One aspect of the Joest program in 1996 was unclear at the time – their status (or non status) as a semi-works Porsche program. Was the Joest team receiving instructions from Porsche to let their GT1 cars into the lead? Jones shared what he knows of the arrangement.

“I got out of the car after the first triple-stint. I think we were almost a lap in the lead so we had a pretty good cushion all the way through to the next morning. The factory team of GT1 cars did claw back a lot of time on us. They were making a big run for it. And we were kind of in perseveration mode. And there was a point that I’d heard that Porsche had asked Mr. Joest if he would hold us back to let their car go on and take the win.”

That incident, says Jones, only inspired his team owner to fight harder. “Mr. Joest said, ‘Absolutely not! This is sport, this is competition!’ Well, at that point, during the was mid morning, Mr. Joest came straight to me and asked me if, when I got back in the car, if I could make up some time. So I did as he asked and went after it."

Asking Jones to get in the car and stand on the throttle was a brilliant call by Joest. In Davy’s four previous Le Mans races he’d marked himself as one of the fastest men of the modern era to lap the circuit. His finishing rate was impressive, but his ability to keep a car dancing within an inch of its outright potential at Le Mans was breathtaking.
Jones built an early lead and maintained it through most of the night. (Photo courtesy of Davy Jones)

“You know, I really enjoyed Le Mans. It just made sense to me. For my last three times at Le Mans, I won in ’96, I was second in ’91 and I was third in 1990. It’s just such a special track -- it is so fast and it's all feel. It's a finesse kind of circuit. And I’m fortunate because I raced there before they put the chicanes in on the straightaway where you went there with as little downforce as possible. One year in the Jags we were doing 252 or 253 miles per hours. And when they put the – that was our top speed – when they put the chicanes in, it slowed our top speed down to 215.

So when you run 215 versus 252, you're able to carry a lot more downforce. And with the more downforce it really made the Porsche Curves a lot easier because you can carry more throttle and you had a better feel to the car. Where prior to carrying that downforce, I remember there were teammates of mine like Price Cobb and Arie Luyendyk, they didn't care for the Porsche Curves because the cars were always just too sensitive, too loose. I didn’t mind it all, though. I think driving balls out on the old track configuration only made it easier for me to attack the new track. It was fun.”

Not only did Davy’s performance in the final stint of the race seal the win, it allowed him to drive the winning car home for the first time in five tries at Le Mans. “I was in for the finish of the race as well so I got to cross the start/finish line and take the checkered flag. Standing up on the podium and looking out on tens of thousands of fans was something I’ll never forget. I’m glad Mr. Joest told Porsche to go to hell!”

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