The 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 46th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 10 and 11 June 1978. In many ways it was a continuation of the race from the year before – the two main protagonists would be the very evenly-matched works teams of Alpine-Renault and Porsche, with four cars each. The race was not valid (did not count points) for any championship.
This time it was the Porsche team that had reliability issues – on only the second lap of the race two of their cars were in the pits. Renault soon established a solid hold of the top three positions. Like the year before, after the Ickx /Pescarolo car had early problems, Ickx was transferred to the second Porsche of Barth/Wollek. Once again he set about driving back through the field during the night, getting up to second by midnight behind the Jabouille/Depailler car. But a loss of fifth gear cost them half an hour to repair it. When the lead Renault stopped on the circuit with a jammed gearbox, there was a sense of déjà vu for the French team. The sister car of Jean-Pierre Jaussaud and Didier Pironi inherited the lead, with a 7-lap margin over the Porsches. Although the second-placed Porsche pulled back two laps, this time Renault would not be denied, and Pironi took the flag for a popular local victory with a record race-distance.
Porsche were second and third, the remaining Renault fourth with the Porsche 935s of customer teams in the next four places. The race also saw several high-speed crashes on the Mulsanne straight, but fortunately only one driver was seriously injured.
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