The 1986 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 54th Grand Prix of Endurance as well as the third round of the 1986 World Sports-Prototype Championship. It took place at the Circuit de la Sarthe, France, on 31 May and 1 June 1986.
This year saw the return of a full Jaguar works team, to take on the strong Porsche works and customer teams. However, with the fuel regulations relaxed, the turbo-charged cars would be able to use more of their potential power to outrun the normally-aspirated 6-litre Jaguars.
Although the works Porsche team locked out the front row of the grid, the Joest car (victor in 1984 and 1985) took the challenge to them from the start of the race and holding the lead till nightfall. The Jaguar team was competitive but gradually fell behind, leading the rest of the field until forced out with transmission and suspension problems.
Early on Sunday morning, third-placed Jochen Mass crashed out when he hit the C2 class-leading Ecosse of Mike Wilds who had spun on oil dropped in the Porsche Curves. Soon after however, there was a far worse incident when Jo Gartner was involved in a violent accident at very high speed as he accelerated onto the back straight. A transmission failure speared the Kremer Porsche into the barriers, and then got airborne hitting a telephone pole before ending upside down on fire, killing the driver instantly. The race was put behind pace cars for two hours to repair the damage.
While behind the pace-car the Joest car's engine failed, ending their chance for a third victory. From there, the works Porsche of Derek Bell and Hans-Joachim Stuck was untroubled and took a comfortable victory by a margin of 8 laps over the Brun Porsche of Oscar Larrauri, Jesús Pareja and Joël Gouhier. Bell joined an elite group of drivers with four Le Mans victories. Despite being the last classified finisher after a number of delays, the new Spice-Fiero won the Index of Thermal Efficiency prize.
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