The early 1920s was the era of the gentleman driver, mostly rich men with their expensive machines, using roads that were still full of horses. At the second 24 Hours of Le Mans, held in 1924, two of these men, driving a Bentley, won the race, giving rise to the term Bentley Boys.
The Automobile Club de l’Ouest, the organizers, made a major change for 1924. Due to heavy rain in 1923, they moved the race forward three weeks to mid-June, when it is still held today.
New rules were also introduced. The club used the race to emphasize the durability and practicality of the cars, requiring at least 20 laps between refueling. Coolants and lubricants were also allowed. Cars had to carry a spare tire and working headlights were mandatory.
If the car was a convertible, he had to pit after five laps, put the top on, run for two laps, pit again and check the top for strength before being allowed to continue with it down.
For safety, drivers had to wear a protective headgear for the first time. It was rudimentary, generally made of leather, with an adjustable chin strap and forehead peak.
“It was different times for the driver,” Tom Kristensen, a nine-time Le Mans winner, said in a video on the Eurosport website. “The lovely leather seats weren’t really shaped to give you comfort.”
The cockpit was “open top, no seat belts”, he said, and the windscreen, which opened outwards, was used “to optimize airflow on the Mulsanne straight, traveling at 160km [100 miles] one hour.”
Forty one cars started the race on June 14th. The hot conditions and increased speed added to the pressure on the cars compared to the previous year, and only 12 finished, compared to 30 in 1923.
One of the cars that fell was the four-litre Chenard Walcker of the previous year’s winners, René Léonard and André Lagache. After leading the race early, as dusk began to fall and with Léonard at the wheel, the car caught fire on the Mulsanne Straight.
Throughout the night, the race for victory was between three Lorraine-Dietrich B3-6 Sport and the sole Bentley, a three-litre of John Duff and Frank Clement. The car was made of a lightweight aluminum body, with wooden supports.
It had, Kristensen said, “four drum brakes on all four wheels, making the car not only faster, but also more consistent and, at the end of the day, more reliable and successful.”
As the Lorraine-Dietrich cars struggled in the morning, Duff and Clement built a strong lead until a routine pit stop to change rear tires with hours remaining.
In this era, drivers did their own refueling, tire changes and repairs. It took about 30 minutes to remove a safety ring, which almost cost them the win.
At the time, the laps were nearly 11 miles and the Bentley covered about 1,280 miles at an average speed of 53 mph. Kristensen said that “over 24 hours, it was a remarkable achievement.” By comparison, last year’s winners, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi in a Ferrari 499P, covered about 2,890 miles at an average of 120 mph
The 1924 win was the start of Bentley’s dominance at Le Mans, also winning from 1927 to 1930, establishing the term Bentley Boys. It established, Kristensen said, “the name and reputation of Bentley cars in the ’20s.”
Seventy-three years after Bentley’s last triumph in 1930, Kristensen returned the name to the top of the podium with victory at the 2003 Le Mans alongside Rinaldo Capello and Guy Smith.
