1988's Le Mans is considered to be one of the most historic of them all. The two Mercedes C9's (the two famous AEG-liveried ones that were a direct follow on from my test car livery above) pulled out after a tyre failure on one of the cars during practice, leaving it to be a shoot-out between the Porsche 962 C and the Jaguar XJR9-LM - the latter proving to have more pace in race trim than the Porsches which were able to up the boost for qualifying and lock out the first 3 places. Behind the three works Porsches and the first of the four Jaguars, was the Blaupunkt Team Joest Porsche 962 C driven by "John Winter", Frank Jelinski, and Stanley Dickens, starting in 5th on the grid.
The #2 Jaguar (starting in 6th) eventually took the win, but the #8 Blaupunkt car came across the line in 3rd place, behind the first of the works Porsche cars and followed by the second of the Silk Cut Jaguars.
Fun fact: "John Winter" was a pseudonym for German businessman Louis Krages who didn't want his family to know he was risking his life racing cars, but they found out the day after the race when his mother recognized his face on the front page of the newspaper standing on the third-place podium.
The car was recently available to purchase through
Dutton Garage in Australia.
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The team also ran a second car, #7, driven by David Hobbs, Didier Theys, and Franz Konrad. They had a poor qualifying lap over 11 seconds slower than the #8 car, and started in 20th on the grid. From here though, they had a fantastic and consistent race and eventually finished just behind the second of the Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9's in 5th position, five laps behind their team mates.
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The Joest Racing Team were able to put a car on the podium again in 1989, their #9 car placing third and the #8 car finishing in 6th, although the driver line-up was completely changed. This was to be the last podium finish for the Joest Team at Le Mans, as their partnership with Porsche in the historic race soon came to an end with the demise of the 962 C and the rise of the Mercedes, Mazda, and Nissan over the next few years.