The Automobile Club de l'Ouest lifted the minimum average speed for qualification from 160 km/h to 190 km/h and required all cars to qualify within 85% of the pole-position car's average speed. There was also a 2.5% increase to the minimum distances on the Index of Performance. The CSI introduced no other significant changes to FIA Appendix J.
The field of 54 starters was heavily weighted toward Prototypes (41 cars) against only six Sports Cars and seven GTs. Thirty-seven drivers had raced or would race in Formula 1; five were World Champions. Eleven had raced the previous month at the Monaco Grand Prix and seven at the Indianapolis 500.
Ford and Porsche each brought ten cars. Four Ford Mk IV cars were entered — an all-new chassis designed and built in the United States, carrying a 427 cu in (7-litre) Ford Galaxie-derived engine producing 530 bhp. Shelby American ran two: the #1 car for Gurney and Foyt required a roof bubble fabricated to fit Gurney's 190 cm frame; the #2 for Bruce McLaren and Mark Donohue. Holman & Moody ran the other two, pairing Mario Andretti/Lucien Bianchi and Denny Hulme/Lloyd Ruby. Three Ford Mk IIB lightened versions were entered by Shelby American (Ronnie Bucknum/Paul Hawkins), Holman & Moody (Frank Gardner/Roger McCluskey), and Ford France (Jo Schlesser/Guy Ligier). Three Ford GT40 Mk I cars contested the S5.0 class for Ford France, John Wyer Automotive, and Scuderia Filipinetti.
Ferrari concentrated on the large-Prototype category with four Ferrari 330 P4 cars — the latest evolution of the 250P, with new bodywork, improved gearbox, and 450 bhp engine. The works team under Franco Lini entered three: Chris Amon and Nino Vaccarella in the open spyder, Ludovico Scarfiotti/Mike Parkes in the second, and Klass/Sutcliffe in the third. The fourth P4 was run by Equipe Nationale Belge for Willy Mairesse/"Beurlys". Three updated P3/412 P cars ran for Maranello Concessionaires, Scuderia Filipinetti, and the North American Racing Team (NART).
J.W. Automotive developed the Mirage M1 from the GT40 platform, with new narrow-cockpit bodywork by Len Bailey and a 351 cu in Ford engine; Jacky Ickx co-drove with Alan Rees. Lola Cars returned with the Lola T70 Mk3 GT powered by an Aston Martin engine developing 450 bhp; John Surtees paired with David Hobbs. The two Chaparral 2F cars featured a high-mounted adjustable wing and a 427 cu in Chevrolet engine producing over 550 bhp through a three-speed automatic transmission; Phil Hill and Mike Spence drove the lead car. Porsche entered 910s, 906s, and the new Porsche 907 — fitted with very long tails for the Mulsanne Straight — driven by Jochen Rindt/Gerhard Mitter and Jo Siffert/Hans Herrmann. Matra brought the MS630 with its 2-litre BRM V8 engine. Alpine arrived with seven A210 entries using Renault-Gordini engines in 1000, 1300, and 1500cc variants.
The tyre war was pronounced: Goodyear partnered Ford, Firestone partnered Ferrari, Dunlop partnered Porsche, and Michelin partnered Alpine.
At the April Test Weekend, Lorenzo Bandini set a sensational lap record of 3:25.4 in the Ferrari P4 spyder. Roby Weber died when his new Matra lost control at full speed on Mulsanne Straight, skidded, and somersaulted off the track; he was trapped in the burning car before marshals could reach him.
By race week the Mk IVs were faster still, though unstable at high speed with cracking windscreens. A collision in the NART garage wrecked the Klass P4 car. Pole went to Bruce McLaren at 3:24.4, just ahead of the Chaparral of Phil Hill (3:24.7). The Mirages had engine failures during practice and JWA switched back to 5.0-litre engines; Ford supplied slightly oversize units to keep the cars in the correct class.
Twenty cars were recorded exceeding 300 km/h over a flying kilometre on the Mulsanne Straight during the race.
The race started in fine weather. The Mk IIBs of Bucknum and Gardner led initially, with Gurney's Mk IV third. The Lola's engine broke a piston on lap four. After first pitstops Foyt led from the Chaparral and the other Fords.
Mike Salmon's JWA Ford GT caught fire at over 300 km/h on the back straight; Salmon got the car to a marshal post before jumping clear with severe second and third-degree burns. After two hours, Foyt, Hill, and Andretti already held a lap advantage over the Ferraris. Denny Hulme set a new lap record of 3:23.6 while recovering from an early delay.
At night Chris Amon suffered a puncture while fifth; unable to change the tyre on track, sparks from the wheel hub started an engine fire and the car burned out. The Chaparral pitted with its aileron stuck in the brake position. Bucknum lost two hours to a water-pipe repair. Lloyd Ruby ditched twice in the Mulsanne sandtrap, the second incident terminal.
At 3:35 am a mechanic fitting new front brake pads on Mario Andretti's #3 Mk IV installed a pad backward. Andretti braked from high speed into the Esses; the incorrectly-installed front brake locked and the car spun into the earth banks. Andretti suffered three broken ribs. McCluskey, arriving at speed, deliberately hit the opposite wall believing the driver might still be trapped; Schlesser attempted to thread between them and also crashed. Ford lost three cars in the sequence. McLaren then picked up a puncture in the debris and later lost 45 minutes when the rear engine bonnet flew off on the Mulsanne Straight.
This left Gurney and Foyt with a five-lap lead. During the night Mike Parkes in the second-place Ferrari repeatedly flashed his lights in Gurney's mirrors. Gurney eventually pulled over at Arnage corner; both cars sat motionless until Parkes accepted the attempt to provoke a racing incident had failed and resumed, with Gurney following.
By dawn the Chaparral had developed an oil leak and retired. Bucknum and Hawkins, who had fought back to sixth, were halted by engine failure at 9:40 am. At the three-quarter mark only 16 cars were still running. Gurney and Foyt had covered 293 laps — twenty more than the 1966 winners at the same point. The leading Ford dropped its lap times by 30 seconds a lap; Ferrari, despite lapping 10 seconds faster and stretching further between fuel stops, could not close the gap.
Gurney and Foyt won by four laps, covering 5,232.90 km at an average speed of 218.04 km/h — the only Ford of the ten entered that suffered no issues throughout the race. They also won the Index of Thermal Efficiency. Ferrari took second and third with Parkes/Scarfiotti and McLaren/Donohue fighting back to fourth. Jo Siffert and Hans Herrmann finished fifth in the new Porsche 907 2-litre, covering only 12 km less than the 1966 winners. Three more Porsches followed in sixth, seventh, and eighth. An Alpine won the 1300 class in ninth. The Swiss Ferrari 275 GTB of Spoerry/Steinemann was the first GT car home in eleventh. The Austin-Healey was the only British car to finish, in fifteenth.
All overall records were broken: fastest lap, furthest distance, largest engine to win. The first three cars all exceeded 5,000 km covered — the first time any three cars had done so.
On the victory podium, Gurney received the traditional magnum of champagne and spontaneously sprayed those below — Henry Ford II, Carroll Shelby, their wives, and journalists. Gurney later credited the moment as unplanned: "What I did with the Champagne was totally spontaneous. I had no idea it would start a tradition."
Fastest lap in practice: Bruce McLaren, #2 Ford Mk IV — 3:24.4, 236.08 km/h. Fastest race lap: Denny Hulme / Mario Andretti, #4 and #3 Ford Mk IV — 3:23.6, 238.01 km/h. Attendance: 310,000.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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