With Group 5 Sports Cars to be limited to 3 litres from 1972, the 1971 race was effectively the swan song of the mighty 5-litre Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512. Ferrari and Alfa Romeo withdrew their works teams to concentrate on the following season's new models, leaving a privateer-heavy field. Porsche established a record of 33 starters from the total of 49 cars, dominating every class.
The JW Automotive team, backed by Gulf, was the clear favourite having won four rounds of the 1971 championship. Their 917L long-tail cars had been further refined by the French SERA aerodynamics laboratory and were powered by a 5.0-litre engine producing 620 bhp. Pedro Rodriguez partnered Jackie Oliver in the lead car, with Jo Siffert and Derek Bell in the second. A third entry — a 917K short-tail — was driven by 1970 winner Richard Attwood with Herbert Muller.
The new Martini Racing Team, formed around equipment purchased from the championship-winning Porsche Salzburg squad, entered three cars. Vic Elford and Gerard Larrousse had the long-tail, while Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko shared a lightweight magnesium-alloy chassis short-tail. A third Martini entry was the experimental 917/20, a unique wide-bodied test-bed for aerodynamic low-drag concepts designed with SERA assistance. Its teams nicknamed it "the Pig" and, with dark humour, had it painted pink for the race with names of cuts of meat painted across its bodywork.
Among the Ferrari 512M entries, the Penske team ran a car for Mark Donohue and David Hobbs, its engine prepared by Can-Am specialist Traco and claiming 614 bhp. The 512F of Scuderia Filipinetti was a radical interpretation by former Ferrari engineer Mike Parkes, with an enlarged rear wing and a narrower windscreen borrowed from the 917.
A new circuit record was established at the April test weekend when Jackie Oliver lapped in 3:13.6, the first time 250 km/h had been achieved over a full lap. In race week Pedro Rodriguez was fastest with 3:13.9 in the Gulf Porsche to take pole. The field was severely speed-differentiated: the big 917s were lapping 55 seconds faster than the smaller GT Porsche 911s, a disparity that Jo Siffert publicly condemned as dangerous after narrowly avoiding a collision at 290 km/h.
First prize for outright victory was $13,000 — barely the cost of a top-tier racing engine at the time.
From the rolling start — the first year this format was used, replacing the Le Mans standing start abolished in 1970 — Rodriguez immediately set the pace, with the two JWA 917s dominant. After three hours Rodriguez led from Elford and Donohue. Elford retired in the sixth hour when a cooling fan detached and overheated his engine.
During the night the JWA cars were collectively delayed by more than two hours with gearbox and rear-end failures requiring rebuilds. The Pink Pig Martini 917/20 ran as high as third before Reinhold Joest lost his brakes approaching Arnage and beached the car in the escape road. Rodriguez, recovering to the front, lost his engine oil in the early morning after a shower of oil spray from a mechanical failure. Two hours later Jo Siffert's car was retired from sixth with a cracked crankcase.
The Marko and van Lennep Martini Porsche, running steadily throughout, inherited the lead after midnight and built a five-lap margin over the overnight attrition. The car won at an average of 222.304 km/h — the fastest race in Le Mans history. The two Porsche 917s were the first cars ever to cover more than 5,000 km in the 24-hour race. By comparison, that distance is roughly equivalent to crossing the Atlantic from Le Mans to the coast of Maine.
Attwood and Muller finished second in the third JWA car, three laps behind, after charging back from multiple gearbox delays. Third place, a very distant 29 laps down, was the NART Ferrari of Sam Posey and Tony Adamowicz. The Piper Ferrari of David Weir and Chris Craft finished fourth with only second and fifth gears operational. Fifth was a NART Ferrari Daytona, winning the Index of Thermal Efficiency. Half the twelve classified finishers were Porsche 911s.
The 1971 race marked the end of an era in multiple ways. The FIA banned 5-litre Group 5 engines for 1972. The circuit layout used since 1932 was permanently altered the following year, with a new section bypassing the dangerous Maison Blanche corner. The Index of Performance was awarded for the last time.
The JWA team suffered grievous losses shortly after the race: Rodriguez was killed in a non-championship Ferrari 512 race at Germany's Norisring in July, and Siffert died in a burning BRM at Brands Hatch in October. The 917/20 Pink Pig was revived in spirit at the 2018 race when Porsche repainted one of its GT entries in the same scheme to mark the company's 70th anniversary.
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