Balto: Le Mans   Foreword   It began with a simple question: who can drive the farthest in 24 hours? For more than half a century, it has pitted man and machine to the ultimate test of endurance. It's distance is often longer than a drive from New York to Los Angeles. The race goes on at all hours, in all weather conditions, on an eight-and-a-half mile long circuit consisting mostly of public roads. Since 1923, the world's great carmakers have come here to prove themselves. Names like Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Ford, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Mazda, Peugeot, BMW, and more recently Audi have all found success here. Automotive innovations like windshields and wipers, headlights and hoods, seat belts and disc brakes all owe a debt to this race. It's called the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The racing here is different than most of the racing world in part because the cars are different. Not just from other race cars, but from each other. They don't all have the same specs like engines, tires, fuel, bodywork, etc. This story features the 1989 running of this famed endurance race.   Chapter 1: April Test Day   Balto Wolf sat behind the wheel of his rented Porsche 911 as he headed north on Route N138 through the French countryside. It was April, and the April test session for the 24 Hours of Le Mans was only one day away. It was his first time racing this event with his new team, having switched from Team Sauber to Joest Racing, this time driving the once-dominant Porsche 962C Group C prototype. There were three prototype classes competing in that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans: C1 (in which the Porsche 962 competed), C2 (for smaller, lighter, and less powerful prototypes), and an invitational class called GTP (the stateside equivalent of C1, which also had an equivalent of C2 called GTP Lights). Balto's girlfriend, Jenna Morrison, was sitting next to him in the passenger's seat. This was her first trip to Le Mans, as she was not able to come over for last year's race. "Are you sure he's gonna be there?" Jenna asked, looking over at Balto. "If I know Reinhold," Balto answered back, referring to his team's boss, Reinhold Joest (pronounced like "yoast"), "he's likely dragged the entire Porsche factory here with him." He took a deep breath before continuing. "Then again, that's for normal for him. Once at the track or in the shop he seems to forget everything except for his work, and then some." "You're nervous about this whole thing, aren't you?" Jenna asked, almost cutting off the end of Balto's last sentence. "Nervous?" he asked with a rather confused look on his face. "No." He then looked over at Jenna and asked, "Why, do I look like I'm nervous?" "No," Jenna answered, shaking her head slightly. "Well, maybe a little bit." Balto sighed before he spoke again. "I just want to get this test over with. I just want to get the drive for the race." Balto hadn't been in a Group C race car since last year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. He had been looking for a ride at Le Mans since late last season. The only race cars he'd driven since then were GTP cars. "But he said you'd get to test the car, right?" Jenna asked. "That's what he said," Balto said in response. "You don't think so?" Jenna asked, again. Balto shook his head. "No," he replied. "I think so." With that said, Balto and Jenna leaned toward each other and exchanged a quick kiss. Since they were on a straight section of roadway, Balto didn't have to worry too much about taking his eyes off the road. Afterward, Balto continued holding Jenna's left paw with his right paw even when he reached down for the shifter to move it from third to fourth gear. On the way to track, Balto approached the Mulsanne corner, located at the far southern end of the track. Since the full Circuit de la Sarthe, the track used for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, consisted of a mix of both public roads and permanent racetrack, which included a 3.5 mile long section of Route N138 known as the Mulsanne Straight, named after the nearby village of Mulsanne, the road sections were blocked off for the race. During the race, the cars would be heading south down the Mulsanne straight, which was opposite the direction in which Balto was currently driving. Not far up the road lie the Mulsanne Kink, a slight bend in the roadway of very short duration. As it lie near the far end of the straight, the cars, especially the prototypes, would be doing well in excess of 200 miles per hour. At those speeds, if something went wrong, the outcome could be disastrous. And so it was for Balto in qualifying for last year's Le Mans 24-Hour race. During qualifying, as he went through the kink, he ran over a piece of debris that had fallen off another car. The debris punctured the left front tire on his Mercedes C9, which sent the car going straight into the wall. The car itself was doing 244 mph at the time of the blowout. It slammed hard into the guardrail on the left-hand side of the road, kicking up a huge cloud of dust and gravel as it ran through the gravel on the shoulder of the road. The entire left side of the car was crushed. But that wasn't the worst of it: After hitting the guardrail, the car spun back into the middle of the track, where it got absolutely clobbered in the right front corner by a Nissan R88C, which had been blinded by the dust and couldn't see the stricken Mercedes. The force of that impact was so strong that part of the lower right front A-arm component in the suspension pierced through the firewall and into his lower right leg. The injury list from the accident was extensive: A severe concussion, closed double fractures (tibia and fibula) in his lower right leg, seven broken ribs on the right side of his ribcage, and a badly broken right foot. The head injury that Balto sustained in that accident was so severe that if he did survive, he might not be the same ever again. The part of the brain that affects coordination and motor skills had been damaged in the accident, which explains the grim-sounding aftereffect. Fortunately, the damage to his brain was minimal, and Balto made a full recovery, and was back to racing a few months later. The driver of the Nissan was also seriously injured, but he too, made a full recovery, with that car being repaired in time for the race. Unfortunately for Balto, even though his car was repaired, because of his injuries, he was not able to start the race. Neither was the driver of the Nissan. Turns out, it wouldn't matter that Balto wouldn't be able to start that race. Team Sauber had withdrawn their entries after they experienced a myriad of blowouts with their Michelin tires, with Balto's crash being the straw that broke the camel's back. He was to have shared the seat last year with Germans Klaus Niedzwiedz and Kenny Acheson. Team Sauber was returning for this year's race. Suddenly, Balto heard a flapping sound coming from one corner of his car. Immediately, flashbacks of last year's crash flooded his mind with the onset of the familiar sound. He had hoped it was just a piece of debris getting caught in the wheel well. But he knew all too well what the real cause was. "What is that?" asked Jenna, who also sounded worried. "I hope it's not what I think it is," Balto replied. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and got out to inspect the right front. A rock had caused a rip to develop in the tire's sidewall. It was just what he had suspected. "Ah, crap!" he thought, shaking his head. "What's the problem?" Jenna asked as she stuck her head out through the passenger-side window with a look of concern on her face. "Sidewall puncture," Balto replied as he looked up at Jenna. He then popped the hood to get to the spare. Because the Porsche 911 had its engine in the rear, the trunk space was instead upfront. The compact spare tire that originally came with the car had already been used, so instead, a full size spare of the same type as the other front tires was in the trunk and ready for use. Balto had long despised the compact spare tire. He likened it to opening one's survival rations on a lifeboat and finding a rat skeleton. "Not exactly heartwarming," as he once put it. Where the car stopped couldn't have been any worse for Balto. Up ahead lie the infamous Mulsanne kink, the site of his crash from last year. He couldn't help but look at the seemingly easy bend in the road that almost did him in. The terrifying flashback ran amok through his mind: the tire blowing out, the impact with the outside guardrail, spinning back across the track into the path of the oncoming Nissan, the absolutely massive impact that could've ended his life. All of it weighed heavily on his mind. After finishing the tire change, Balto climbed back in his car and continued his drive to the track. If he was to do well this year, he would have to put last year's ordeal out of sight and out of mind. His main goal was to do better than last year.   In the paddock at the Circuit de la Sarthe the next morning, in the Joest Racing garage, the team's Porsche 962Cs was being prepped for the start of tomorrow's test day. Joest Racing would be fielding three cars in the race (The "C" in the car's name designated Group C trim. GTP 962s were called just 962). For this year's race, Balto would be sharing a ride with ex-Formula 1 driver Hans-Joachim Stuck and longtime Porsche factory driver Bob Wollek in car #9. A trio of Frenchman - Henri Pescarolo, Claude Ballot-Lena, and Jean-Louis Ricci - would be driving car #8, and in driving car #7 would be German Frank Jelinski, Frenchman Pierre-Henri Raphanel, and German Louis Krages. Balto was no stranger to the Porsche 962, albeit in GTP from only, having already driven

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