Eight things you didn’t know about Aston's '59 Le Mans win

Back in 1959, Aston Martin rocked up to the Le Mans 24 Hour race with a fleet of three gorgeous DBR1s and a pretty impressive crop of drivers. The number four car was piloted by Stirling Moss and Jack Fairman, Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby were in number five, and Maurice Trintignant and Paul Frére drove number six.

The fight was of course with Ferrari, but Salvadori and Shelby eventually came out on top to take the title – and that remains Aston’s only ever outright win at the famous endurance race.

Without an entry in either prototype class, that’s unlikely to change in 2019, but the British marque will commemorate the 60th anniversary of its success by going for gold in both the GTE Pro and GTE Am classes.

That’s for the weekend though. For now, click through for a few facts about Salvadori and Shelby’s famous victory all those years ago…

Salvadori and Shelby actually drove themselves to Le Mans in an Aston Martin DB MKIII. Lovely stuff.

In the build-up to the race, the Aston team were swimming in the river opposite the hotel to keep cool. When Sir Stirling dived in on the Wednesday though he lost both of his front teeth. Luckily, his secretary was on hand to fly out a spare pair of false ones before the race weekend.

Moss and Fairman battled for the lead with the Jean Behra/Dan Gurney Ferrari for the first half of the race, but both cars would eventually retire with technical issues.

The DBR1 was a fantastic racer, but one design flaw for such long stints was that the clutch pedal had been placed just above the exhaust. This, along with the aluminium body, meant that both Salvadori and Trintignant suffered badly scolded feet.

After all of those miles and 323 laps, the DBR1 was apparently in such good condition at the finish that it could have completed another 24 hours. 

“The oil pressure was 80 pounds at the start and never varied. The car was 100 per cent for the entire race,” said Salvadori.

The 1959 race was the first time that either Salvadori or Shelby had ever finished the Le Mans 24hrs.

“Anyone who reckons on winning Le Mans is just day-dreaming. Le Mans is 80 per cent luck. A car that’s built for out-and-out racing is not supposed to stay together for 24 hours,” said Shelby.

Aston Martin team manager Reg Parnell collected a cheque from the organisers for approximately £10,000 in French francs for finishing first and second in the race. That’s £228,500 in today’s money. We reckon the bar tab that followed was pretty hefty too though.