Jean Rondeau won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June 1980 driving a car that carried his own name. The Rondeau M379B finished two laps ahead of the Porsche that Jacky Ickx shared. More than four decades later, the Jean Rondeau Le Mans win is still the only time a driver has won the race in a car he built.
Rondeau was a local, after all. He was born a short drive from the circuit, raced there as a young driver and then turned to building his own prototypes. In 1980, everything came together in the rain, on his home track.
Even so, it was not a clean run. The winning car had a sick starter motor, the weather turned late, and one of the drivers spun with the lead in hand. Here is how a small French team beat Porsche.
From hired seats to the Jean Rondeau Le Mans team
Rondeau was born in Champagné, about 20 km from Le Mans, according to the race organizer’s centenary history. He raced at the 24 Hours as a driver from 1972 to 1975. Then he became a constructor.
At first, his years as a driver were not glamorous. Motor Sport recalls that he rented a seat in a Chevron-Cosworth in 1972. On the Mulsanne Straight, a bird struck his helmet, and the nickname “Bird Brain” followed him for years.
Later, his first cars ran under a sponsor’s name. In 1976, his team’s Cosworth-powered prototypes were entered as Inaltéra, after a wallpaper company run by Charles James. That year, Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo won the GTP class and finished eighth overall, according to the organizer. In 1977, an Inaltéra won the class again and placed fourth overall.
From 1978, the cars wore the Rondeau name. The M379 nearly delivered in 1979, Motor Sport says, until teammate Jacky Haran crashed while the car was well placed.
Three cars for 1980
Rondeau came back in 1980 with three M379s. As a result, he had more than one chance to win. The race organizer lists the No. 15 car for Pescarolo and Jean Ragnotti, the No. 16 for Rondeau and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, and the No. 17 for Gordon Spice and the brothers Jean-Michel and Philippe Martin.
Each one used a 3.0-liter Ford-Cosworth V8, the engine that had been common in Formula 1 for more than a decade. TotalEnergies, which backed the team, puts its output at “around 460 bhp.” According to TotalEnergies, their main strength was reliability.
Still, the opposition was serious. Ickx and Reinhold Joest drove a Porsche 908/80 for the Joest team, and Ickx had already won Le Mans in 1975 and 1977, according to the race organizer’s own histories.
A storm, a gearbox and a spin
The race started in treacherous conditions. For that reason, Rondeau and Jaussaud drove carefully early on. Meanwhile, their teammates Pescarolo and Ragnotti started from pole and led after ten hours. However, a broken cylinder head gasket then put the No. 15 car out.
Then Porsche had its own trouble. Shortly before 10 a.m. on Sunday, gearbox problems cost the Ickx and Joest car about half an hour, according to the race organizer. That opened the door for the Rondeau.
Then the storm came back. Rondeau aquaplaned at the Dunlop curve but kept going. Later, a faulty starter motor meant the team kept Jaussaud on slick tires through the showers rather than risk a stop, Motor Sport reports. He spun and stalled in the rain about 45 minutes from the end, the organizer says. Fortunately, the engine restarted, and he held the lead.
The result
The No. 16 Rondeau M379B won on June 15, 1980. The race classification at Racing Sports Cars shows it completed 339 laps and 4,608 km. Meanwhile, the Ickx and Joest Porsche finished second with 337 laps, two laps behind.
Behind them, the No. 17 Rondeau finished third with 330 laps and also won the GTP class. That also gave the small team two cars on the podium. The following week, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing received the team at the Élysée Palace.
The win meant something to Jaussaud as well. It was his second Le Mans victory, after he won in 1978 with Didier Pironi in a Renault Alpine A442B, as the organizer’s profile of the car notes.
After the win
Rondeau died in a road accident in December 1985. As for the winning M379, it was last seen on the Le Mans starting grid in 1988, driven by Pierre-Alain Lombardi and Bruno Sotty.
His record still stands. TotalEnergies calls a Le Mans victory in a car the winner designed and built himself something that “remains unmatched today,” and the race organizer still names Rondeau as the only driver to win the 24 Hours in his own car.
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