LARRY Perkins admits crashing out of the 1984 24 Hours of Le Mans rates as one of the worst moments of his illustrious career.
Perkins teamed up with Peter Brock in a Bob Jane T-Marts-backed Porsche 956 for the Circuit de la Sarthe epic.
Almost 40 years later, Jane’s son Rodney will take part in the event, in the Porsche Carrera Cup France support category.
Perkins has some simple advice for Jane: “At circuits like Le Mans, you’ve got to finish. You can’t just attack a circuit like that at ten-tenths all the time, but I wish him well.”
Reflecting on his own 1984 campaign, the ex-Formula 1 driver and eventual six-time Bathurst 1000 winner still has disappointment at crashing while lapping cars.
“I remember our trip in 1984. I was working for Peter Brock and for some reason we were talking about Le Mans,” said Perkins.
“I don’t exactly know why, which ended in him asking ‘why don’t we go there?’
“It quickly moved onto me saying ‘I’ve got a good mate of mine who knows the system, we can rent a Porsche in England’ and I had a network of people.
“Brocky and Greg Siddle thought Bob Jane might be interested in this, so he was involved as was Alan Hamilton (long-time Porsche Australia distributor). Alan’s dad was a friend of mine for many, many years.
“I knew Alan well and he said he’d have no problem talking to Porsche about getting some engines for us. The Dunlop people came onboard of which was a big customer.
“It very quickly got enough legs to make it all happen and we went to Le Mans.
“The biggest issue I had was I was running Peter Brock’s race team and it was about three or four months before Bathurst. As we know, Bathurst is a massive project in itself, so this added even more pressure.
“I took two very good mechanics of mine with me to England to prepare the car – Jeff Grech and Andrew Bartley.
“It all went really, really well, but the worst thing was the car wasn’t initially prepared as well as it should have been from the Fitzpatrick factory.
“We eventually got it going pretty good, but we had issues. Ultimately a suspension failure, which shouldn’t have happened, put us a long way behind in the race.
“As a result, I was driving at the time when we were many laps behind and driving at the limit not paying enough attention in a passing manoeuvre at a very high-speed section.
“I misread the inside line, which was slippery from debris and it put me off the road into the catch fence.
“It was one of my worst moments in motor racing. I like to think I wouldn’t normally make those mistakes, but I did indeed and it was all over.”
Perkins did enjoy some Le Mans redemption four years later, combining with Derek Daly and Kevin Cogan in a Tom Walkinshaw Racing Jaguar to finish fourth outright.
This weekend’s event is the 100th anniversary of the inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans.
