Johnny Herbert won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a Mazda 787B – a favorite among sports car fans – and three Formula 1 races behind the wheel of Benetton and Stewart machines. But the two cars he selected during his career were machines he failed to win with.
“The best car I drove at Le Mans was the Bentley, very well designed,” says Herbert of the Speed 8 he shared with Mark Blundell and David Brabham to finish second at Le Mans and third at Sebring in 2003.
“Everyone said it was an Audi R8, but it was much more than that. The engine and gearbox, yes, but everything that happened was completely new. Basically it was a Bentley, it was nice and better than the R8. »
Herbert scored one of his favorite victories, at the 2003 Petit Le Mans, in a Champion R8, but the car he chose as number one was not as reliable as the great German endurance car. In fact, it collapsed in almost half of the events Herbert started there.
The Lotus 107, designed by Peter Wright and Chris Murphy, arrived after the first races of the 1992 F1 season and lasted, in one form or another, until mid-1994.
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“I had the most fun and adrenaline with the 107 Lotus,” explains the veteran of 160 grands prix. “We still had the huge diffusers and the big slick tires.
“You could attack every corner. You could fight these cars and that’s how I thought it should be – you should fight these cars and they should fight back. I enjoyed this period.
Herbert achieved fourth place with the Lotus 107 on three occasions in 1993.
Photo by: Motorsport Images
“Over time, with the narrower tires – I hated the grooved tires – the sensitivity increased and my sensitivity couldn’t increase with it. [because of his foot injuries from his 1988 Formula 3000 crash at Brands Hatch].”
Herbert also liked the 107’s predecessor, the 102, but the 107 had more potential: “The 102 was actually a pretty damn good car – you could throw it around – but hey, it was slow! It was good in the wet, very forgiving, but the 107 was a car you could attack.
Interestingly, despite (or because of) developments, such as active suspension pushed to the forefront by Williams, this was the first version of the car that Herbert loved most. This was despite scoring three fourth places in the 1993 B-spec version, before finishing ninth in the drivers’ standings, a position which could have been higher with better reliability.
“You could fight these cars and that’s how I thought it should be – you should fight these cars and they should fight back” Johnny Herbert
“The 107 lasted about 25 years – that’s what it looked like!” ” he says. “It got worse. He became active in 1993 and we had a good run in Brazil, but it just wasn’t there.
Herbert continued to drive the car, now in C specification, for the first four rounds of 1994 after Lotus swapped Cosworths for Mugen V8s which were hardly an improvement.
Two seventh places at Interlagos and Aida, which earned no points due to the scoring system of the time, were the disappointing highlights before Lotus introduced the 109 at Barcelona. But his fortunes did not improve and he did not score any more points for the moribund team which collapsed at the end of the season, by which time he had moved to Benetton.
Herbert bowed out with the 107 after a gearbox failure at Monaco in 1994
Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images
