Photo credit: Sebastian Missel via Porsche

From Road & Track

By the time they needed it the most,bible verses about backstabbing the Porsche team's racing chronograph had seen a lot of action. But

the "Nuit Spaciale"

was an important design for Omega. Powered by the high-beat caliber 1131, these split-second chronographs were developed in 1966, so that two years later, Omega could send 45 units to the Summer Olympics in Mexico. As

Hodinkee

notes

, Omega has been the Games' official timing partner since 1932, and while Mexico City got 45 individually marked black-dialed Olympic stopwatches for 1968, the Swiss also sold a few to high profile athletes, including John Partridge, a member of the British Cycling Federation. Interestingly, the 1977 Porsche team's cherished chronograph is an even rarer, white-dialed variant.

As the Omega would prove, during qualifying, everything seemed fine with the 936/77 Spyder.

Driven by Jacky Ickx, Jürgen Barth and Hurley Haywood, that continued to be the case up until the 24th hour, when 45 minutes before the finish on Sunday, the single-turbo flat-six blew a cylinder. Smoking badly, Jürgen Barth had to pit.

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Twelve minutes before the end, Barth fired up his now five-cylinder Porsche. They were still in the lead. The regulations said the car had to complete its pit lap and do a final one at speed without crossing the line before 4 p.m., as making that error would have started a new lap.

To make sure Jürgen Barth wouldn't hand over the victory to the Renault-powered Mirage GR8 by losing sight of the time, the team used some adhesive tape to fix the Omega on his steering wheel. Ten minutes later, the Porsche 936 secured its second Le Mans victory.

Hat tip to

Christophorus

!

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