Designer Gordon Murray hadn’t designed the McLaren F1 as a racing car. No, the legendary South African, who had joined McLaren as technical director after an illustrious spell as the tech chief at Brabham, had wanted to create the ultimate road car: stupendously fast, but also comfortable and, for a supercar at least, practical.

To ensure this, Murray, kept an unscientific parameter in mind throughout his entire design process: would you want to drive it to the South of France?

He had no plans to interrupt that theoretical journey by spending 24 pressured hours at Le Mans going round in circles at high speed.

“It was going to be a road car,” admits Murray. “And that was that. It was the car’s owners who made the decision for us. They called our bluff by saying that they planned to race it with or without our help. I was worried if they took it entirely from our hands that they might make it unsafe, slow and unreliable.”

The revised model, a racing car called F1 GTR, won the first six GT championship rounds of 1995, but a problem was looming. Enthusiastic customers wanted to contest the forthcoming Le Mans 24 Hours, so a compromise was reached: an updated kit would be developed on the understanding that all the teams would purchase it.

There was also one final caveat; preparation specialists Lanzante Motorsport had been asked by McLaren to run an extra car for a Japanese sponsor. It would contest the legendary enduro with Frenchman Yannick Dalmas, already a two-time winner of the 24 Hours, the vastly experienced Masanori Sekiya, a Japanese driver so fond of Le Mans that he had got married there, and F1 driver JJ Lehto, a La Sarthe rookie.

“There were only half a dozen of us,” remembers team boss Paul Lanzante. “And we had neither more nor less than the customers. The mistake they made was that they wanted to do their own thing. Personally, not knowing the car as well as those teams, I took advice from the factory. And we were lucky. We didn’t have any problems.”

The race started in dry but overcast conditions. By lap 16, a McLaren was firmly in the lead, and a variety of F1 GTRs would remain in that position for the next 282 laps.

“We just plodded away,” Lanzante admits. “What I wanted to do was bring the car home in one piece. We weren’t racing. My job was to make sure the car performed and that we didn’t mess up.”

Lead driver Dalmas offers a touch more insight: “Our strategy was to push, but not like crazy. We were very careful with the gearbox; at every stop we added oil. We saved the car. If you check the lap times, however, we didn’t lose too much time. I don’t want to be critical, but some of the others started very fast.”

The fog, rain and spray during the night was as bad as many drivers could remember, but the conditions didn’t seem to bother Lehto. More than 10 seconds per lap quicker than the next fastest on occasion, he hauled the stealth-black GTR into contention.

Jeff Hazell, who ran McLaren’s customs support operation, remembers the Finn’s raw speed: “He was astonishing. We asked him to slow down. He said, ‘I have already. I’m having fun.’ He was spinning wheels on the straight shifting gears and was sideways rally-style in the chicanes…”

The battle for victory had by now developed into a two-horse race between two F1 GTR McLarens.

“That’s when certain politics kicked in,” remembers Lanzante. “Annoyed, I called Yannick and JJ from our caravan – they were having a kip – sat them down and told them, ‘There’s going to be a new plan: we are going to do everything we can to win this race. And I think we can.’ Yannick was to do the last stint as planned, but I explained that if we needed some extra pace I would put JJ in for the final hour.”

The Dalmas/Letho/Sekiya car finally took the flag, leading home a remarkable McLaren 1-3-4-5 on the marque’s La Sarthe debut.

“If any single person deserved the credit for winning it was JJ,” recalls Lanzante. “Yannick was great, too. With his experience of Le Mans, he was our captain. He was always telling JJ to be careful, waving his finger at him.

“But Le Mans is a team effort, and it helped that we weren’t hungry to win from the outset; that we were very cautious initially, and that we were enthusiasts rather than bounty hunters – there only for the money and the glory.”