How good would you feel if you’d travelled to compete on one of the world’s biggest stages - and you won?

I’m still waiting for a full email to come through from Retrospective Motorsport, but I think there’s enough info at their website to start telling the story. And what a story. This is almost something of Carlssonian proportions.

Some would suggest that a little 2-stroke Saab with a top speed of 175 km/h has no place on a storied track like Le Mans. They’d be wrong. Very wrong. Not only did the little Saab belong there, it triumphed there!

There were three races over the weekend. I’ll post brief snippets from Retrospective’s site here and await the full report and photos from them. I expect they’ll be celebrating and making their way back to Sweden at the moment, so it might be a few days.

Our first race at Le Mans - Our first victory at Le Mans!

Try to make a report of our first race ever at the Le Mans track. But I don’t know how to write this - how do you describe your first victory at Le Mans?

Yes that’s true!

When sitting in the drivers club, having a delicious dinner after our race, we got the official classification from our first heat, and we started to read the form from the bottom, because we are really beginners at Le Mans.

In the total list the Saab was placed 50 of 63 starters, and winning our class, before all the beautiful Dyna Panards.

But when the results of the Index of performance, which always have been the handicap system for the 24h Le Mans, we found us unbelievable art the first place!!!

Number one were our Saab 93 followed by Lotus XI, Porsche 550 Spyder, another two Lotus XI, Aston Martin DBR I, Lotus Elite, Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta, yet another Lotus Elite and on tenth place a Jaguar D Type. Yes, this is the top ten cars from round 1 for the grid “Cars between 1957-1961”. I think that all the visitors at the Drivers Club were thinking “the Swedes must be a little bit crazy…”

We have just started to imagine how it is to be a winner at this legendary track.

They had some clutch problems during the second race, but still managed to post impressive times and retain high placings.

Le Mans isn’t just about speed though, it’s about hanging in there to get the highest results. And hang in they did. The little Saab 93 completed all three races, with the following being the latest message on the Retrospective site:

We won!

At long last, the official results were released and the joy of the team were very high. In the list we came in 38th place over all; which means that we won our class and also drove faster than many cars in the higher classes.

Our hope to get in the top of the Index of performance held. When these results became official and we saw that we were number one, the team members and I fell many tears of happiness. Right now I hardly can find words for how good this feels. Incredibly godd is perhaps the best in to match. Our adventure at Le Mans has gone way better than we dared to hope and I’m still amazed over the result.

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This is some of the best news I’ve covered in three-plus years of writing this website. I’m so happy I could dance. Almost.

I met Bo Lindman in Sweden last year at his presentation on tarmac racing at the Saab Festival, and if managing Swede Team Motor isn’t enough, he’s just proven his expertise once again.

A win at Le Mans, any win at Le Mans, is an extraordinary accomplishment. My heartiest congratulations to the team at Retrospective Motorsport!!!

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If you’d like to read a bit more about the event and the car, check out Retrospective’s own website, as well as the previous posts on the subject here on TS:

Saab 93 to race at Le Mans
More on the Saab Le Mans Classic effort
Saab effort at Le Mans Classic just a few weeks away

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