The winning Porsche 917K completed 397 laps in the 1971 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep shared Martini Racing’s No. 22 Porsche 917K. They covered 5,335.313 kilometres, setting a distance record that stood for decades and averaging more than 222 km/h over the 24-hour contest.
The 1971 race was the 39th running of Le Mans and became one of the defining events in the 917’s short but spectacular career. Porsche prototypes filled the front of the result, with another 917K finishing second and a Ferrari 512M taking third.
The 917K means Kurzheck, or “short tail,” distinguishing it from the longer-tailed 917 variants developed for high-speed circuits. The 397-lap figure is easy to confuse with other historic Le Mans totals, but it belongs specifically to Marko and van Lennep’s winning 917K in 1971.