This year my friend @Italiansupercarvideo and I saw this Matra MS650 at two historic racing weekends by Peter Auto: the 2022 Mugello Classic and the 2022 Dix Mille Tours at Circuit Paul Ricard. Unfortunately most of the footage is from the cold and rainy Mugello weekend as at Paul Ricard we only managed to record that initial warm up procedure after which the car had to withdraw from the event due to technical problems.
When the first MS650 made its competition debut at Le Mans, in June of 1969, Matra had only been in the automobile industry for a couple of years but already made a name for itself both in sports car racing and in Formula 1. Its name is an acronym for Mécanique Aviation TRAction as the French company founded in 1946 initially specialized in aviation and aerospace products.
For the 1969 Le Mans 24h, Matra designed two new cars, the MS640 and MS650, to replace the MS630. These cars complied with the Group 6 regulations, created for prototypes with displacement up to 3.0-litre. However during a private test the MS640 was destroyed in an accident that almost cost the life of the driver Henri Pescarolo and was never used in the race as Jean-Luc Lagardère, Matra's chairman, didn't consent to the construction of another example.
The chassis of the MS650 was a tubular steel chassis on which a fiberglass, barchetta body was fixed. The suspensions were similar to those adopted by the MS80 used in Formula 1. Compared to the MS630, the curb weight dropped from 820 to 775 kg. The car was powered by a 3.0-litre V12 engine that was able to produce 410 hp at 9,800 rpm in its first 1969 version, reaching 430 hp at 10,500 rpm with the new MS12 introduced in 1970.
The MS650 was built in only three examples, with chassis numbers MS650-01, MS650-02 and MS650-03. During the last couple of years, the EPAF company in France have built several replicas using the original drawings and original Matra staff. These 'continuation cars' were sanctioned by Matra and even received official chassis numbers (to which the one in this video should belong, but I'm not 100% sure).
Instead of retiring to the museum the three examples built at the end of the 1970 racing season, Matra decided to modify two of them to compete in the prestigious Tour de France Automobile, even if it was an unlikely car to compete in this type of event. Instead the 1970 edition was dominated by the two MS650s and the 1971 edition was again won by one of the two cars. Matra had no option to defend its crown in the following years as for 1972 the Tour de France was opened to production-based GTs and Touring Cars only.
0:00 Warm Up
2:35 In Action on Track
#MatraMS650 #MS650 #MatraV12
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I have to thank my friend and youtuber @Italiansupercarvideo for the great collaboration done during this event. Don't forget to subscribe to his channel!!
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- Camcorder: Canon Legria HF G30 & GX10 + Canon DM-100 Microphone
- Event: Mugello Classic & Dix Mille Tours 2022
- Where: Mugello Circuit, Italy / Circuit Paul Ricard, France
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