Le Mans '66 – Sour Revenge

But fate had apparently turned against it.

Poor Walt Hansgen succumbed five days after his testing accident in April. Thankfully, Lloyd Ruby, AJ Foyt and Jackie Stewart survived their crashes – at Indianapolis (aboard a light aircraft!), Milwaukee and Spa respectively – but injury ruled them out of Ford’s Le Mans line-up.

And now the organisers were threatening to throw out Dr Dick Thompson’s Ford after his collision with a slower competitor during practice.

Project leader Leo Beebe bluffed total withdrawal. He was playing a dangerous game and breathed with relief when the organisers folded: though Thompson was out, his car was in.

“It was tense,” says Lee Holman. “In that Ford expected to win and there were three teams, each trying to do the best they could.”

Shelby American and Holman & Moody were running three 7-litre MkII apiece and Britain’s Alan Mann Racing two.

“We got on well with Shelby’s, which had remarkably few American mechanics,” says Jim Rose of Alan Mann Racing. “Both American teams worked very hard and wondered why we never stopped messing about (yet won everything). We put a Mercedes sticker on the silver car and that caused no end of aggravation.

“But the only real problem we had was with the parts guy. He wouldn’t give the Brits anything and pretended not to understand us.

“Maybe there was more animosity between Shelby and Holman & Moody.”

Holman: “[Carroll] Shelby had got so far in debt to Ford over the Mustang and Cobra projects that he’d become a division of it, albeit a fairly independent one. So his was the factory team. Both Alan Mann’s and our drivers were told not to pass a Shelby American car unless a Ferrari was also passing it.”

There was friction within Shelby American, too.

Ken Miles was fretful in the absence of co-driver Ruby, whose ability to sleep soundly between stints had provided a counterbalance to the nervously pacing Englishman. Denny Hulme was an excellent replacement, but Miles was concerned that the New Zealander, though laid back, did not have enough invested.

And Bruce McLaren was adamant there was something amiss with his car.

Holman: “Shelby American wanted Miles to win but McLaren was the quicker; so his car was sabotaged. I don’t know if its crew realised that it was being given bad information, but I do know that Bruce didn’t like the way the car handled.

“He complained to my father [John], Alan Mann and Henry Ford II, and a group of mechanics – some of Alan’s crew and two of our workers – stayed over the night before the race to change the suspension.

“To my knowledge, Shelby wasn’t aware.”

Ferrari was in turmoil, too. Its number one John Surtees had had his fill of a meddlesome team manager and dashed to Maranello to lay his cards on the table.

No one bluffed and the Scuderia lost its ace.

And Fords held the first six places at sunrise.

Team-mates Dan Gurney, the polesitter, and Miles were reprising their Sebring battle – and were again admonished for it – and McLaren and co-driver Chris Amon were going like hell on Goodyears to recover from early delays caused by chunking Firestone wets in changeable conditions.

Ford had the race in its pocket but worried that its drivers might burn a hole in it.

Gurney was asleep when partner Jerry Grant burst into the trailer at 9am to tell him that the lead car’s water temp was off the clock; its V8 would be cooked within the hour.

The ‘EZ’ sign was displayed but Miles and McLaren continued to jockey.

The former was on the verge of an historic endurance hat-trick having won Daytona and Sebring. His testing for the programme had also been extensive and exhaustive.

The latter had been the first to drive a Ford GT – more a modified Lola, in truth – in 1963. His eponymous team had also built, developed and raced the lightweight aluminium roadster that Ford commandeered and with which Miles had won at Sebring.

Both men felt they had earned and deserved a shot at victory. To be told prior to their final stints that the bosses, with the organisers’ consent, had decided to stage a dead heat pleased neither man.

Firestone-contracted McLaren’s mood darkened further when he was delayed by what he considered an unnecessary tyre swap.

Holman: “Shelby always wanted to run Goodyears because of his tyre store in California.”

The crowd was unaware of these undercurrents as the remaining MkII drew level in streaming rain, the third car, 12 laps in arrears, riding shotgun.

Nor did the main protagonists know that their dead heat was dead in the water.

The organisers had backtracked: McLaren had started 20 metres behind Miles and that could not be ignored in the final calculation – which in any case would be taken, somewhat imprecisely, after precisely 24 hours rather than at the finish line.

But the significance of how that line was crossed was neither lost on McLaren nor Miles. The former appeared to back off in protest approaching the chequered flag. Holman, on pit road at the time, insists that McLaren accelerated to stagger the formation.

“The most important thing was for Ford to win,” says Rose. “When our cars retired we stayed on in case our help was needed. I don’t remember worrying about any controversy. I was just glad we’d beaten Ferrari.”

There could be no denying, however, that Ford’s sweet revenge had curdled – and would turn sour two months later when Miles, the ‘injured party’ at Le Mans, was killed testing Ford’s J-car.

A tang lingers still.

Images courtesy of LAT