1966 Le Mans

1966 — When the FIA created the F1 World Championship in 1950 few paid attention until a champion was crowned. The same attitude prevailed when the Sports Car World Championship was created in '53. When the CSI wrote rules creating a new class of limited production sports racing cars between the pure prototypes and the GT category for '66, the reaction, at first, seemed much the same.

No one in the prototype wars seemed able – or was likely – to build 50 cars to satisfy the new "Sports Car" class. Ultimately the minimum was cut to 25. Ford was in the third year of their three-year Le Mans program, and Daytona had changed the season opening Continental to a full 24-Hour race, which Ford won more with force than style.

America was entering an era of a no-limits sports car revolution, and Ford with its 427cid pushrod V8s was leading the charge. The company redrew its Le Mans organizational chart.

Shelby America had three 7.0-liter Mk IIs. Stock car legends Holman & Moody entered another trio, and Alan Mann Racing had a pair. They were backed up by four private 4.7-liter GT40s running in the Sports Class: one each from Comstock (Innes Ireland and ’65-winner Jochen Rindt), Essex Wire (Peter Revson and Skip Scott), Filipinetti (Herbert Muller and Willy Mairesse) and Ford France (Guy Ligier and Henri Greder). Ford liked Ferrari’s safety in numbers program.

Ferrari had four works P3s led by John Surtees and Mike Parkes. Or so Surtees thought. When he got to the Sarthe he found Ludovico Scarfiotti’s name painted next to Parkes’ on his car. Politics of the sort that can only gestate in Ferrari’s fertile fields dulled the Modenese '66 Le Mans effort. Surtees and Eugenio Dragoni got into it over drivers and co-drivers and whose name was painted where and the whole thing ended when Dragoni told il grande John that if he didn’t like the way things were going he could leave. And off stormed the ’64 World Champion, who was eight seconds faster than his Ferrari teammates and the only man able to put a Ferrari among the Fords.

But the red cars were the favorites based upon . . .

a) history: Ferrari had won six straight, and . . .

b) more history: Ford’s three-year program was two years old and had produced nothing but lap records, an impressive stack of receipts and various shades of anti-American sentiment ranging from the traditional post-war "rich American" attitude to the more popular "big, loud overbearing Americans" sentiment.

The American spoiler in all this – who seemed to suffer none of the above – was the Texas Chaparral team powered by 5.3-liter Chevrolet engines in a coupe-bodied version of the famous Chaparral fiberglass roadster. The Texas roadrunner had won the 1000Km of the Nurburgring in the hands of Jo Bonnier and Phil Hill. It was perhaps the most American car entered.

The very-American Fords were developed in England and visited America for engines and transmissions and tires and an appointment with Carroll Shelby, his brilliant chief engineer Phil Remington, and paint codes. The Ford PR department had already gotten hold of the Le Mans program; all eight 7.0-liter MkIIs were painted in Mustang colors. Cute, and instructive.

Henry Ford II was the honored il donnerent le depart and dropped the tricolor as instructed at 4:00 o’clock. Graham Hill won the first-lap grand prix in his (black) MkII from Gurney (Mustang red), Bucknum (bronze) and Mike Parkes in the No. 20 P3 – red, of course. It took Gurney two more laps to pick off G. Hill, and the red MkII stayed out front through the first hour. Ken Miles in the No. 1 MkII he shared with Denny Hulme gradually reduced the lap record to 3:31.9.

First of the big cars to pit was the Nurburgring-winning Chaparral 2D. When the Ford pit stops began, they were protracted affairs, especially compared to the astonishingly brief and disciplined Ferrari stops. At one point, four of the Easter egg MkIIs were in together. Then it started to rain, and somehow one of the Ferraris sneaked in front. This annoyed Gurney mightily. He ran down the offending red car in his Mustang-red coupe, reeling off another lap record: nearly 143mph.

Reality had already set in, and the best Ferraris decided that it would be prudent to keep the American monsters in sight, if possible, and see what developed. Pedro Rodriguez was doing the best job of that in Luigi Chinetti’s NART entry, as the dusk turned to dark. That’s when it began to rain. Jean Guichet made a small mistake in the esses, and his No. 21 Ferrari P3 got hit by a Porsche which forced George Heligoin, in the CD-Peugeot, to make a big evasion maneuver just in time to collect Parke’s partner Scarfiotti in Modena’s first-string No. 20 P3.

That’s about when the Chaparral ate its battery and had to go to the dead car park. The night passed in Ford’s favor. By 4:00 o’clock in the a.m. – when Le Mans develops that "Who leads at Rome?" are-we-there-yet? mentality – the top-six positions were all filled by Fords of varying hues: Miles/Hulme first with Gurney and Jerry Grant second on the same lap. The Rodriguez/Richie Ginther NART P3 retired with overheating, and the 2.0-liter Porsche Carrera Six gang was looking very strong indeed.

By breakfast, things had compressed at the front. Chris Amon and Bruce McLaren had moved ahead on their own lap with Gurney and Grant still second, still on the same lap as the third-place Miles and Denny Hulme MkII. By noon, Ford had lost its major player: Gurney’s red No. 3 was losing oil and overheating, and Ford was down to three cars at the top of the order. At least they were the first three. Behind them the annoyingly fast Carrera Sixes of Colin Davis/Jo Siffert, Hans Hermann and Herbert Linge, and Peter De Klerk/Udo Schuetz in fourth, fifth and sixth, and leading the lucrative Index of Performance as well: Americans and Germans one-through-six.

The last pit stops allowed Ford’s racing boss Leo Beebe to explain the PR drill for the finish. Dutifully McLaren closed on the leading Miles/Hulme Mk II. Respectfully Bruce, who had been with the Ford Le Mans program practically from inception, drew up behind the leader for the PR photo finish. With less than a quarter-hour remaining it began to rain again. The No. 5 Ronnie Bucknum and Dick Hutcherson car joined the winning Ford formation.

That’s how they finished: Miles/Hulme, McLaren/Amon in a near dead PR heat, and the No. 5 12 laps behind. This confused A.C.O.’s timing and scoring who finally decided that, staged finish or no, the second car across the line had traveled farther as it had started the race behind the true winner, the first-across-the-line Miles/Hulme MKII. Logic.

The public address chimed and made the announcement, and McLaren and Amon in the properly hued New Zealand black and silver MkII had been declared the winners of the Ford 1-2-3 sweep. Miles and Hulme were robbed, but Ford won the International Championship of Makes and Le Mans on the same day. Which is exactly what Hank The Deuce came to France to see, no matter who was driving.

The 200kph barrier had been breached for the first time, and the A.C.O. started conducting meetings regarding rule changes for '67. After all, American cars; seven liters. Things were clearly out of hand. A pair of 2.0-liter Porsches wound up fourth and fifth, which set off no alarm bells at all.