Chris Amon Lemans 1966


RACER INTERVIEW: Chris Amon on Le Mans '66
Thursday, 16 June 2016
The 1960s Ford/Ferrari rivalry at Le Mans is one of motorsport's great grudge matches, and after a couple of years spent weathering Maranello-borne humiliation, Ford's response in 1966 was ferocious.
An unprecedented development program over the previous winter helped the Blue Oval to roll into La Sarthe in 1966 with a fleet of GT40 Mk IIs that ticked all of the boxes: they were quick, they were bulletproof, and they had some of the best driving talent in the world. The fact that the cars also looked amazing was just a bonus.
But while Ford's pre-race confidence was vindicated by a 1-2-3 finish, the race still had plenty of scope for intrigue, not least when Ford tried unsuccessfully to engineer a photo finish: the ACO decided that if the leading pair of GT40s finished side-by-side, the No.2 car shared by Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon would be declared the winner over the sister car of Ken Miles and Denny Hulme. And you can't fault the reasoning: McLaren and Amon started further back on the grid, therefore by finishing side-by-side with a car that started ahead of them, they'd have covered a greater distance over 24 hours.
Regardless, the problem became an academic one when, depending which version you believe, either McLaren surged slightly or Miles lifted as they approached the finish, and the all-Kiwi McLaren/Amon car with its patriotic black and silver livery was first to greet the checkered flag.
To suggest that McLaren and Amon won because of confusion at the finish line does them a disservice, considering that they'd led a good portion of the race from dawn onwards. McLaren then backed off to obey an instruction to hold station, and was promptly overtaken by Miles, who had already won the long-distance races at Daytona and Sebring, and wasn't about to let team orders to stand in the way of a rare triple.
Most of the main protagonists from that day are now gone. Miles was killed in an accident while testing Ford's experimental J-car at Riverside later that year; McLaren died in a testing crash at Goodwood in 1970, and Hulme suffered a fatal heart attack during the Bathurst 1000 in 1992. Amon continued to be a mainstay in F1, sportscars and a variety of disciplines before retiring and returning to New Zealand in 1977.
Fast-forward to the present day and Amon, now aged 72, punctuates his chat with RACER.com with frequent apologies for occasional memory lapses as he continues to recover from recent health problems, although in reality his recollections are hard to fault. And is his sense of humor. "My memory hasn't been improved a great deal by having brain surgery," he says. "I'd rather been hoping for a miracle on that front".
He continues to follow the sport closely – over the course of more than an hour, our conversation detours into discussions about everything from the struggles to assemble a 33-car field at Indy to the prospect of canopy protection in open-wheelers. But the main focus is very much on that day in 1966; a day that cemented Ford's place in sportscar history, a day that helped define the 1960s at Le Mans, and a day that created a legacy that will be continued by this year's fleet of Ford GTs.
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RACER: Leading up to the 1966 race at Le Mans, what sort of expectations did you have based on your previous experience with the GT40?
CHRIS AMON: I did quite a bit of testing in late 1965 and early '66. A lot of the Sebring testing was with that torque converter, two-speed gearbox thing - which seemed a good idea at the time, but I don't think it was, really.
Then I did quite a bit at Daytona. And when we went to the 24 hour at Daytona, I was still concerned about the reliability of these things. Well, when I say 'reliability', I mean the ability to really drive them hard and have them survive the whole race. I'd said to Bruce, 'I'm still not convinced that if we drive these things hard for 24 hours that we'll get to the finish line'.
For Daytona we were seventh on the grid, and I told Bruce that I thought we should set ourselves a fairly conservative lap time and stick to it. 'We may be running five or sixth in the early stages, but we could be the only one there at the end.' And the net result of that careful planning was that we finished fifth. [laughs]
So the car proved very reliable. I thought there was no question those cars could win Le Mans. I'd driven with Phil Hill previously with the first of the big-block ones, and Bruce and Ken Miles were in the other one. I'll never forget going down the end of the Mulsanne Straight at the end of the first lap and looking in the rear-vision mirror, and the nearest Ferrari was about 300 yards behind. So in terms of top speed, the Ferraris had no hope of even looking at us.
I went to Le Mans very much with the expectation that it was going to be a race amongst the Fords. The Chaparral was there as well, and it was quick but there was no way it was a 24 hour car. So when we went to Le Mans, Bruce and I discussed it and decided that there was no point messing around. We'd go for it.
One thing you really had to watch at Le Mans was the brakes, because the thermal shock loads were huge, and you'd come out onto the Mulsanne Straight with hot brakes and by the time you got to the end of the Mulsanne Straght they were basically stone cold. And then you'd put a tremendous amount of heat into them through stopping at the end of the Mulsanne, and then you had another long burst down to Indianapolis, where once again you'd lose all the brake temperature. Thermal shock and thermal loadings were huge. That was the one thing that you really had to think about. The rest of the car was bulletproof.
Daytona had demonstrated that the transmissions were sorted – in '65, Phil and I were leading comfortably and the gearbox went, and I think Bruce and Ken were leading quite comfortably after that when their gearbox broke. That had been our Achilles' Heel. But by 1966 we were pretty confident that that wouldn't be a problem.
Of course, the one big difference between our car and the rest [of the GT40s] was the tires. Bruce and I were both personally contracted to Firestone, and Bruce's fledgling company's main source of income was tire testing for Firestone, with Firestone's entry into European racing. So we were the only car on Firestones. That, of course, had a significant outcome during the race. I guess you're probably up to speed on that already.


RACER: That was the chunking during the first stint, when Bruce was in the car?
AMON: I have a feeling that he had two tires chunk, although I struggle to remember when. It was only after a few laps. I think we were on an intermediate tire, and I'm not sure that they'd ever been tested under those sorts of speeds. We were doing probably 210, 220mph. After a few laps Bruce came in with one rear tire chunked, and then he had another one go. When he came in, I poked my head in the door while they were changing the tire, and he said, 'Be prepared to take over from me if this happens again, because I've got to go and sort something out'.
I'm pretty sure it did a third one, and I got in the car at the next pit stop. After a few laps I got called in, and they put Goodyears on. What Bruce had effectively done was go to Firestone and said, 'Listen, either we withdraw the car or we've got to put some different tires on'. And Firestone said, go for it.
The upshot of that was that we'd had three pitstops before any of the other cars had done one. So Bruce said, 'Hey, we've got nothing to lose, let's just drive the hell out of it'. Which is effectively what we did. By the daylight hours of the morning, maybe seven or eight o'clock, we'd actually gotten ourselves into the lead. And then of course later in the morning the sign went out saying 'Ease'. And that meant, hold station. That's when everything started to go pear-shaped.
Bruce was in the car, and we were close on a minute in front. So Bruce slowed down, and unfortunately the second car didn't, and caught and passed us very quickly – we'd slowed by something like four seconds per lap. It was at that point that the senior Ford people made the decision to go for a dead heat, because if they couldn't control the drivers and stop them from racing each other, then that was the solution – it would make racing each other pointless.
Little did the team know, the [race] organizers had decided that they were never going to have a dead heat. So it all got a bit messy there over those last few hours. I guess the situation after the race ... Ken was very upset because he was a full-time resident Shelby driver, and he'd won at Sebring, he'd won at Daytona, and I think he wanted the triple crown. [ED: The job of running Ford's factory entries that year were split between Shelby and Holman Moody].
I think Ken sort of felt that he had the right to win, which I never really understood. And the whole thing wasn't helped by the fact that he died at Riverside just a few weeks later. That was a bit hard to cope with at the time.
RACER: The way the story is sometimes told, Ford was informed during the race that the ACO wasn't going to allow a dead heat, but the team wasn't able to communicate that to the drivers in the cars. So were you standing there in the pits knowing that if they crossed the line side by side, you'd win?
AMON: I'm not sure at what point Carroll Shelby and the other people were told by the organizers, but as we came to the finish, I was still thinking it was going to be a dead heat. It wasn't really until a few minutes after the finish that I knew we'd been declared the winners. It was a bit strange standing and watching the finish, because Bruce crossed the finish line a few car lengths ahead of Ken anyway. Bruce always said to me that Ken backed off ... whether Ken backed off or Bruce accelerated, I'm not sure [laughs]. But that was always Bruce's line.
Bruce was really quite annoyed about the whole thing, because he was the one in the car when the 'ease' sign came out – he was the one who had obeyed it, and Ken ignored it. It was the one thing that really put a dampener on things at the time. Having said that, the next morning Ford flew us all to New York and we had a celebratory dinner, and we'd all forgotten who'd finished where.
RACER: It must have made for a weird vibe on the podium.
AMON: [Slowly] Yeah ... It took a little bit of time for it all to sink in. But I remember standing up there with Bruce on one wide and Henry Ford II on the other, and thinking 'My God ....'. I was still only 22 or something. And the whole atmosphere at Le Mans is huge; it's like the [Indy 500]. I think think it's one of motorsport's special events – that, the 500, and the Monaco Grand Prix.
RACER: For you guys within the team, how big a deal was the internal rivalry between the Shelby cars and the Holman Moody entries?
AMON: It was quite big, but probably more between the management than it was between the drivers. Equally, I think the Shelby operation had more experience with the cars and had done more of the testing, so I think we had more of an edge anyway, not in speed terms but in experience terms.
The one unknown coming into it was how the British team run by Alan Mann was going to go, because if I remember correctly they hadn't been around long. So they were a bit of an unknown. I think we pretty much knew what the Holman Moody situation was. Personally, I always felt it was going to be a Shelby team battle. It was a superb team, the Shelby team. Not saying that Holman Moody wasn't.


RACER: You said earlier that Bruce told you to 'drive the hell' out of the car. Given the power that thing had and the general dangers of the era, how difficult was that psychologically?
AMON: The problem with Le Mans – and it still exists in sportscar racing today – is the speed differential. And at Le Mans at that time, you probably had cars that you were catching on the straight by something like 80mph. We were doing over 200mph, and you had things out there that were probably flat-out at 130. During the day it wasn't so much of a problem because you could see what was coming up, but at night, all you had was tail lights in the distance. Whilst you could guess based on the speed at which you closed up, it was still quite hard to determine exactly what the speed differential was at night. That was probably the most dangerous thing. And it still happens today – [Porsche LMP1 driver] Brendon Hartley ran into a backmarker [GTE Porsche driver Michael Wainwright] at Silverstone; somebody who was in a different class and going way, way slower. Thankfully, it's all a lot safer today.
That was always something that you had to be conscious of. But in terms of actually going for it, in terms of danger, I don't think we ever really gave it a lot of thought. Unfortunately – and it seems crazy when you look back in hindsight – it wasn't that we were super-brave. It was just, if you wanted to race, that was what you did.
In Formula 1, you could go into the drivers' briefing at the first race of the year and look around the room, and you knew bloody well that four or five weren't going to be there at the end of the year. It was crazy. You wouldn't know who they were, but statistically, that was going to be the result. It's a bit like the 'getting run over crossing the road' thing – it's always going to be somebody else.
RACER: One of the unexpected ramifications of being part of the Ford line-up that beat Ferrari at Le Mans was that a year later you became a Ferrari driver trying to beat Ford. What was that like?
AMON: Yeah, that was interesting [laughs]. My first time driving for Ferrari was in testing at Daytona at the end of '66. Having gotten out of the Ford and into the Ferrari ... it was a totally different car. I guess you'd say the Ferrari was a lot more nimble. We approached Daytona [in 1967] with the feeling that we had a good chance of winning, because while they had the banking at Daytona, they also had the infield section, which would suit the Ferrari far more than the Ford.
So after we won Daytona, with Lorenzo Bandini, pictured, and then won the 1000km at Monza, the Ferrari guys were all gung-ho that they were going to win Le Mans. And I said, 'Hang on, just watch it because we're going to get crucified by the Fords in a straight line'. And they said, 'oh no, we'll be fine'. And of course we were crucified in a straight line [laughs]. I think we were hanging on to the top three by our fingernails, but it was a real struggle.
The Ferrari P4 was certainly very different to the GT40. Once again, the P4 had no real vices either – it was a really well-sorted car. But it certainly lacked straightline speed. Probably in acceleration there wasn't a lot in it, but we'd run out of puff not a hell of a lot more than 190, 195mph. I'm not sure what that Ford Mk IV was doing in 1967, but it was probably 220 or something. So there was a big margin there. At a lot of tracks, that didn't matter so much. But certainly at Le Mans it did.
RACER: Was the GT40 hard to drive on the limit?
AMON: No, it wasn't. It wasn't a tight-circuit car, I'd have to say. But it was absolutely in its element at a place like Le Mans. I always felt it was an easy car to drive. It was very progressive, it didn't do anything in a hurry in terms of snap oversteer or understeer or anything; it was well-balanced ...
The '65 car that I drove with Phil had the longer nose and the longer tail, and that was a bit unstable on the straights. You had to almost work at it. But the '66 car, with the shorter nose and tail, you could literally sit there going down the Mulsanne with one hand on the wheel and not worry about anything really, in terms of stability. Even pushing on the limit, it had no vices.
It was a little bit different in the wet. At Le Mans, as the race progressed in those days, everything was leaking – you'd end up with a lot of self-leaked oil – and you'd suddenly get a little rain shower and with all of the oil on the track with was like driving on a skating rink. But again, it wasn't a difficult car in those conditions. We had a little bit of an issue late in the race with the throttle sticking open a bit – not wide open, but it made it a bit tricky in the slower corners and the wet because the engine was still trying to push you into the corner when you backed off. But that wasn't major. It was a great car to drive.
RACER: How do you view the 1966 Le Mans win now in the context of your career?
AMON: Formula 1 was always the number one priority. As it turned out, results-wise I didn't have the greatest of luck in my Formula 1 career, so I guess Le Mans goes down as my biggest achievement in racing. I had a few other good sportscar results, but Le Mans would definitely be the biggest one.
As time goes by, you're remembered more for your records; not so much for peripheral things. So that will probably rate as my single biggest achievement.
But it's certainly very a important win to me. More than anything, it is a special memory of Bruce McLaren; a very special memory. He wasn't with us for very many years after that. So it was very special from that point of view.
And I think that [win] was probably the catalyst that got me into Ferrari, as well. In fact, I'm almost sure it was - not that Ferrari ever said so.