Lost footage of 1966.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJztRHjtwHw
with historical interviews of people who were there that day

gimmeshelter1969
Wait! Ken Miles did race at Le Mans in 1966 and should have won but politicking by Ford brass prevented it from happening. Ford wanted the headlines to read: "FORD WINS LEMANS!" and not "MILES FIRST TO WIN DAYTONA, SEBRING, AND LEMANS IN ONE YEAR!" so they decided on a "dead heat" of the GT40s crossing the finish all abreast. The French would not have it claiming that dead heat was not possible due to the slant staggered start formation of the cars. So Miles was screwed! (McLaren and Amon were declared the winners in a sister car to Ken Miles) Then 2 months later Miles was killed testing the Ford J-car at Riverside, CA.
************************************************** ***
By Autogefühl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdpWTLB0Y4I
************************************************** ****

This time Tomorrow 1966 Lemans Documentary by Roy Zukerman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rrVOVuwPV0
Ford's documentary of the 1966 Le Mans 24 hour endurance race

 

Race start
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z9wHdx7Yj0

2016 Lemans in 10 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmvXF0smtks

14 hours update by speed on fox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FifWYcLIj5c

22 hours update by speed on fox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwjEgN5HppY

Dramatic last lap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbvKuM_dOAQ

 

By FIAWEC
1PM-3PM /after 2 hrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI7ZJZZNGKw

3PM-5Pm /highlights til 7PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkW2vrEl6DA

5PM-7PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbvKuM_dOAQ

7PM-9PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gducgSMjmNQ

9PM-4AM /evening through to 400h
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wot-fRRjkJ8

0400-0600
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph_NUP25cP4

0600-0800
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTIhX0SUTIA

8Am-10AM /10-12AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA6f909HoLM

12AM-1:15PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFecz5bfC5U

 

StreamlinerV16

Apoyo a Porsche incondicionalmente pero ésto... me dejó estupefacto! Claramente se ve como si Toyota estuviese en maldición con respecto a 1999 y en el mero FINAL. Deseaba que ésta vez ellos se llevaran ese trofeo a Japón�� Estando en esa situación en la cabina, me costaría mantener la cordura porque su papel fue óptimo, tanto en manejo como en técnica desde el inicio bajo la torrencial lluvia. La vanguardia desde el TS020 hasta éste, fue superior en su categoría, pero en fin, qué mala pasada.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Nf5P2EKGY
LE MANS: After a dominating performance, the No. 5 Toyota losses power with one lap remaining as the No. 2 Porsche takes the lead and wins the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
3 minutes and 20 seconds to go...

Babelfish

They did lead for the majority of the race. Porsche passed them because leading doesn't mean being a thousand miles in front. You can lead by a one second margin, you'll still be un front. The Audi was 3rd because the Toyota did its last lap in over 8 minutes. Rules say your last lap shouldn't exceed 6 minutes. Dont know why but there must be some good reason. In consequence the Toyota was not classified.

 

[h=2]LM24: Heartbreak for Toyota, joy for Porsche, Ford[/h] Sunday, 19 June 2016


Marshall Pruett (words & images)
Toyota was in line to score the biggest upset at Le Mans since rival brand Mazda became the first Japanese manufacturer to win the great 24 Hour race in 1991 – until an even bigger upset occurred in the final minutes.
The #5 TS050 led the race by 1m24s inside the final 10 minutes, but with just over five minutes of the 24 hours remaining Kazuki Nakajima slowed, reporting that he had no power.
As the Toyota attempted to crawl around to the finish, Neel Jani blasted by in the #2 Porsche 919 Hybrid to grab the lead and complete one more lap to take an unexpected victory, extending the marque's Le Mans win record to 18.
"I can't believe it," Jani told RACER. "But my heart is so heavy for [Toyota]."
The Toyota team, at the time of publication, had yet to confirm the source of the No. 5's problems, but a Toyota driver was overheard saying it was caused by a turbo failure. Nakajima initially stopped the car on the pit straight, but eventually was able to complete his final lap in 11m53s, crossing the line second. However, the lap was ruled too slow to make it eligible to be classified. That promoted the #6 Toyota to second, and enabled Audi to maintain its record of always finishing on the podium since its debut at Le Mans in 1999.


It was also an amazing weekend for American entries or drivers in three of the four classes representing the Stars and Stripes.
Ford came, saw, and conquered Le Mans on the 50th anniversary of its first win with the GT40 model in 1966 as the pole-winning No. 68 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing GT driven by Dirk Muller, Joey Hand and Sebastien Bourdais made first-time winners of the tight-knit trio.
"It's an unbelievable feeling to be able to make this happen," said Bourdais. "There was so much effort, so much emotion, and to be the one that wins the trophy to give to the Ford family and everyone involved is very special. Everything aligned for us today – the history, the Ferrari/Ford battle, 50 years on and the Ford family being here. To come out on top of all that is an amazing feeling."
An announced crowd of 263,500 spectators witnessed Ford's thorough spanking of the opposition, although the No. 82 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 put up a strong fight until Toni Vilander spun in the final hours and lost almost half a lap. Second was still possible until the car was called into the pit with 10 minutes remaining because one of the leader lights were not functioning correctly. The team opted not to serve the penalty so it could have the honor of climbing the podium. One driver in the foyer next to the podium reported seeing the Risi team and ACO officials having a rather heated discussion before the Ferrari drivers were allowed to take their place next to the Ford drivers.
RACER has learned that Ford protested Risi for the malfunctioning Ferrari leader lights, and Risi protested the leading No. 68 Ford for passing under the yellow. In response, both teams were assessed a nominal time penalty that would not move P1 and P2 behind P3 – in other words it's a wash, so the existing podium order will stand.

LMP2 featured the most cars and the most carnage as spins, crashes and retirements became the story across 24 hours. The No. 36 Signatech Alpine team (using an Alpine-branded ORECA 05-Nissan) survived the never-ending rumble as Nicolas Lapierre, Stephane Richelmi and Californian Gustavo Menezes won by a lap over the No. 26 G-Drive Racing ORECA 05-Nissan and a wider margin over the No. 37 BR01-Nissan.
And in GTE-Am, another American team – Scuderia Corsa, with an all-American lineup of Townsend Bell, Bill Sweedler and Jeff Segal – captured the win in their No. 62 Ferrari F458.
"It went exactly according to plan," Bell told RACER. "What an amazing feeling."

More cruel ironies for Toyota: 44 cars were classified as finishers in the provisional results, a new record for the Le Mans 24 Hours. The previous record was 42. And, until the last-minute heartbreak, Toyota's Anthony Davidson, Sebastian Buemi and Nakajima had won the brutally expensive game of LMP1-Hybrid Reliability Roulette as their #5 5 TS050 was the only entry in the six-deep class to make it to the final minutes without requiring extended service or repairs.
The Franco-German TS050 chassis and Japanese drivetrain proved to be a near match for the staggering pace set by the 919 Hybrids, and declared itself the class leader in fuel economy as the 2.4-liter twin-turbo V6 engine and 8 megajoules hybrid system pushed its drivers one lap farther per stint.
That extra lap, in concert with dogged performances behind the wheel, transformed the complexion of the race. Defending overall winners Porsche had the fastest car in the 84th running of the great endurance event, but minor problems, including a nighttime tire puncture, turned the tide in Toyota's favor before fate cruelly intervened.
Audi and Porsche were the favorites heading into the event, but grave reliability issues took three of their four cars out of contention in the six-car class, and just for good measure, the second Toyota spent four laps in the pits in the final hours, without which a possible 1-2 finish was on the cards.
Toyota's massive disappointment comes 22 years after American Jeff Krosnoff, Italian Mauro Martini and Ireland's Eddie Irvine had the race in their hands and suffered a gearbox problem that dropped their twin-turbo V8 94C-V to second overall.
The lasting image of the race for Audi was seeing both of its R18 e-tron quattros backed into the garage. The German's F1-inspired chassis with its impossible packaging of electronics and hybrid drive components proved to be the most unreliable of the three LMP1-Hybrid models.

 

[h=2]RACER INTERVIEW: Chris Amon on Le Mans '66[/h] 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.
***
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.

 

VIDEO: '8 METERS' explores controversial 1966 Le Mans finish

RACER Staff
In a war fought by titans of industry – one from Michigan, the other from Maranello – on the roads of rural France, the battle for sports car supremacy came to a head in 1966 when three of Ford Motor Company’s GT40s beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the closest endurance racing finish of all time. Fifty years later, “8 Meters,” a new documentary produced by Kahn Media, explores what really happened on those final, fateful laps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhiWRTDZ7-E

In 1966, three Ford GT40 race cars crossed the finish line at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a photo finish, with the black and silver car driven by Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon neck-and-neck with the blue car driven by Ken Miles and Denis Hulme, handing Ford and America its first victory at the most famous endurance race in the world. Moments later, amid mass confusion, officials led McLaren and Amon to a makeshift podium to claim victory, while Miles – who had already won Daytona and Sebring that year – lost his shot at the Triple Crown of endurance racing.
Questions have gone unanswered - did Grand Prix drivers Amon and McLaren outdrive Shelby’s development driver Ken Miles, or were other forces at work?

“8 Meters” examines the legends, stories and historical footage to sort out what happened with the people that were there. The film features Chris Amon, Mario Andretti, Miles’ crew chief Charles Agapiou, Shelby team photographer Dave Friedman, Ford racing engineer Joe Macura, author AJ Baime (Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans), author Preston Lerner (Ford GT: How Ford Silenced the Critics, Humbled Ferrari and Conquered Le Mans) and archival footage of motorsports icon Carroll Shelby.


"8 Meters” also reveals historical footage from the development of the Ford GT racing program and a rare behind-the-scenes look at the young men who risked everything to bring America its first Le Mans championship, thanks to rare photos captured by Friedman before he went on to a tremendously successful career in Hollywood.


The film was shot at locations around the world, including the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, which has one of the only GT40 MkIII’s as well as a 2017 Ford GT prototype on display; at Irvine, California based Superformance LLC, which manufactures absolutely stunning GT40 MkI and MkII continuation cars, as well as in New Zealand, Michigan and Willow Springs International Raceway.

 

Ford GT40 1968 24 hours by bjwhitegti (Ferodo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMzgeEWqXPQ

Wonderful period video from brake pad manufacturer Ferodo on the 1968 Le Mans race from the standpoint of John Wyer's Gulf Oil Ford GT40 team, who won the race. The first 4 minutes shows a high speed in-car lap around Le Mans narrated by Stirling Moss. Wonderful video with footage of Alfa Romeo 33s, Porsche 908s, Matras, etc....

 

1967 Lemans winner Dan Gurney


Dan Gurney to receive Peter Bryant Award

Friday, 05 August 2016
Doug Stokes
ABOVE: Peter Bryant (left) and Dan Gurney at the Legends of Riverside reunion in 2009.

On Saturday night, Aug. 20, Dan Gurney's name will be added to the honor roll of names already inscribed on the Peter Bryant Challenger Award. This unique award is named for the late racecar designer Peter Bryant, who designed and engineered many well-known racing machines, among them the cutting-edge Ti22 and UOP Shadow Can-Am cars as well as the Shelby Series 1 road cars. Beginning as a young racing mechanic in his native England, Bryant went on to become a brilliant and innovative engineer/designer (and an every bit as brilliant storyteller and celebrity impressionist.)
The man's classic biography, "Can-Am Challenger" is a fascinating recounting of a life well-lived in the sport. At a Riverside Raceway reunion event in 2010 (on the first anniversary of Bryant's passing) the "Peter Bryant Challenger Award" was unveiled and presented to former McLaren mechanic/Formula 1 Driver/racecar constructor Howden Ganley by Bryant's widow Lois.
The ceremony honoring Gurney will take place at a special dinner at the Monterey Plaza Hotel held as part of the historic races and concours and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the iconic Can-Am racing series.
"We've got the plaque ready," said Can-Am event producer Dave Wolin. "In truth, Dan Gurney's name should have been on this perpetual trophy long ago. Dan Gurney has always been celebrated as championship driver ... and now we're very pleased to be able to recognize him for his many contributions to racecar engineering with this prestigious award."
Whether it was his overseeing the design and construction the Formula 1 Weslake Eagle and then driving it to become the first American (and still the only one) to win a Grand Prix in a car with his own name on it; or talking Ford into working with Colin Chapman to install a modified Ford Fairlane engine in a upgraded Lotus 33 chassis for the Indianapolis 500; or taking Toyota to victory in the 24 Hours of Daytona; or building the Eagle Indy car that Jerry Grant broke the 200 mile-per-hour barrier with at Ontario Motor Speedway in 1972. ... Dan Gurney was never satisfied with the status quo and always sought a technical edge to go along with his great talent behind the wheel.
"The general public really never thought of Dan Gurney as any of an engineer when he was driving," Wolin remarked, "but, in many ways he was." Perhaps one his best "engineering" feats took place at the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans. Some years after his famous champagne-spraying victory there, Gurney let on that he really never went as fast as he could in practice, figuring very rightly that his congenitally competitive co-driver (one Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr.) would try to match (or beat) his times and possibly end up screwing up their chance at the win. Dan Gurney set a strong but solid pace... their Ford GT won.
The award celebrates excellence in motor racing engineering and the sort of spirit that Bryant brought to the craft. Phil Remington, Bruce Burness, Trevor Harris, Tyler Alexander, Alwin Springer, and Ike Smith are the names that precede Gurney's on the clear Lexan award that features a likeness of his sleek Ti22 car and pieces of titanium sheet sourced from the Timet Company, the company that originally produced that exotic super-strong/super-light metal for Bryant's incredible "Ti22" car.
Due to prior commitments Gurney will not be able to attend the Can-Am dinner. Accepting for him will be Vintage Racecar Associate Editor, historian, and the author of "Dan Gurney's Racing Eagles", John Zimmermann.