by A. J. Baime
Four hours into the race, Ferraris were lying one through four. The Surtees car was running beautifully in first place. Shelby stood helplessly as the sun dropped toward the western horizon, his stomach souring. Already Ford mechanics and drivers were cataloging their equipment, packing it up, and heading back to the hotels. Beebe was avoiding eye contact.
“I can smell the chicken shit now,” Shelby muttered to himself.
At sunset, Phil Hill was on the course trying to catch up to the Ferraris in the only remaining Ford. His car had suffered some clutch problems, and he’d lost time. He was miles behind, and he knew his Mk II wasn’t going to last. He could feel the clutch slipping. There was nothing left to do but floor it and try to squeak out a lap record, some piece of good news the team could walk away with. When he passed the start/finish line, he summoned all his expertise and all the power of the big 427 engine. Headlights were on now. He piloted through the Esses into the tight Tertre Rouge corner. On the Mulsanne Straight he was clocked at 218 mph. When he passed the start/finish again, the official timekeepers recorded the fastest race lap in Le Mans history, an average of 138.44 mph. But the news registered only a hint of pleasure on the faces of Ford staff. Soon Hill was guiding his car back to the pit, his clutch—and his race—destroyed.
It was barely 11:00 P.M. and all the Fords had broken down. The most anticipated automobile endurance race of the decade had fizzled not long after its start. All the posturing and all the company money spent had resulted in a gut-wrenching failure before hundreds of thousands and live television cameras.
The debacle left each Ford man strategizing to cover his ass. Someone was going to get fired. “You should have seen all of the finger pointing among the Ford people once things started unraveling,” one team driver later said. “It was almost humorous.” Shelby had nowhere to hide. He stood alone and defeated.
All over the grounds, the crowds’ attention steered away from the action on the track. The party raged on. Drinks went down warm; ice had no chance in this heat. Under the cover of darkness, the race took another unexpected turn. Surtees was moving along at a quick clip when he felt his front suspension suddenly collapse. He felt the car buckle. He pulled his foot off the pedal and gently maneuvered back to his pit as the competition roared past him. Surtees was beginning to loathe this race. Silly little things, every time. Then, within minutes, more Ferraris pulled into the pits with shattered brake discs. The brakes were not surviving the abuse of the Mulsanne Corner. Beneath the stars the mechanics jumped to action, piecing together disc brake systems with whatever parts they could find.
Surtees had foreseen these problems. None of this would’ve happened if it were not for Bruno Deserti’s fatal accident. The frontline Ferraris began to fall further and further back, leaving the race wide open.
As spectators drifted off to sleep in the early hours of morning, one thirty-three-year-old American driver began to inch his way toward the lead in a tired and bruised Ferrari, entered by Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team. The pilot moved down the Mulsanne Straight with all his weight on the pedal, straining the car’s every bolt and weld. The Kansas City Flash was lapping at a furious pace, driving flat out as always.
16
Le Mans, 1965: The Finish and the Fallout
LUIGI CHINETTI STOOD in the pits at dawn, silent and imperious, his dark brown eyes fixed on the rolling thunder. He had a widow’s peak of gray hair, and 195os-style spectacles. Many of the fans sitting nearby looked down at the compactly built sixty-four-year-old and had no idea who he was. But those who knew racing knew that Chinetti was as much a part of Le Mans heritage as the seats that cupped them. He was a three-time champion here (1932, 1934, 1949), a sly and beloved man in the automobile business, the little giant behind Ferrari in America. An Italian who’d defected to the United States during World War II, Chinetti had dedicated his life to the idea of a car, one that bore another man’s name.
As head of Ferrari’s North American Racing Team, Chinetti had recruited young talent that became legends in their time. He’d sold Phil Hill his first Ferrari. He’d given Dan Gurney his first Le Mans ride. He’d discovered the Rodriguez brothers from Mexico, Pedro (twenty at the time) and Ricardo (eighteen), the latter who perished at the Mexican Grand Prix in 1962 in front of his home crowd. Chinetti still mourned for him. He ran his team with a flare of old-school Italian style. “Racing with Chinetti was an experience in itself,” one driver once commented. “He never told you anything. I was afraid he wouldn’t tell us when to come in for gas. It was the most informal thing you could imagine.”
In his pit, Chinetti watched Masten Gregory hurtle down the straight in the morning light. He looked up at the leader board and saw Gregory’s #21 Ferrari, his entry, in second place. Emotions ping-ponged inside him. It was going to be a long day.
Over the years, Chinetti’s relationship with Ferrari had grown complicated and at times contentious. Though it was Chinetti who convinced Ferrari to build his cars and sell them in America (“You must believe that here sports cars will be a gold mine. . .”), Ferrari had barely mentioned Chinetti in his memoirs, published three years before. There were fights over money. For Chinetti, business relations with Ferrari had been, in the words of Ferrari biographer Brock Yates, “an elaborate, protracted drama of artful parlays, suspended agreements, temper tantrums, operatic claims of impending bankruptcy, social ruin, family shame, incurable disease, and violent death.”
Chinetti was having his best year ever in 1965. As a brand, Ferrari couldn’t have been hotter. He would move about 240 cars before the year was out. But Enzo Ferrari was working new distribution lines in the United States, namely Nevada’s gaming lord William Harrah out in Reno. Was Ferrari phasing Chinetti out? Many powerful players in the automobile industry believed that, if not for Chinetti, Ferrari’s company never would have survived the postwar years. As Shelby—who knew them both—once said, “The Old Man cheated Luigi and generally treated him like shit.”
How Chinetti longed to beat Ferrari on the track. Here at Le Mans, where it counted most.
At midnight, Chinetti’s #21 entry was nowhere near the front. But by dawn, Masten Gregory and his teammate, the baby-faced Austrian Le Mans rookie Jochen Rindt, had moved up and were now stalking the leader. Their car was believed obsolete. The days when a year-old racing car could be competitive seemed long past; innovation moved too quickly. Neither driver had dreamed their car would even last this long. Gregory had raced so furiously in the opening laps, he pulled into the pit after his shift to find Rindt in his street clothes, shocked that the old Ferrari was still running. Even the mechanics were ready to quit. Why exhaust themselves and risk their necks when they knew the car would never survive? Gregory insisted and so Rindt changed into his driving clothes and took to the track.
All night long they’d raced on the ragged edge. They’d driven so hard they’d burned through their tires. Chinetti found himself, with flashlight in hand, hunting in the dead tire pile for Goodyears that still had some tread. By noon on Sunday, Chinetti’s car was one lap behind the leader, a Belgian-entered Ferrari—293 laps to 292.
The morning’s mildness turned to raw heat. The mood in Chinetti’s pit was growing more tense with each lap, eyes darting back and forth between stopwatches, the Dutray clock, and the red Ferrari as it rocketed through the grandstands every four minutes or so. An announcement piped suddenly over the loudspeakers: the front-running Ferrari had burst a tire on the Mulsanne Straight! The crowd stirred. Chinetti retained his poise as the #21 Ferrari was moved up to first place on the leader board.
Some time later a Ferrari factory representative appeared in Chinetti’s pit. He explained that the Belgian Ferrari, previously winning but now trailing in second place six laps behind, was on Dunlop tires. Chinetti’s car was on Goodyears. Strategically, it would be best for Enzo Ferrari if the Dunlop car won, not the Goodyear car. Ferrari had a contract with Dunlop, the factory rep reminded Chinetti, and it wouldn’t do
if the Belgian Ferrari came in second due to a burst Dunlop tire. Surely Chinetti might enjoy a substantial discount on future cars for his showroom if Gregory and Rindt allowed the Belgian Ferrari to move back into first place.
“You’re going to tell them to slow down?!” Chinetti responded incredulously. “How are you going to do that?” He was utterly offended.
Throw a race? Luigi Chinetti? At Le Mans!?
Masten Gregory drove the last shift terrified. He was miles ahead and now all he had to do was finish. His exhausted brain imagined clanking from the engine compartment and smoky odors. He had tortured this tired machine. Any second now it would seize up and die. It would have its revenge.
In the press booth, Jim McKay sat with Phil Hill doing commentary as a camera helicopter followed Gregory around the circuit on his last lap. A handful of cars escorted the leader in a traditional finishing parade. “These are literally tattered and battered oil-stained survivors,” McKay said. “It’s four o’clock right now. So as they come into our view this will be the end of the race. The crowd cannot see them as of now, except for those who are lining the roads along the countryside. This is one of the great moments in sports.”
“Luigi Chinetti must indeed be happy today,” Hill added.
When the #21 Ferrari crossed the finish line, the crowds surged forward onto the road. Gregory and Rindt climbed up on the podium, gendarmes surrounding them to keep the fans at bay. Standing in his black-rimmed Coke-bottle glasses, the Kansas City Flash looked like a more slightly built Clark Kent. He held up two fingers, making a V for victory. The rookie Rindt stood next to him, giving cameras the thumbs-up sign.* The racers were handed glasses of champagne and wreaths of flowers. (McKay: “It may seem odd to Americans to give these champions flowers, but that’s how they do it here.”) Nearby, Chinetti looked on, his normally sober face contorted with joy.
An American racing team had won Le Mans for the first time in history. It was a team of Ferraris, Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team.
The American national anthem played over the loudspeakers. In the crowd, Shelby stood sullen and tired. He saw his old friend Masten up on the podium. Shelby knew what it felt like to climb up on that podium a Le Mans champion, the thoughts that go through one’s mind, like you could pick the globe up in your hand, toss it up in the air, and catch it. He saw Henry II’s son Edsel II—who’d made the trip to France—approaching. Edsel, seventeen, had spent some time at Shelby’s shop learning a few things. They’d gotten to know each other.
“Carroll,” Henry II’s son said, “what the hell happened? This is embarrassing.”
When Shelby finally got a chance to congratulate the winner, Gregory summed up the story neatly.
“You know, that’s a good car!” he said. “I stuck the clutch in that fucker and it revved up to 7,800 rpm! The thing didn’t even bend the valves!”
Gregory was swept off to a victory party. Shelby headed to the nearest bar with the Goodyear tire guys to get himself drunk.
Ferrari’s cars had won Le Mans for the sixth year in a row, taking the top three places in the last five. One Ford-powered car had finished, a Cobra in eighth place, six hundred kilometers behind the winner, a distance that equaled New York to Pittsburgh. Ken Miles called the race “the greatest defeat ever suffered by a team in the history of motor racing.” “Murder Italian Style,” read the Sports Illustrated headline. The fever that plagued the Ford 289 engines was diagnosed: defective head gaskets. And those 427s? The cars simply weren’t ready to go. If there was any bright spot, it was Phil Hill’s expert television commentary.
“He could wind up replacing Bert Parks on the Miss America Pageant,” joked Car and Driver.
Henry II had spent, by one reliable estimate, $6 million (roughly $39.5 million today) to win one motor race in 1965. All he had done was help Enzo Ferrari sell more cars. It was said that Ford had spent all that money to strengthen Ferrari’s reputation. People were comparing Ford’s attempted invasion of Europe’s racetracks to President Johnson’s troops in Vietnam. The good intentions were there, but now the boys were stuck in a war they couldn’t win, with no easy way out.
A month after Le Mans, Henry II received a letter from Rob Walker, heir to the Johnnie Walker whisky fortune who ran a powerful and well-respected racing team. Walker had fielded one of the Ford GT4os prepared by Shelby American at Le Mans. The car had lasted three hours. Walker was furious and humiliated, and he addressed his letter directly to Mr. Ford. “I was very disappointed,” he wrote, “that Ford Motor Company should make themselves a laughing stock in European motor racing circles, which they undoubtedly did.”
Henry II had heard enough. He called a meeting. He wanted Don Frey, Leo Beebe, and Carroll Shelby present. The three men found themselves sitting in Henry II’s corner office. Mr. Ford’s eyes bore into them. A journalist once described his gaze: “I felt like I was being unpeeled like an orange.” Staring back at those blue eyes, Shelby knew there would never again be a man who would run an automobile company that big with that much power. The Deuce was the last of the corporate dictators.
“You got your asses whooped,” Henry II said.
He passed each man a nametag. The tags said their names with one sentence printed next to them: “Ford wins Le Mans in 1966.”
Shelby looked down, focused his eyes, and got the point. The year 1965 was now in the rearview. He’d get one more shot at Enzo Ferrari, and if he lost, Henry II was likely to pull the plug on the Le Mans campaign. History would record Shelby and Ford Motor Company as losers, and Ferrari would move on, unchallenged.
The three men left Henry II’s office. Outside in the hallway, Frey stopped them. “I wonder what our fiscal responsibilities are?” he asked. They walked back in and asked Henry II, who paused, looking at them.
“You’d like jobs next year, wouldn’t you?” he said.
“And that,” as one member of the Ford racing team later recalled, “is when the shit hit the fan.”
A couple of weeks after Le Mans, Shelby was asleep in his bed when the phone rang. A glance at the clock—nearly 3:00 A.M. It was Alan Mann on the line, an Englishman who was getting paid to oversee the Shelby American Cobra team at certain European races. Shelby had his hands full and he wasn’t at the 12 Hours of Reims in France. A Cobra had placed fifth behind four Ferraris, but it had won the GT class.
The Cobras had clinched the GT-class Manufacturer’s World Championship. Shelby might have gotten slaughtered at Le Mans, but he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do: beat Ferrari for the GT-class world title. It was the first time an American car company had won this vaunted award. And it happened on July 4, 1965.
Shelby hung up the phone and lay there in his bed. This had been his dream, and it had come true. But it was almost anti-climactic. So much had changed in the last two years. There were bigger dreams now, bigger battles. Many American fans didn’t understand what GT-class racing was. All they understood was the checkered flag, and it was Shelby’s job to bring it home.
The Magician of Maranello opened his newspapers after Le Mans and grew more furious with each article. Sure, a Ferrari had won, but it was Chinetti’s car. His men and his machines had failed in the most high profile of races, and the papers were making sure everyone knew it. They loved him when he won, but Ferrari was so very arrogant. They let him know it when he didn’t.
Ferrari knew Henry Ford II was going to come at him in 1966 with all the speed that his millions could muster. At his factory, Ferrari made his wishes known. They would build a new Le Mans car. Before the summer was out, his design engineers had completed the initial drawings. What was about to spring from those blueprints: the most striking car of its time, the Space Age racer defined. It would be the most powerful racing sports car to roll out of the Ferrari factory to date.
But who would be driving it? Fifty percent man, fifty percent machine. This was Enzo Ferrari’s equation for victory. His lineup of talent was about to experience an unexpected s
hakeup.
There was no slowing down for Luigi Chinetti. Never one for interviews, he simply returned to America and went back to work. Glory and praise were not his emotional trophies. He was driven by a deep love of cars, and the thrill of the chase.
Chinetti was a master at scouting the next young talent. On September 19, three months after Le Mans, he debuted a new driver on his North American Racing Team at Bridgehampton, a talent who was about to explode on the scene like none other before him. He was twenty-five-year-old Mario Andretti, a tiny man originally from Montona, Italy, who had emigrated as a teenager to Pennsylvania, having been raised in poverty in a World War II refugee camp. At Bridgehampton, Andretti arrived for the race with a pair of red driving gloves, a gray helmet, and racing shoes with very thin soles, handmade in Sicily. He stood just five feet four, with an olive complexion and dark hair pushed straight back, Fonzi-style. He performed well in one of Chinetti’s beat-up Ferraris. Chinetti promised him $500 for the outing.
“How many kids do you have?” he asked Andretti after the race, speaking in Italian.
“I have two boys,” Andretti answered.*
“Okay,” Chinetti said, “I’ll give you $500 for one boy, $500 for the other.”
Andretti smiled. Good money. That Luigi Chinetti—what a guy.
The following week, John Surtees stood in the pit at Mosport Park, a racetrack northeast of Toronto, two miles from the Lake Ontario coast. The Canadian Grand Prix was two days away and the teams were practicing. Surtees was competing with the Lola team. He didn’t make much money from his contract, and he had asked for Ferrari’s permission to race with Lola. He could pick up on some of the highly innovative ideas the Lola engineers were working on and bring them back to Ferrari. The boss had replied, “In the classes we don’t make cars for, okay.” It was a tricky political move, and Surtees knew it. Some of Ferrari’s inner circle didn’t appreciate his working with another team. An English team.
