Go Like Hell

by A. J. Baime

  Immediately after the first Le Mans Committee meeting, a group of Dearborn suits flew down to Daytona. It was seething hot that August morning when they walked onto the speedway infield. Ken Miles was already there. He eyed the suits suspiciously. They were going to do nothing but get in the way.

  In the pit, Shelby’s team manager Carroll Smith and chief engineer Phil Remington were making adjustments on a Ford Mk II. The suits stood idle, most of them having never been to a racetrack when the grandstands were empty. Inside all of their heads, these words were echoing: You’d better win, Henry Ford II. It wasn’t just about competition or rivalry anymore, it was about survival. The moment Miles sparked the racing car’s engine marked a new beginning, the beginning of the end.

  Miles began to lap around Daytona’s banked turns and infield road course, threading the car quickly through the hairpins, what he called “miserable, slippery little turns.” The sun grew hotter by the minute, and Miles’s body oozed sweat in the sweltering cockpit. Firemen and medical staff stood by. The company men stood there smoking their way through packs of cigarettes. They were learning a lesson about race car development: it required long and hopefully uneventful hours.

  Miles would occasionally lose it in a turn and spin off the track, tires screeching. Then he’d motor back on, gaining speed. “I remember some really scary spins he had at Daytona,” one Shelby man later recalled. “But they didn’t seem to faze him.”

  After Daytona, the Ford car was flown to Dearborn for windtunnel testing. Then it was off to the company’s proving grounds in Kingman, Arizona—ideal weather conditions during winter. Day and night Ken Miles lapped at speed, oversteering through turns, kissing 200 mph on straights. He could get a car so sideways he could practically see his own tailpipes. He moved from one hotel room to the next, living out of a suitcase, wearing the same old pair of socks, his old army jacket in desperate need of a wash.

  Finally the car was getting the development work it had always needed, and with each lap, Miles’s intimacy with the machine grew deeper. His colleagues described “an almost mystical sense” of a car’s inner workings. The engine and gearbox were gaining durability, and the Shelby American crew was honing in on the most critical issue. The big 427 was so powerful and heavy, decelerating into corners was proving troublesome. Brakes functioned by converting the energy of motion into the energy of heat. A caliper grips a rotor like a squeezing hand, slowing its motion. The metal rotor spikes in temperature. (If a person were to squeeze a metal disc spinning rapidly, it would burn his fingers as it slowed.) When Miles’s foot jammed on the brake pedal, the Ford’s brake fluid instantly boiled and the half-inch-thick cast-iron rotors eventually shattered.

  The crew moved to Sebring’s flat airfield track to work on the braking system. With firemen and medical staff on hand, Miles moved around the circuit, trying out different setups and tires. Time and again team manager Carroll Smith logged brake failure on his clipboard. January 18: “brake fluid boiling,” “complete loss of brake efficiency.” January 19: “The car was uncontrollable at any speed under all conditions.”

  Throughout January, the team searched for solutions. They were making progress, but they ran out of time.

  The Daytona Continental was the first race under Ford Motor’s new regime, the Le Mans Committee. A number of high-up executives were watching closely. Shelby and Miles flew out of Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, January 30, 1966. It was a long flight, with stops in New Orleans, Tampa, and Orlando; there was plenty of time to think. The humiliation of Le Mans the year before still ate at Shelby. No amount of mouthwash could rid the bitter taste from his mouth. Another humiliation at Daytona would crush his reputation.

  For the first time, the Daytona Continental was going to be a 24-hour race. Recognizing the exploding popularity of endurance racing in America, track owner Bill France stretched the 2,000-kilometer competition (about 13 hours) to a 24-hour marathon, hoping to cash in at the register, making it the only 24-hour race in the world besides Le Mans. Shelby feared the cars weren’t ready for that long haul; brake failure at the wrong place and time, with the fans and reporters watching, could be catastrophic.

  Ferrari’s factory team wouldn’t attend. Luigi Chinetti’s team would represent the Italians. But Shelby’s major rival was going to be the other Ford team, Holman Moody. The two teams would be racing nearly identical machinery. Shelby feared that the Dearborn suits were currying favor with Holman Moody. The Ford executive overseeing the Charlotte-based outfit, Jacque Passino, was a big NASCAR guy and a little shifty, and he held considerable sway within the company. Who knew what kind of politics or cash handouts were taking place behind closed doors? Holman Moody had signed major talent, most notably veterans Richie Ginther and Walt Hansgen, who were at that moment on their way to Daytona, too.

  Another problem: Shelby had a long relationship with Goodyear tires. Holman Moody ran on Firestones. Goodyear and Firestone were locked in a bitter rivalry known as “The Tire Wars,” and in Akron, Ohio—headquarters of both—the war was as intense as the Ford–Ferrari duel. Which rubber would prove superior on the track? Millions in sales hung in the balance. Ford and Firestone enjoyed a cozy relationship, back to the days when Harvey Firestone made tires for Henry Ford’s Model Ts. In fact, Henry II’s brother William Clay Ford had married Harvey Firestone’s granddaughter Martha. The two companies were literally wed. Surely Dearborn executives had a preference of which Ford team would win at Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans: Holman Moody on Firestone tires.

  “Holman Moody this, Holman Moody that,” Shelby complained. “You know,” he told Carroll Smith, “someday you’re going to get beat, and it better be by Ferrari.”

  Shelby checked into the Americana Beach Lodge, crashed for the night, then headed to the track in the morning. Already the world’s top talents were filing into the speedway medical office for their physicals. “The driver list reads like a Hall of Fame roster,” noted the New York Times in its race preview. In the pits, Mario Andretti was talking with Luigi Chinetti, the emerging star’s eyes so dark and intense, they looked like black holes. Daytona was only his second sports car event.

  “Mario,” Chinetti said in Italian. “Everybody says you will break the car. Don’t let me down, Mario.”

  “Just give me the lap time you want me to run, and I’ll do it,” Andretti said.

  By the time the grandstands were filled and the pace car was leading the pack around the track, Leo Beebe had arrived in the Ford pit. He wasn’t smiling. “We don’t even know if our paint can go for 24 hours,” he told a reporter. Ken Miles rolled along behind the pace car, headed for the start, while his teammate Lloyd Ruby lounged in the pit. Miles had won the pole; the aged mechanic and competition manager, who wasn’t even supposed to be racing, had qualified faster than Andretti, Gurney, McLaren, and the rest. Miles had put all the work into this car, and now he was on the track, his fingers light on the wheel. He had no idea if and when he would lose his brakes. He had to sense a problem before it happened. He must have felt like a bullet in a gun barrel.

  Twenty-four hours later, the crowds pressed down on the infield, where the winners were receiving their trophy. Shelby watched Miles and Ruby field questions from reporters, their eyes glazed from exhaustion.

  “We had confidence in our car,” Miles said. “Some people told us the car wouldn’t last, but it did.”

  Was he tired?

  “A little,” Miles answered. “I couldn’t sleep very well last night. Some noisy buggers going around in automobiles kept me awake.”

  Miles and Ruby knocked nearly 10 mph off the average speed record at Daytona, an incredible feat given that the race had doubled in length. Their speed was astounding. One reporter called their victory “one of the most perfect drives in racing history.” Another Shelby Ford finished second, a Holman Moody Ford third, and Andretti’s Ferrari fourth.

  For the first time in history, an American car had won a 24-hour FIA-sanctioned race.
Even Luigi Chinetti—a naturalized American citizen—was pleased. When asked if he was bitter about his defeat, he answered in his Milanese accent, “I am proud for my country.”

  John Surtees pulled up to the Ferrari factory gate in a Fiat. The date was March 10, 1966. He stepped awkwardly out of the car, fumbling for his crutches. His wife Pat walked beside him as he hobbled onto the grounds. How many hours had she spent in pits at racetracks charting his lap times? And how many hours by his hospital bed? Now she was watching her husband battle against his body as he limped through the factory’s large, metal, prisonlike gate.

  When they walked into the racing department, the technicians stopped their work. Surtees was a ghost, a man who’d come back from the dead. The English driver would always remember seeing tears drip down their faces at the sight of him. He looked over the machinery, his crutches sliding on the red tile floor. It was obvious that the Formula One project was well behind schedule. Enzo Ferrari’s rivalry with Henry Ford II had taken center stage, and the focus in the racing department was the battle for Le Mans.

  The technicians showed Surtees his “convalescence car,” a Dino 246 Formula One car they had prepared for him, similar to the chariot that had carted him to his World Championship in 1964. Surtees’s left leg was in such bad shape, he had difficulty climbing in. The mechanics pushed over one of the cranes used to move engines around the shop. Surtees let go of his crutches and grabbed hold. They winched him up off the ground and eased him into the cockpit. He wrapped his fingers around the wheel and placed his feet on the pedals.

  Surtees and his wife sat down to dinner with Mr. Ferrari. There had been no attempt to replace the driver as number one on the team. Ferrari had faith that the champion would do everything in his power to return. They shared that singular focus. Who would either be without racing? Over dinner they talked about the new fleet of competition cars. Ferrari asked Surtees if he would consider taking on more responsibilities within the team. There was no talk of the Dragoni rift.

  “Would you consider coming to live in Italy full time?” Ferrari asked.

  Surtees liked the idea. He loved Italy, the people, the passion for speed, the way a win for Ferrari was a win for the entire nation. He could still recall the day he signed his first contract to race motorcycles for an Italian team—ten years earlier, in Count Agusta’s office outside Milan. His racing career had for the most part been based in Italy since he was twenty-two years old. Ferrari offered him one of the flats he owned in Modena and Surtees accepted.

  One morning in early March, the Englishman pulled into the parking lot behind the pits at the Modena Autodrome. Some technicians were standing around his convalescence car. When he climbed in, he must have struggled with his nerve. He knew the legendary story of the great Ferrari pilot Alberto Ascari. “You have to get straight back into the saddle after an accident, otherwise doubt sets in,” Ascari said the day he climbed into a Ferrari at Monza, still nursing wounds from a crash days before. Minutes later, Ascari was dead. Helmet and goggles on, Surtees stepped into the Dino. He fired the ignition.

  Surtees’s left leg was weak; it took effort to work the clutch. He moved slowly around those flat 1.5 miles at first, and then it all came back to him—the swift charge into a turn, the feel of the rubber’s delicate grip on the blacktop. And that certain sound, the Ferrari engine, wailing inches behind his ears.

  Each day, Surtees returned to the little circuit. It was early spring and the grass around the track was turning lush green. Mornings it was covered in dew, sparkling in the sun. When Surtees breathed in its fragrance, he smelled rebirth. As the days rolled by, reporters began to gather to watch him train, along with some locals, who sat in the bleachers that the Modena Automobile Club had erected. Surtees gained speed, accelerating deeper into his turns, lapping faster and faster.

  On March 15, he shattered the Modena Autodrome’s lap record, a coveted bragging right. All through the 1950s, Ferrari and Maserati drivers had battled to own this title, and it had belonged to some of the greats. Now it belonged to Surtees. The following day, he carved another .3 seconds off the record. On March 17, he went faster still.

  News of the pilot’s speed soon reached Ferrari’s office. Ferrari expected nothing less of Surtees. He knew the gritty Englishman was battling against himself—his demons, his frailness. And he knew Surtees would win that race.

  Still, Ferrari was preoccupied in March 1966. A number of dramas were unfolding in his office, each of them requiring his utmost attention. He was now entering serious negotiations with Gianni Agnelli, the grandson of Fiat’s founder and its current chief executive. Ferrari was finally going to sell a large portion of his company. Long meetings were taking up a good portion of his time. Fiat was Italy’s largest corporation. The Magician of Maranello knew that age was catching up to him. He was, after all, mortal. In the hands of Fiat and the Agnelli family, he could have faith that his work would continue after he was gone, and that the spirit of Ferrari would remain Italian. Already the two companies were laying the groundwork for their first joint project: a six-cylinder, two-seater customer car called simply Dino—the first customer car to carry this moniker, with no Ferrari, Fiat, or any other nameplate. The curvaceous little Dino sports car would eventually become one of the most coveted collectors’ cars in the world.

  That spring, Ferrari’s band of trusted confidants began to dwindle rapidly. Vittorio Jano—the engineering maestro who’d created the Alfa Romeos that’d given rise to Ferrari in the prewar years, who sat with him by Dino’s bedside in that fateful winter of 1956—was terminally ill and would soon take his own life. Enrico Nardi, revered Italian engineer who’d played a pivotal role in the Scuderia Ferrari’s success in the 1930s, was growing sicker by the day and would soon be dead at fifty-nine. Ferrari’s aged mother had died months before. That spring he learned that his long-time friend Battista Pininfarina was also dying. Pininfarina had designed the bodies of so many Ferrari cars that now graced roads from Japan to America. He would not live to see another summer.

  Meanwhile, a young employee was beginning to make his presence known at the factory, and this, in some ways for Ferrari, was the most personal drama of all. The employee’s name was Piero Lardi. Ferrari pulled young Lardi, who was twenty-one, into his inner circle. Lardi sat in on company meetings in the boss’s office. During these meetings, Ferrari would sit at the head of a small and simple table facing the portrait of his son Dino, and ten to twelve men would gather around, elbow to elbow, most in suits but some in oil-stained jumpsuits. Lardi was put in charge of organizing the production of the new Dino 206 racing car (a cousin of the customer car mentioned above).

  Some of Ferrari’s closest confidants had known of Lardi for some time, but even to those who considered him a stranger, there was something familiar about his face: the aquiline nose, the structure of the cheek bones, and the strange brooding eyes. Piero Lardi looked curiously like his boss Enzo Ferrari. The old man had kept a secret for so long, and now it was creeping out. The mistress, the bloodline.

  Ferrari had another son.

  Piero Lardi was born during World War II. At the time, most young men were in uniform and in many cases, women filled their places in industry. These were the years that Ferrari built his factory, and many of his employees were initially women. One such young local named Lina Lardi had drawn the affection of her boss. They had an affair. Through all the years since, they had retained a clandestine relationship; Lina now lived in an apartment in Modena owned by Ferrari, along with her son, and Ferrari made frequent trips to sit and visit. By 1965, Piero was getting the first taste of his birthright. That his first major project was a Dino, a car named after Ferrari’s deceased legitimate heir, may or may not have been a coincidence.

  Amidst all these weaving plots, the Ford Motor Company juggernaut loomed. The new Ferrari competition cars would debut at Sebring on March 26; Surtees would not make the trip. Ferrari sensed that the Americans were mighty, that their resources were m
any times greater than his own. Through the years he had funneled all the money from his customer cars into his racing. But the Italian lire against the American dollar in 1966, against Henry Ford II’s bottomless pockets—could a man like Ferrari win in such a duel, no matter his genius?

  Ferrari’s negotiations with Fiat were becoming increasingly critical. The days when a small, independent company could build racing sports cars and compete against major corporate powerhouses were coming to a close.

  The week before Easter, Ferrari approached his deputy Gozzi. “Sunday there’s Sebring,” he said. “And Wednesday practice for Le Mans.”

  Gozzi saw where this was going. “I don’t feel very well,” he said, "but if you need me I’ll be at home and available.” Gozzi had spent Easter the year before at a race in Sicily. He wanted to stay with his family.

  “Sort out your health,” Ferrari said. “It is not necessary that you go to Le Mans, but you must see Sebring. We’ll lose the race. But I’m interested in knowing firsthand how the Dino and the new P3 go.”

  19

  Blood on the Track: March–April 1966

  HENRY FORD II stepped through his private executive entrance in the Glass House one Friday morning, his face grim. Waiting for him were two of his vice presidents, whose faces were even grimmer. They had a major problem on their hands.

  A tornado of controversy had touched down in the nation’s capital. A young activist named Ralph Nader had published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed on December 1, 1965. Its message: Automobiles were killing off Americans at the rate of nearly 48,000 a year and that number was rising fast, and car manufacturers were to blame. Fueled by greed, Nader claimed, they peddled the drug of speed and style, ignoring safety altogether. Unsafe at Any Speed’s tone was extreme, so much so that it read like a document of religious fanaticism from the first page: “For over a half century the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people. With Medea-like intensity, this mass trauma began rising sharply four years ago reflecting new and unexpected ravages by the motor vehicle.”