by A. J. Baime
June 4: Speeding into a turn at the Milwaukee Fairgrounds, A. J. Foyt lost a front wheel. He hit a wall and his car exploded. “I knew I had to get out or just fry,” he said from his hospital bed, his hands, neck, and face scorched and bandaged. “I gritted my teeth and put my hands into the burning fuel to raise myself out.” Foyt was under contract to race a Ford at Le Mans, but he wasn’t going to make the trip.
That same day: Ken Miles’s teammate Lloyd Ruby went down in a plane crash after taking off from Indianapolis Motor Speedway airport, suffering a fractured spine.
June 12: At the Belgian Grand Prix, Jackie Stewart—also contracted to race for Ford at Le Mans—lost control on wet pavement and launched through a wall of hay bales into a nine-foot ditch. He survived a harrowing ordeal, pinned beneath a smoldering car while leaking fuel soaked into his coveralls. He suffered a fractured shoulder and ribs.
Phil Hill had a falling out with Ford management. Hill signed with another team that posed a major threat: the Chaparral of Texan Jim Hall, with its big Chevrolet engine. Hall had rebuilt the car to meet all FIA regulations and had hired the most accomplished Le Mans pilot of them all.
Leo Beebe needed drivers, but who was capable of taking the wheel of a 225-mph machine? You couldn’t put that kind of power in just anyone’s hands. “The Flying Scot” Jimmy Clark—two-time F1 champ and reigning king of Indy—refused to race at Le Mans. It was simply too dangerous. So, too, did Fred Lorenzen (the first NASCAR driver to earn more than $100,000 in a season, in 1963), for the same reason. At the last minute, Ford reached out to the new kid.
Not since his family left a refugee camp in Italy had Mario An-dretti stepped foot in Europe. Ford Motor Company offered a big payday. Andretti saw a chance to get some experience across the Atlantic, without having to make the kind of commitment that the Ferrari offer would’ve required. And the money was too good to turn down. Andretti packed his bags.
The weekend of June 12, racing teams from all over Europe and America mobilized. At Shelby American in Los Angeles, Holman Moody in Charlotte, and Dearborn, the rush to move personnel and equipment overseas got under way. The logistics were staggering. Eight 2,400-pound cars, four spare engines, more than 25 tons of tires and parts, and a 40-foot tractor trailer turned into a rolling machine shop were stuffed into the bloated bellies of jetliners. The staff totaled more than 100 men. In Dearborn, Beebe’s team arranged for Ford’s own medical unit. “We have our own medical tent, our own doctor, and a helicopter standing by to evacuate anybody who gets busted up,” he told one reporter.
As usual, Shelby enjoyed his share of the prerace spotlight. He was coach and captain of Henry II’s army, a Pied Piper of hotrodders, a tough Texan with a sissy’s name. Shelby had gotten word that Andretti had joined the Ford effort. The young sensation was contracted to Firestone, which meant he had no choice but to race for the Holman Moody Ford team. One more thing for Shelby to worry about.
“Win or lose,” he said on his way out of Los Angeles, “I’m flying home on Monday and I’m going to go hide for awhile where no Ford man or Frenchman can find me.”
In Paris, Henry II arrived by jet with his wife and son Edsel II. He was to spend the whole week in France. On Monday, June 13, he’d meet with Prime Minister Georges Pompidou to discuss business and the European economy. On Wednesday, his appointments included France’s Finance Minister Michel Debré. And on Saturday, he would arrive at the racetrack at Le Mans as Honorary Grand Marshall. His arrival was treated like the second coming of Henry II of the House of Plantagenet, the English king who ruled much of France during the twelfth century.
Henry II was about to pump another $100 million into overseas operations by the end of 1966, and the French leaders were vying for some of those robust American dollars. They had a new French Ford factory in mind. Ford’s growth in Europe was rising 5 percent to 7 percent a year, double growth in the United States. Although in America Ford Motor Company was second to General Motors, in Europe, among American manufacturers, Ford was number one.
The day Henry II met with Prime Minister Pompidou, Ralph Nader appeared in Europe for the first time to spread his message. Was the timing coincidence? Lectures in Great Britain drew crowds and banner headlines across the continent. Nader’s face was the face of controversy, his voice the voice of reform. “The road death and injury rate in Europe has reached tragic proportions,” Nader preached. “They have not done anything about safety since Magna Carta.”
In the city of Le Mans, hotels filled with the world’s elite racing drivers, mechanics, and engineers, the price of each room jacked up to double or triple the normal rate. Journalists and television crews arrived, along with spark plug sales reps, tire company executives, and anyone else who stood to make a buck. Sleepy bars in town cranked their jukeboxes and the streets grew loud with late-night, drunken foot traffic. Ford men filled two hotels downtown. Ken Miles was spotted outside the Automobile Club de l’Ouest’s official inspection tent. Standing shirtless in light blue chinos and shades, he shook hands and signed autographs. Andretti checked in to the Hôtel Moderne. He got off to a poor start in France; he was in a dark mood, brooding over bad news. The night before the first practice day, he sat down to dinner with his wife at the hotel.
“Did you hear what happened at Reading?” he asked. She hadn’t heard. “Jud Larson was killed and so was Red Riegel.” Larson and Riegel were two dirt-track racers who’d schooled Andretti in his early days in Pennsylvania.
When asked about Le Mans, Andretti said that he’d do his best. Sports cars weren’t his specialty but “money talks,” he said, sarcastically. “We’re all here to make money. What else? That’s what Jud Larson was doing at Reading, pushing to make a buck. But he pushed too hard.”
Phil Hill showed up with the Chaparral team. If the Chevy-engined Chaparral took the checkered flag as Henry Ford II sat in the crowd watching, it would go down as one of the most humiliating moments in racing lore, and many in the know were putting their money on Hill.
The Ford team set up operations in the old Peugeot garage not far from the track. The garage’s floor space was the size of a football field, but, by Wednesday, June 15, the team was already running out of room. Bruce McLaren walked into the garage with his teammate Chris Amon. McLaren saw eight cars painted in various colors. Dozens of technicians worked over the fleet in spotless Ford uniforms.
McLaren had been the first driver hired by Ford to develop a Le Mans car, back in 1963. He couldn’t believe how massive the operation had become. But then, that was racing in 1966. Money was pouring in, advancements in technology were throttling forward, and speeds kept rising. McLaren had himself cemented his reputation during the previous few years as one of the most innovative engineers and racers in the world. He’d launched his own Formula One team just a month earlier, fielding cars under the McLaren marque. It seemed the natural course of things since his childhood days, when he raced around the Wilson Home for Crippled Children on his Bradshaw Frame. McLaren might have known he would someday die at the wheel. He’d just published an autobiography in which he’d written his own epitaph: “To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.”
Shelby believed McLaren’s expertise was so valuable, he’d negotiated to have him on his team even though McLaren was contracted to Firestone and not Goodyear. No one knew at the time that this little footnote in the story of the Tire Wars was to play a strange and significant role in the outcome of the race.
With his teammate Amon, McLaren found his car. They were delighted by the sight of their Ford. Both he and Amon were from New Zealand, and their car was painted black with silver racing stripes—kiwi sporting colors. The number two was painted on the nose and doors. Neither driver had ever seen a car better prepared for competition than this one. Many critical pieces had been X-rayed. There was no need
for frantic, last-minute work; everything was ready to go.
Thus far, all of McLaren’s races for Ford had ended in disappointment. Months earlier at the 24 Hours of Daytona, he and Amon had teamed and had taken it easy on their Ford fearing it would break—as it always had before. They’d finished in fifth place, miles behind the leaders. They’d “pussyfooted,” in Amon’s words, because they didn’t believe in the car. After that race, McLaren had told his friends that Ford was going to win Le Mans in 1966. Now here he was in France, about to start the biggest race of his life. There’d be no pussyfooting, he told Amon.
“We’re not screwing around like that again,” McLaren said. “We’re going to go for it!”
Surtees came to Le Mans directly from Belgium following his victory at Spa-Francorchamps. He knew he and his team were underdogs. After six straight Le Mans victories, Ferrari was now expected to lose. Surtees had a strategy in mind. When the team had gathered—roughly two dozen men in comparison to the Ford army—he stated his case.
“The only way we’re going to beat these cars is by playing tortoise and hare,” Surtees said. “Mechanically, our cars are well engineered and they can be driven 99 percent. The thing is, you got racers at Ford. Real racers. Now I reckon we can get away with a bit of luck by driving one of our cars at 100 percent. The moment the flag drops, we have to go —bang! We can run our other cars with a little more safety. I cannot see some of those drivers resisting, not joining the race. I can see their discipline easily go right out the window. We can win the race that way!”
It was a plan. One Ferrari would charge out front at the start and try to bait the Ford drivers into moving too fast too early and breaking their cars. Time and again, the Fords had proven fragile. The Americans understood power, but were they the best engineers? The most disciplined drivers? Surtees was the only man on the team quick enough to make this strategy work. He’d be the man to set the pace.
The afternoon of Wednesday, June 15, mechanics from all the team garages wheeled cars into the pits and onto the circuit for the first practice session. Surtees was on the track, as were Miles, Gurney, McLaren. On the fastest straightaway in racing, the world’s most skilled drivers busted the 200 mph mark again and again, the thin strip of pavement lined on either side by sturdy pine trees. By the time the teams left for their hotels after the first day, the sun had gone down and the lap record was history. Dan Gurney had set a new mark in a Ford—3 minutes 33.3 seconds. Surtees was three seconds slower, but still warming up.
Surtees arrived in the Ferrari garage the following day prepared to beat the Ford’s time on the second of three practice days. He found his 330 P3. The names of the drivers for each team car were painted in white on the red body. When Surtees saw the names on his car, he knew something was wrong. He was supposed to be teamed with another Englishman named Mike Parkes, but there was a third name painted on his Ferrari, Ludovico Scarfiotti, a fast Italian who happened to be the nephew of Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli. Because of his health, Surtees had agreed to allow Dragoni to assign Scarfiotti as a reserve driver to his car. But Surtees was feeling strong, and Scarfiotti was reserve, on the bench. The Italian’s name wasn’t supposed to be painted on the car. Surtees knew something was up, and Dragoni was behind it. He went in search of his nemesis.
At Le Mans, the world caved in on Surtees. The near-death accident, the stress his return to racing had placed on his marriage, the backstabbing and cutthroat politics. Even worse: Dragoni had put up a fuss about Surtees’s wife Pat sitting in the pit. Pat Surtees always charted her husband’s lap times. There were rumors that one of the Ferrari engineers was making passes at her, and Dragoni said it was distracting. Making passes at his wife while he was on the track risking his life! Was it true? Who knew? All of Surtees’s crackling rage funneled into this one moment in time.
He found Dragoni.
“Why is Scarfiotti’s name painted on my car?”
“Perhaps you are not fit enough,” Dragoni answered. Then he added, “John, you are not going to start. Scarfiotti will start.”
“Why?” Surtees said, exasperated. “That’s against all the philosophy! That’s against what we’ve said is necessary to win!”
“Mr. Agnelli is here,” Dragoni said. “He’s here for the start. I want Mr. Agnelli to see his nephew Scarfiotti.”
“Ludovico’s not going to be able to mix it up with the Fords in the early part of the race! We have a strategy in place!”
The strategy had apparently changed. “Besides,” Dragoni said, “we thought if we let Ludovico start it would give you an easier time. Perhaps you might be tired.”
Surtees realized what was behind all of this. As head of Fiat, Agnelli was the man that Enzo Ferrari was currently negotiating with for a strategic partnership, and diplomatically it would make nice if Agnelli saw his nephew start the race. Surtees had gotten caught up in the Fiat affair. And Dragoni, Surtees believed, had his own agenda. Surtees and his teammate Mike Parkes were both Englishmen. Dragoni wanted an Italian on their team so the Brits wouldn’t get all the credit if they won.
Surtees dug in. A shouting match erupted, and it ended with Dragoni laying down an ultimatum. If Surtees didn’t like the scenario, he could walk.
“I’m the fastest man on this team,” Surtees responded. “Whatever is behind this, it’s not in the best interest of the team. The main job is beating Ford and winning this race. I’m tired of constantly being sabotaged in my efforts to win by decisions that make no sense. Therefore, you’d best count me out!”
He stormed off. Within minutes, word began to spread. An extraordinary new development reached the pressroom and reporters went in search of the facts. This was no minor affair. Surtees’s refusal to compete at Le Mans was like Hank Aaron refusing to suit up for Game Seven of the World Series. The driver sent a telex to Maranello pleading with Ferrari to do something about the Dragoni situation—to no avail. Ferrari did eventually comment publicly: “If Dragoni has decided on the substitution, then he must have good reason for doing so.”
It occurred to Surtees that all Mr. Ferrari ever knew to be truth was funneled to him by a variety of pawns in his Medici-esque empire. Who knew what Dragoni had told Ferrari in the past, and what he’d say about this morning’s row? Surtees had to get his own story out there immediately. When the reporters arrived, he was ready to talk. He spoke to them all: the English reporters, Italians, Americans, even ABC’s television cameras, filming footage to fill out the weekend’s live broadcast.
“Dragoni and I have never agreed,” Surtees said. “The big problem is he is an Italian and I have not got the right nationality. Things came to a head this morning. I was asked by Dragoni if I agreed to the Italian Ludovico Scarfiotti becoming the reserve driver to the three Ferrari works cars. Mike Parkes and I agreed. I was astonished when I arrived to find three names were painted on the one car which Mike and I were to have driven. When I tackled Dragoni he said something about me not being fit enough to finish the race. I told him not to make lame excuses. His reply was, ‘Take it or leave it.’ I chose to leave it.
“We came here to beat the Fords,” Surtees continued. “When things are going on in the pits which tend to stir up trouble among the drivers, this is not my idea of a team effort.”
Surtees knew he had to go see Mr. Ferrari in person and make his side of the story known before it was too late. He knew this meeting had the potential to be the most explosive of his life.
By Friday night, the qualifying times were set. Dan Gurney was fastest in the #3 Ford: 3 minutes 30.6 seconds. Ken Miles was second, 1.1 seconds behind. The quickest Ferrari qualified fourth at 3:33.
The night before the race, drivers struggled to sleep. Some picked anxiously at late-night dinners, while others lost themselves in the eyes of some beautiful conquest. In a castle called Château d’Artigny not far from the track, Ford executives gathered for a VIP cocktail party. They walked wide-eyed around this massive Renaissance building, swallowing hors d’oeuvres w
ith glasses of French wine. How different this was from the usual Dearborn fete. None of the waiters spoke English, and though they liked American money, they didn’t like Americans.
At one point, Roy Lunn ventured to the bathroom. Though the building was majestic and expensive, the toilet had a trough-like urinal that seemed centuries old. He stood thinking about how this whole European campaign had unfolded. Three years earlier, he had been at the Ferrari factory with Mr. Ferrari on a fact-finding mission. He could recall the Dearborn meeting after the Ford–Ferrari deal had gone sour, when he outlined his proposal before Lee Iacocca and Don Frey to build a mid-engine racer that could beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Now Lunn was relieving himself in this castle southeast of Paris the night before the most anticipated race in Ford Motor Company’s history.
He heard the bathroom door open. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a large man amble up next to him. It was Henry Ford II. They stood next to each other.
“Well, Roy,” Henry II said, “do you think we’re going to win?”
Lunn searched for words. He was caught off guard, though pleased Mr. Ford had remembered his name. “I hope so,” he said. “I think we’ve got a great shot.”
Around the globe, headlines alerted millions that international racing’s ultimate showdown had arrived. Stories appeared in Paris’s Le Monde, Milan’s Corriere della Sera, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. The question would finally be answered: Which was faster, Europe or America?
Ford had entered eight prototypes, all Mk IIs with 427-cubic-inch engines. The final lineup:
