A war of speed

WHAT BEGAN AS A RIVALRY BETWEEN TWO POWERFUL INDUSTRIALISTS TURNED INTO A NO-HOLDS-BARRED BATTLE FOR INTERNATIONAL SPEED SUPREMACY. A LOOK BACK AT THE FORD V$. FERRARI DUEL AT LE MANS IN THE 1960S, AUTOMOBILE RACING'S GOLDEN AGE

the spring of 1963 Henry Ford II—the larger-than-life grandson of Ford Motor Company's founder and one of the richest men in the world—had a vision. He saw the future of the car market not in America but in Europe, and he invested the future of his family's empire overseas, gambling more than he could afford to lose. How to prove that his American cars were the best in the world and that customers in Europe should line up to buy them? Henry II ordered his engineering brain trust to design and build a racing car that could win the most famous speed competition in the world—the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France—a feat no American manufacturer had ever achieved.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans was (and still is) a sports-car race. But in the 1960s it was much more than that: It was a remarkable marketing tool. A win instantly translated to millions in sales. The basic rules: an 8.36-mile road course, a team of two drivers to each car, one man in the cockpit at a time. The car that covered the most laps after 24 hours won. Le Mans was deeply controver­sial because of its extreme speeds and danger. In 1964, the first year Ford entered cars, Car and Driver called the event "a four-hour sprint race followed by a 20-hour deathwatch." It was "probably the most dangerous sporting event in the world."

Henry ll's nemesis would be Enzo Ferrari, who at the time was enjoying the greatest Le Mans dynasty ever. The cars that rolled out of Ferrari's factory in Maranello, Italy had won Le Mans four years in a row. They were as famous for their speed as for their beauty. The battle between these two industrialists would make for one of the greatest grudge matches in sports history. Looking

back, one can see this rivalry as the first chapter in everything that was about to unfold in the automobile business, a long story that has now reached its climax: Detroit car companies battling for international supremacy in the era of globalism.

Based on three years of research and nearly 30 interviews, this account of the 1964 Le Mans reconstructs the first battle between Ford and Ferrari, in which Ford unveiled a car called the GT40. The major characters:

Phil Hill: Racing for Enzo Ferrari's team at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix, which took the lives of 14 spectators, Hill became the first American to win the Formula One World Drivers' Champi­onship. Now, in 1964, Hill had signed with Fora*and was leading the American effort to beat his old boss.

John Surtees: Number one on Ferrari's team. The Italian fans called this Englishman II Grande John.

Carroll Shelby: A chicken farmer turned racing icon, Shelby was a Le Mans champion (in 1959 with Aston Martin), but a bad heart forced him to retire. That's when he began build­ing his own cars. In 1964 Shelby was attempting to win the GT class (made up of cars customers could actually buy, as opposed to the purpose-built prototypes Ford and Ferrari cre­ated to win the race outright) with his Shelby Cobra, a car that commands millions at vintage auctions today.

NO ONE BELIEVED the Americans stood a chance. It would be a miracle if they beat the Ferraris in their debut at Le Mans. In fact, it would seem a miracle if they could keep their racing cars on the road. But then, in the spring of 1964, people had grown

used to the unexpected, to heroic events and shocking headlines. In the previous 12 months John F. Kennedy had been assas­sinated, the U.S. Congress had passed the first civil rights bill, and the Soviets had launched the first woman into space. Cas-sius Clay had knocked out Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, and Martin Luther King had marched on Washington.

The Ford team checked into the Hotel de France in La Chartre sur le Loire, as did an army of Ford men from Dearborn, Michi­gan: carburetor specialists, tire and engine men. Wednesday through Friday were practice and qualifying days, and the race started at four p.m. Saturday. It all had to go like clockwork, down to the customs papers to get the Ford cars into the country.

On the morning of the first practice ses­sion, the pit lane filled with cars painted in national racing colors: red Alfa Romeo Giulia TZs, silver Porsche 904s, green Jaguar E-Types. Ferrari's lead driver, John Surtees, was spotted, as was the American Phil Hill. Carroll Shelby arrived with a pair of Cobra Daytona coupes, painted Guards­man blue with white stripes. There was no way to measure the man-hours, ingenuity and soul that had gone into these cars. Shelby was a fan favorite in France. When he walked out onto the pavement and looked up at the empty, towering grand­stands, it all came back to him: the magic of this place. If his Cobras could win the GT class, his little automobile company would be assured survival.

"Outside of the United States," Shelby told a Sports Illustrated reporter, "the Le Mans race has more prestige than all the other races put together. Le Mans receives throughout the world probably five times as much publicity as Indianapolis. Any automobile manufacturer who wants to make a name for himself in racing has to do well at Le Mans."

The first engine sounded, and soon revs were coming from all directions. The air stank of exhaust and hot pave­ment. One by one, cars motored onto the circuit. Stopwatches clicked off vital seconds. The press box grew loud with the sound of thumping typewriters. Facing the three Fords and two Cobras, Ferrari had entered four cars, and a number of privateers were racing their own Ferraris, also prepared at the fac­tory by Enzo Ferrari's men, bringing the total to eight entries branded with the prancing horse.

From the first day of practice it became apparent that the race would move at historic speeds. One after another, Fer­raris cut deeper into the circuit, shat­tering the Le Mans lap record: 3:47.2, then 3:47. By the end of qualifying, the crowds that had begun to amass were left with a cliffhanger. Surtees set the best time in his Ferrari: 3:42. His speed was dumbfounding. He'd knocked more than 10 seconds off his own lap record from the year before. But a Ford qualified next, and Phil Hill was fourth. Over the

8.36-mile course, less than four seconds separated the top four qualifiers.

On the eve of the race Surtees stood in the Ferrari garage, taping an on-camera interview with Stirling Moss for ABC's Wide World of Sports. Until three years earlier Moss had been considered the greatest racing driver in the world. One high-speed injury later and here he was, with a microphone rather than a steering wheel in his hand. Moss asked him about the American threat. How important was it to Enzo Ferrari to beat the Fords?

"To a firm like Ferrari," Surtees said, "which produces a specialized product and sells most of its cars in America, it's very important."

"Ferrari has won this race four times in a row," Moss said, "and if he wins this race, it'll be five times, which has never been done. You're entering four cars?"

"Yes."

"How many men did you bring?"

"Our team is comprised of about 12 or 13 mechanics, one engineer and one team manager."

Moss looked around the garage. There were seven cars. "What are the extra cars for?"

"In case anything unusual happens," Surtees said. "For instance, the other night we were out, and we hit a fox in the middle of the road at about 140 miles an hour. It could have damaged the car rather badly."

"Well, I (continued on page 96)

SPEED

(continued from page 36) imagine it damaged the fox rather badly," Moss laughed.

A smile crept out of the side of Surtees's mouth.

Behind him the Ferraris were lined in a row. Mechanics in beige jumpsuits took a break from wiping them down so they could leer at ABC's script girl holding cue cards near the camera. An air of complete confidence permeated the garage, as if the Americans posed no threat whatsoever.

"After all," joked Ferrari's stateside rep­resentative, Luigi Chinetti, "the best Ameri­can sports car is the Jeep, no?"

When Surtees wrapped his interview, he started to think about sleep. With Ferrari, there were no dramatic meetings, no strategies to coordinate. Out on the track it was every man for himself. Surtees was teamed with Lorenzo Bandini, Ferrari's number two driver. Together they were the odds-on favorites.

At the Hotel de France, Ford team man­ager John Wyer assembled his men. Ford had hired Wyer away from Aston Martin to head up the effort. His gaze was so fierce, racers called him Death Ray—but never to his face. Six drivers gathered, three teams of two. Wyer's philosophy was the opposite of Enzo Ferrari's. He believed in a team approach. Each driver and car was a cog in his victory machine. He wanted everything done pre­cisely to his orders.

"We want to finish the race," Wyer said. "We aim to keep our cars running. We all must remember this is an endurance race, not a sprint race." Phil Hill and Bruce McLaren, Ford's two superstars, composed the number one team. Wyer's master plan had them win­ning. They would keep pace with the front-runners. "Stay close at court," Wyer ordered. "Speed must be as high as possible while con­serving brakes and gearbox. You must stay in a position to strike if attrition takes its toll on the leaders, which it always does."

Wyer turned to Richie Ginther, a short, toothpick-shaped man with red hair and an impressive resume. Ginther had raced on the Ferrari Formula One team and was an old friend of Phil Hill's back in the days when they had worked together at an automobile dealership in Los Angeles. Ginther had quali­fied fastest on the Ford team. Wyer ordered Ginther to run hard at the start to try to get the Ferrari drivers to break their engines.

Ginther got the point. The opening laps would be his chance to show the world what the new Ford racing car could do.

•

All roads leading into Le Mans were clogged with overheating cars, their trunks filled with tents, sleeping bags and Kodak Instamatics. Cabs moved bumper to bumper past the Le Mans train station. By the afternoon, spec­tators had swamped the grandstands and crowded the fields around the circuit. Accord­ing to French officials the largest crowd ever was attending the race, some 350,000.

Mechanics began pushing cars out of the paddock onto the pit straight at the bottom of the grandstands. The official Dutray Le Mans dock hung over the pavement in the center of it all, and as its hands rounded doser to four

p.m., drivers appeared, holding their helmets.

The Le Mans start was foreign to the American racing fans. Drivers stood on one side of the road across from their cars, which lined the pit row in order of qualifying, the fastest at the front. The starter stood in the center of the road holding the French flag high, and when he dropped the flag, at exactly four p.m., the drivers sprinted across the two-lane road, jumped into the cock­pits and boxed each other into the opening straightaway in the fiercest and loudest traffic jam ever witnessed.

Minutes before four p.m. gendarmes herded die crowds off the pavement, and the drivers took their positions. In Italy Enzo Ferrari sat down in front of a television. In the pit Shelby paced. His Cobra had clocked 197 mph in qualifying on the Mulsanne Straight. A host of

high-level Ford execu­tives had arrived, and they stood in the pit, waiting and watching. Following a handful of national anthems, silence settled over the hundreds of thou­sands of spectators. Smokers could hear the crackle of their cig­arettes burning. Rows of photographers lined the pavement, aiming like gunners in a firing line. A voice over the loudspeakers counted out the final moments.

"Thirty seconds... 10 seconds...."

START

Phil Hill dashed across the road. He jumped into the Ford GT40's cockpit and hit the ignition. The V8 came to life. Clutch in, shift into first, down on the gas, up on the clutch. The engine stalled. Hill saw cars peeling off all around him onto the opening straight. The noise was deaf­ening even through earplugs. And then he

was alone on the starting line. He couldn't get the car to move. He couldn't goddamn believe it. In die pit, mechanics and Ford executives looked on, their jaws hitting the pavement. By die time Hill got the car going he was alone, motoring down die straight in last place, gear­shifts crackling in rapid 6re.

Even then Hill knew something was off. Something was very wrong.

John Surtees tore down the opening straightaway, up the slight right-hand incline and under the Dunlop bridge. He loved the pavement at Le Mans—"billiard-table smooth." Two other Ferraris got a jump on him. and he found himself in third place.

It was a long race.

The early laps were among the most dan­gerous, when not-so-skilled drivers swapped paint at high speeds; it was wise to motor

ahead of the riffraff as soon as possible. Surtees was merciless in close combat. No matter how good you thought you were, he'd find a way to pass you and leave you won­dering, your concentration snapped. It was a custom for drivers at Le Mans to wait until they reached the 3.5-mile Mulsanne Straight to strap on their seat belts; on the straight they could hold the wheel with their knees.

By the time Surtees was hauling back through the grandstands at the end of the Erst lap, it was one, two, three for Ferrari. A flagman stood in the center of the lane, sig­naling caution—slick oil had already spilled onto the pavement.

In the cockpit everything unfolded in slow motion. "When you start [racing]," Surtees once wrote, "120 mph seems like 160 mph. With experience, that 120 mph seems more

like 60 mph.' As Surtees maneuvered the twisty downhill Esses on lap two, he saw in his rearview the mouth of a Ford GT40 tuck in behind him. Mere inches separated the two cars. Surtees downshifted into second gear and turned hard into the right-hand Tertre Rouge corner onto the Mulsanne Straight. Then he accelerated, with the Ford slip-streaming behind him. Third gear, fourth, fifth. He was approaching 190 mph. The world was a Technicolor blur, as if he were being sucked into a cosmic vacuum cleaner.

Suddenly the Ford jumped to the left to pass. It was the number 11 car. Richie Ginther darted past Surtees, traveling faster than any car ever had on the storied straight. Surtees saw him through his windscreen and—-just like that—Ginther was gone.

In the press box ABC's Jim McKay was

yelling wildly into his microphone, taping footage for the next weekend's Wide World of Sports broadcast: "Word from the course is that Richie Ginther, who had moved up from eighth to fourth place, has passed some more cars. As a matter of fact, the word is that Richie Ginther has taken the lead in the second lap in the white Ford with blue stripes. The Ameri­can racing colors are in the lead at Le Mans! There he is on the right of your screen. Get a look at that low-slung Ford! I've never seen a car as low as that!"

Phil Hill was back in the pit, and mechan­ics were digging into the engine compart­ment. Minutes were speeding by, Hill losing more and more ground. The crew found the problem: a blocked jet in one of the Weber carburetors. The car couldn't breathe. Not soon enough the carburetor was fixed, and

Hill raced off.

Cramped into that small cockpit, the champion began to weave through the traffic. By this time Hill was in 44th place. He'd lost 22 minutes. To catch up to the Ferraris from that distance would require the powers of a superhero. Hill knew this circuit bet­ter than any man.

HOW TO GO FAST

Hill began to rip off a series of perfect laps. Experience told him how to make up time at high speed without overtaxing the engine. There can be only one shortest distance around a racetrack, achieved when the driver chooses the per­fect line through every turn. As Hill moved the car through a bend, he could ease the tires within an inch of the edge of the pavement.

In large part the race was won or lost on the rev counter, the

rpm gauge staring the driver in the lace from the center of the instrument panel. If Hill aimed to take a turn at 4,500 rpm, 4,400 rpm wasn't good enough. The difference between a four-minute lap and a 3:58 lap on this circuit equaled roughly 25 miles at the finish.

Fans watched Hill shriek down the pit straight. Thumbs clicked on stopwatches when he flew past the start-finish. He was cruising at 185 mph in fourth gear at 5,700 rpm. A slighdy inclining right bend led him under the Dunlop bridge. He eased up on the gas, then accelerated again, shooting down a slope at 183 mph into the Esses. He downshifted to third, then second. Easy on the downshifts; no stress on the gear teeth or clutch plate. Hill left the Esses in second gear at 5,800 rpm— 82 mph. A hard brake down to 65 mph, a tight right turn onto the Mulsanne Straight,

and he hammered the throttle. Third, fourth. The g-forces pinned him against his seat. A glance at the tach: 6,100 rpm. Two hundred mph summoned with his toe.

Nearing the end of the straight, a blind right-hand kink approached—La Grande Courbe. Hill took the kink flat out. I"hen came the Mulsanne Hairpin, the hardest turn on brakes in racing. He let the car coast.... Then he nailed the brake pedal and downshifted: three, two, one. Exhaust pipes spit sparks, and the cast-iron brake discs turned fiery red. The lap belt dug into Hill's waist. He steered into the right-hander at 35 mph.

Hard on the accelerator. Second, third, past the signaling pits on the right, back up to 180 mph. Hill hurled the car through turns, rear wheels struggling for grip. The grandstands appeared in the distance. Hill gunned through that chasm, a huge val­ley lush with human bodies. Thousands of eyes followed the blue-and-white streak as it passed, a Ford car hurtling 185 mph on four patches of rubber.

No two laps were the same. Hill's brain filtered stimuli, automatically ranking them in order of importance in nanoseconds. Pho­tographers leaning in and waving at him. Pit signals: P2 (pit in two laps), PI, along with lap times. With each lap, fuel burned off, lighten­ing the car, increasing its speed. His perception was near extrasensory. "True concentration is not aware of itself," Hill would explain. "The flagmen, unless they are holding a yellow flag

or some such thing, are perceived and forgot­ten," Hill said. "A car you are overtaking is reg­istered and erased as you safely pass."

As Hill weaved through the field, the cock­pit heated up. During daylight hours it could hit 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Dressed in cov­eralls, helmet tight over the head, the body began to dehydrate. Noise numbed the ears, and the same brutal, incessant vibration that threatened the car's electronics wore on the driver's nervous system. Lap alter lap, hour after hour. "You may not even be aware of the break in your concentration," Hill said, "not until you find yourself plunging past your braking point."

PIT STOP

Richie Ginther pulled his number 11 Ford into the pit. It was just after 5:30 p.m. Gin­ther stepped out of the car, and the crowd roared for him. He was in first place.

None of the mechanics said anything. Four of them—the most allowed by Le Mans regulations—went to work. Tires to check, tank to fill.

"Well, for God's sake," Ginther shouted, "isn't anyone going to ask how the car went?"

Questions followed, and Ginther told his story. One man present described him as "wildly ecstatic." When he passed those Ferraris to take the lead on the Mul-sanne Straight, Ginther said, his tach read 7,200 rpm. He had hit 210 mph.

Ginther's teammate, Masten Gregory,

the Kansas City Flash, hustled over to the car, but the mechanics were not Finished. The whole team watched and wailed. And waited. No mallei how last the car traveled, it meant nothing if the pit stops were slow. By the time the number 1 1 Ford screeched onto the pit straight, two minutes and seven seconds had passed. John Surtees had taken the lead.

ATTRITION

In the Cobra pit stood Shelby, making a meal of his fingernails. At nine p.m. one of his Cobras, in the hands of Dan Gurney, was leading the GT class miles ahead of the Ferrari GTOs, lying fourth overall. Gurney had raced here six times, but he had never finished. He had a heavy foot, perhaps too heavy for this race. The Cobra had a five mph edge in top speed over the Ferrari GTOs, but diose Ferraris were solid. As one GTO pilot put it, "A Ferrari was like insurance. You were assured diat you would finish the race."

Would Shelby's Cobra hold together? The tall Texan rubbed his eyes and watched the car as it passed, as if the intensity' of his stare could ward off mechanical failure. The sun ducked slowly behind the grandstands.

Ford team manager John Wyer's careful plans began to unravel. A little more than four hours into the race, the Ford team received word that a GT40 had burst into flames on the Mulsanne Straight. Word from the signaling pit on the other side of the circuit: The driver

had climbed safely out of the car, but it was still burning on the side of the road. One of the three prototype Fords was retired.

Soon after, Ginther's teammate, Masten Gregory, pulled into the pit. He was having trouble with the transmission. He couldn't get out of second gear. Mechanics went to work, but it was futile. Wyer gave word to the offi­cials; he was withdrawing a second car.

Only one Ford remained. Hill was still far behind the leaders, with 19 hours to go.

NIGHT

After sunset spectators no longer saw the sil­houettes of cars on the track but rather head­lights stabbing through the dark. Speeding shadows could be identified not by shape and color but by exhaust note. Keen ears could pluck out the song of the Iso Rivolta, the Porsche 904, the thunderous GT40.

Darkness added an element of danger. To aid vision on the Mulsanne Straight, tree trunks were painted white so they would reflect headlights. Some drivers preferred the action after dark. "The very high speed is much safer than during the hours of day­light," Phil Hill's teammate, Bruce McLaren, later wrote in his diary. "The main danger at Le Mans was the little cars with a top speed around 90 mph that were cruising nearly 100 mph slower than we were, but in the darkness they couldn't help but see our lights coming up behind and they stayed out of our way."

McLaren took over for Hill at midnight. He later described this four-hour shift as "the best 500 racing miles I've ever covered."

For the crowd, the party picked up steam. From its inception Le Mans had always been more than a motor race. Coundess bars and beer tents served up German sausages, crepes, oysters and french fries. Ham on French bread: 30 cents. Crowds lined up to ride the massive Ferris wheel that, lit brightly against the night, could be seen spinning from miles away. Under a tent, strippers grinded all through the night in a display of endurance that rivaled what was happening on the race­track. Through it all came the cry of engines and the faint smell of exhaust.

By one a.m. 20 of the 55 cars had dropped out of the race. ABC's Jim McKay was still at it in the press box, stubble darkening his jawline. "It's the middle of the night here," McKay barked into his microphone, "and the leader is the favored car, the factory Fer­rari driven by John Surtecs and his partner, Lorenzo Bandini, who was one of the two winning drivers last year. That first-place car is followed by two more Ferraris. However, of very much interest is the fourth-place car, the number Use Cobra driven by Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant ol the United States. That car is not only in fourth place but is leading the GT division. And in fifth place, a remarkable story, is the one remaining Ford in this race, driven by Phil Hill and his partner, Bruce McLaren from New Zealand. That car has moved up from 44th place. It's going faster than any other car by far, lapping faster and faster every time...."

DEATH

At the kink near the White House bend, out of sight from the grandstands, the high-pitched wail of a Ferrari V12 clashed with the

throatier bellow of a Cobra V8. The drivers were battling for position when the Cobra blew a tire and clipped the Ferrari. Both driv­ers looked out their windshields and saw the world spinning. The screech of burning rub­ber filled their ears. They wrestled with their cars, using all dieir tools—brake, dutch, steer­ing wheel, gas. Sentience reached its absolute peak, and both men were suspended in time.

"A wonderful thing happens," Masten Gregory once said about losing control of a racing car. "Time slows down to a crawl or else your mind runs like a computer; you know everything that's going on, and you can just sit there and consider the alternatives that will get you out of it." And when every attempt to regain control fails, there is always God. Bruce McLaren: "There's nothing like that blank flash of despair when it dawns on you that you might be going to hit something hard and there isn't a thing you can do about it. Except to get down in the cockpit and pray."

The Cobra flipped and tumbled off the road, landing upside down in an area forbid­den to spectators. The Ferrari spun wildly in a cloud of smoke and ended up in the grass. Track stewards were alerted. Miraculously, both drivers pulled themselves out of their cars with only minor injuries. A man looked at the Cobra and saw something under it in the thick brush. Was it...? He looked closer.

There was a small body under the car.

A closer look: There was more than one body.

Police arrived along with reporters and medics. They found three young boys under the wrecked Cobra. The kids had sneaked under a fence to get close to the track, and they were watching from behind the bushes. None of them had any identification, and all were pronounced dead.

DAWN

At 5:20 a.m. Hill set a lap record. Minutes later he pulled the Ford into the pit widi gearbox problems. The team of mechanics was exas­perated, as was the crew of Ford executives. Hill stepped out of the GT40, and as the early-dawn light illuminated his face, he stood there for a moment widi his helmet in his hand. The sleepy crowd gave him a round of applause, and he couldn't help but smile.

The race was barely more than half over, and the Ford team was finished. Only one of Shelby's Cobra's remained.

Shortly after Hill's Ford retired, Surtees pulled his first-place Ferrari into die pit. His car was limping also. He complained to the mechanics of a slipping clutch, and the needle on the water-temperature gauge was steadily rising. When the mechanics popped open the radiator cap, steam piped out. Surtees was exhausted and pissed off. First place slipped away. The technicians knew Enzo Ferrari would be angry too; they'd hear it from him when they got back to die factory.

By the time Surtees was in the car again, he was lying third. Ferraris held seven of die top eight places.

In fourth place, snarling along through die fog, was a Shelby Cobra. In his pit Shelby watched the cars roll by. The deeper into the race, the slower the hours seemed to pass. The crew signaled for Dan Gurney to bring the number five Cobra in for repairs, fuel and a driver change. They were holding

their breath. Gurney had slaughtered the GT lap record and was in first place in the GT class, but about an hour earlier the car had started bleeding oil. The oil cooler had sprung a leak. Shelby's chief engineer, Phil Remington, rigged a quick fix. Rules stated that a team could add oil only every 25 laps, so if the oil leak continued, the engine would seize and Shelby would have to pack it in. Gurney stepped out of the car and huddled with Shelby and driver Bob Bondurant.

"Brakes okay?" asked Bondurant.

"Yeah," Gurney said, "but I wouldn't trust 'em."

Shelby told Bondurant not to ride the engine too hard. "Watch your oil pressure," he said. He gave the driver a shove, and Bon­durant was off.

FINISH

The final hours stretched out in a blur of speed, smoke and noise. The crowds grew restless, and the mercury spiked. As the Dutray clock ticked past 3:45 p.m., the order of placement was all but set, and the drivers slowed to ensure their finish. The first-place car was five laps ahead of the second-place car, which was seven laps ahead of the third. At the end of the world's most brutal automo­bile race the cars cruised slowly. In the final minutes no driver would take the chance of blowing his engine or shredding a tire. The crowds leaned in, awaiting the moment when the checkered flag would wave and the cham­pions would be crowned.

Just after four p.m., the red Ferrari of Sicilian Nino Vaccarella and Frenchman Jean Guichet rolled over the finish line, winners of the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans. Enzo Ferrari's cars finished in five of the top six places. Surtees

placed third. In fourth place, winning the GT class—a first for an American manufacturer— was a Shelby Cobra. None of the Ford proto­types finished. Hill, McLaren—they were no more than spectators now.

Fans and media flooded the pavement, swarming the winning car. The new champions stepped toward the podium, and soon the Ital­ian national anthem was playing over the loud­speakers. The Shelby crew gathered around the Cobra, which had a California license plate on its rear end. Stirling Moss was there with the ABC camera crew and a microphone to inter­view the drivers, Gumey and Bondurant.

"Congratulations, Bob," Moss said. "His­tory, I reckon, has been made here today..."

A few yards away Shelby stood, his curled bouffant looking a tad less than perfect. His team members crowded around, fists pumping toward the sky. Nobody believed Shelby's cars would finish the 24-hour grind at Le Mans. Now the "Powered by Ford" Cobra had placed fourth and first in the GT class. The Cobra was the Cassius Clay of motor racing—easy on the eyes and capable of the impossible. The reporters awaited comment from the Texan. Shelby was always good for a quote.

"Fourth isn't bad," he said. "Maybe America didn't hammer any nails in Enzo Ferrari's cof­fin this time. But we threw a scare into him. Next year we'll have his hide."

Excerpted from Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Ije Mans by A ,J. Baime, available in mid-May (pre-order at Amazon .com). Copyright © 2009 by Checkered Flag Media, LLC. Reprinted by permission ofHoughlon Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.