Le Mans 1965 is the craziest race you haven't heard about

Jannetty is knows he can taste it it can smell victory if the car survives [Music] one of the great racing history stories that I love is of course one of the ones that most people haven't heard about now everybody's heard about the great Ferrari Ford war in the 60s that really ended up being mean afford winning with the gt40 s and Ferrari never winning again at Lamar but in 1965 in the middle of all this and it's usually the year that's glossed over in the histories basically neither manufacturer won in order to understand what was going on you have to kind of go back a few years in 1961 Ferrari had the palace uprising and Enzo had a really horrific meeting with some of its biggest guys busy Rini and Sheedy and they left Ferrari basically gutted the organization his head of racing one of his designers and all these guys left they formed a really strange little company called ATS built a cute little car that never really did anything but Ferraris organization was really in peril and in 1962 and 63 he luckily had some really great guys on the sidelines like Scaglietti and they came out with the amazing 250 GTO which was all conquering and one of the greatest cars of all time in 1963 Ford came forward and they wanted to purchase Ferrari which seemed to make a lot of sense because you buy Ferrari and you'd have an instant racing arm you'd have an instant high-end automotive arm and it was really appealing and Henry Ford had a brand-new Italian wife so why not had an Italian company and so they started negotiations and the purchase price nowadays when it seems ridiculous I heard it was like 16 million dollars or something like that they were fiddling over they sent over all these Ford accountants and for people and for made a huge investment in that they were really good moving forward it was going to happen and at the last hour at the last meeting and so sitting there with his famous purple pen that he had he would just cross things out they'd taken away what he actually wanted which was he'd sell Ferrari the Audibel the street automobiles to him were never important to begin with he wanted to control the racing program with an unlimited so that he could go racing which was the whole purpose of selling Ferrari and they said no and he just crossed it out turned to his buddy said let's get something to eat and they left which hacked off for just a little bit and by hacked off I mean he turned his entire organization towards Ferrari to destroy them the phone calls began almost immediately after that we're gonna go beat Ferrari where he lives which is on the racetrack and we're gonna do it in the most famous race in the world the 24 hours of them all they brought 11 cars they brought the two mark to gt40s they brought four mark one gt40s and they brought five of the Daytona's of the six Cobra Daytona's Ferrari of course responds by calling everybody they know to bring their Ferrari to the race now they've got the two factory p2 s they brought over like there's all the Italian distributors around the world had their own little race team so they would bring there were a few of the 250 LMS which some people call them 275 LMS but because of the engine size but Ferrari insisted it was called 250 so that it has some lineage to the GTO but according to the Ferrari engine size to number ratio it should have been a call at 275 it's a 3.3 liter but anyway that's something else the they bought a few of those they even had a 275 gtb which was a street car beautiful car not a GT B total cheater car like really a GTO under the like the engine had been done everything had been done but friend Ferrari had lent their factory helped to this privateer just to stack the deck so there were 12 Ferraris versus 11 Ford's line up at the beginning which is pretty much half of if almost half of the field at Lamar race day comes gt40s on pole all the GD forties are up front and it looks like it's gonna be a bloodbath the race starts and off they shoot and into the lead immediately goes out of nowhere a Maserati and people are like okay that didn't last long but it was kind of great that a Maserati fired out to the front they had their moment in the sunshine and for the first hour it looked like Ford Show it was also the first time that Wide World of Sports the United States did a live broadcast from lamal and I guess the satellites failed so all the Americans were watching was a black screen and they could hear like Jim McKay's voice talking with people but it sounded great you know that was the tower that Ford wanted people to hear because after that it completely fell apart and you could almost click off the hours going by with a gt40 dying it was for the 289 s it was warped heads they had head bolt issues with all the 289 s and because Ford insisted on changing them before the race and Shelby always thought you know that was a mistake and it was a mistake and then the mighty mark twos which already had heating issues we're pumping a tremendous amount of power through this tiny little transaxle and even the engineers were like it's not gonna last and it's good that they didn't last because Goodyear was supplying the tires for the American effort they brought over like six thousand tires for all these Ford's the engineer was in charge of it right before everything started looking at the tires and they were checking on the side after they got some heat into them which wasn't unusual for those old tires they had to make them really thick to make them work back then he's looking at he's like something's not right and then he figured it out they had used the molds for the Indianapolis tires to make these tires so they weren't the right tires they brought over a couple thousand of the wrong tires for this amazing Ford effort and he thinks oh my job is over and sure enough the gt40s are out there the first mark two comes in for a fuel stop and wasn't opposed to be a tire stop and he's looking at the back and she'll be very famously is always at the front of the car pointing at everybody making things happen he's not looking at the back of the car and the Goodyear engineer looking in the back and he's a bald tire on the back of this thing and he's all like you got to change the tires you got to change the tires and Shelby's like no don't change tires like no you've got to change the tires they start changing the tires he goes back and he just sits in the trailer he's like what am I gonna do I've got thousands of the wrong tire we've got four you know my days are over good year at level in the car industry remington it was kind of helping run the program comes over to him and he's like it's okay it's alright what do you mean it's okay he's all cars aren't gonna last like they knew they knew was gonna work out and by midnight all the gt40s are dead and the good old Daytona's are still trucking out there Dan Gurney's out there all the gray they're tearing up with those things meanwhile Ferraris like seem in order to win a race you have to finish a race so they think they've got it in the bag but they didn't the factory p2 is the two factory p2 s had a new technology in them literature ventilated front disc brakes and they were cracking and they didn't bring enough of so they were actually going out into the parking lot and grabbing people's cars and taking discs off of them and the increased time it took to change all these brake discs were slowing them down but they still had issues with the car they had gearbox issues and I think one had a head issue because it's a brutal race absolutely Berlin was very very hot l'm all that here shortly after all the Ford GT s are dead the two Ferrari P twos are dead and now nobody's got a car on the track that belongs to the factory so Ferrari quite smartly is like okay what are we going to do they move the factory banners over to the 250 LMS that are running one is the is running out to the lead which is a belt run by a Belgian team another one is run by Leo gianetti's NART team from North America that car is being driven by Masten Gregory and by Jochen Rindt who would go on to become a posthumous Formula one champion at the beginning they were like the secondary team you know in a secondary car and Jochen Rindt was a real firebrand and so was Gregory I mean Gregory was an American they were like okay you know we'll do okay and Gregory actually was slated to drive a Maserati but that car been destroyed in practice so janetti's like okay you can drive my car you're pretty fast so they're driving that car and rent is bored out of his skull because endurance racing is not Formula One racing you can't go flat out for 24 hours you can't nowadays but back then it was you had to manage the tires you had to managed gearbox in to manage the brakes year to make sure the car survived while staying at the front and hated it it's too much work in the evening the Saturday evening he was like okay I'm done leaving starts packing his stuff up fortunately he had parked his car first before the trucks came in and they couldn't he couldn't get his car out so they found him trying to get the trucks move so he could get his car out and just split they came over and they were like you you gotta run he's like if I'm gonna race I have to race my way I'm gonna race flat out and if I don't do that I don't race and so she's dad he's like we're here we spent all the money fine let's do it you can just drive flat Gregory comes in rent gets in and Rin starts cracking five seconds a lap faster than the other LM that's out there and he's also going much faster than the Daytona's and he's just crushing it doing a half sideways half the time but it's obvious that he's got the speed if he if they can be if the thing team survived by about three o'clock in the morning the lead cars were the American 250 LM Bernard car you had the Belgian 250 and we had the remaining Daytona and a mix of a couple other cars out front in first place is the Belgian it's 250 LM coming up strongly is our hero the NARC car the 250 LM I think was in about third place at the time and I think the Daytona was in second place but it looked like at taking five seconds off a lap they were coming up strong and it was really was possible at that point so as the morning continued they closed in and it was now the Belgian car up front in the NARC car and second place Masten Gregory had glasses thick thick glasses and in the morning Allah ma it's foggy traditionally foggy and he couldn't see a damn thing so he came in at daybreak and they had the chance of winning and this story came out many years later that he came in and they couldn't find rent anywhere he must have been call you know people slept wherever they could find some sleep and they couldn't find him Gregory couldn't drive he couldn't see and Edie huges was a backup driver and he'd been helping out the team and things like that and Gregory turned something goes get your helmet just get it we need to get back out there so they put ed in now he's never officially been recognized as a driver he didn't get up on the podium and in fact the story didn't come out until right about his death and about 2000 or so if I remember that correctly so he got in and drove why they found rent and he came back in a you know a few laps later or went no ways really quite sure on how many laps he did somebody said he did a full stint he said he only did six or seven laps but he drove the car now cording to Lamar rules if you replace a driver you have to stay in the car you can't that driver can't come back so technically rent could never have come back in the car but he did he hopped back in the car and because rent was tremendously fast so rink it's back in the car Hyuga s-- kind of goes into the background and rin starts ripping this thing apart like really everybody was nervous because it should not have held together he is tearing this car to pieces to get to the front now the only difference between really between his car and the Belgian car up front is that he's on Goodyear tires and the front car the Belgian car is on the traditional Dunlop's and Dunlop of course sponsors lamothe there's the Dunlop tire that goes over the track I mean you can't miss it over the period of a couple of hours he that's getting closer and closer and closer but he's harming the car and Ferraris getting nervous because they've already lost their factory team cars they don't want to lose the secondary team cars they've already moved their Flags over there they're already looking like this is all these are our best friends this is this is the plan all along we've got the 250 L lambs everything's fine they approach an art they approach Jannetty and they're like slow down we need to save these cars they need to finish we've obviously beaten the four there's only one surviving for power car left but not to worry too much about them we need to finish the race so they start making offers to Chinetti to make it you know acceptable maybe to back off the story goes is that they offer him a couple of caught Ferrari streetcars because he owned a distributorship in the United States that he could sell in that states like he was two Ferraris you back off everything's good everybody's happy and she's like no so they come back an hour later like four Ferraris four Ferraris you me everything good you have some Ferraris you back off they win everyone's happy good and she said he's like no Chinetti is knows he can taste it it can smell the victory if the car survives meanwhile Gregory's back in and he's beating the heck out of it you know the odds of it finishing were slim at the beginning and at this point who knows but they're closing in now they're only you know they're only minutes behind the lead car in a beautiful moment of racing irony the Dunlop tire blows on the back of the Dove the Belgian car ripping like a bunch of the rear sheetmetal apart and they have to bring it in hammer out the sheet metal get into Dunlop tire on there meanwhile the NARC car takes the lead and is in front and some stories have Ferrari going to them still after they had taken lead and asking them to give back the lead to the Dunlop team it comes out that all this was at the request of Dunlop not really Ferrari Ferrari really wasn't as worried as they sounded about the car surviving they didn't want a good year an American tire company winning at Lamar for the first time they wanted Dunlop but the sponsor out there winning and so Dunlop was really behind these little machinations god forbid an American tire company wins well they won the the Goodyear Tire survives and they win the race this little 250 LM is the last Ferrari ever to win at Lamar overall and still is to this day they've never won overall since then and you'd think it'd be one of the most prized possessions of Ferrari but it gets forgotten it goes on to race for a few more years it never has the success it had lemagas LeMond was really a fluke in reality and it was never designed to be a front running all winning car and Ferrari never embraced it because it wasn't their car it was almost a slight embarrassment that a American privateer had won for them when their own factory amazing p2s hadn't so it gets donated to the indianapolis motor sport museum which is an amazing facility but primarily is focused towards obviously Indy cars and the little car gets stuffed down in the basement and its partner stuffed in the basement in the corner literally almost jammed up against each other is the 1979 Porsche 935 lamal winner the winning two brothers car there rammed up against each other with little science in front that you would see at like a local car show telling what they are and they lived in this kind of car for Kotori in the basement of the Indy Museum and most people wouldn't even see or even know what they were for years and it wasn't till recently when the winning brothers car was pulled out and got restored and people were like oh my god you know this is a hidden gem that Indianapolis realized you know really what they had downstairs so they took the 250 LM they sent it to Canepa in Scotts Valley where I was working at the time to be brought back to life to be taken to shows so we get it in and it's always amazing to be in the presence of something like that I mean it granted it's in an item an object it's a chunk of steel but the history of it is sitting there and it hasn't fired up in decades we're given the the job to get it ready to go because it's got to drive across the law and in a you know and when you win an award you have to go up on the thing it all has to work and look right so we spent months researching what it looked like exactly were you know the straps that held the back end on the drank number is the found like the pieces were missing like the fog lamps were missing and to find fog lamps for 1965 Ferraris not the easiest you'd imagine but we got all the right pieces for it got it ready and it had a kind of rough look to it they wanted to keep it looking like it had just come off the racetrack so a little bit of a rough front-end look to it and it looked like a little warrior it was a great great little car the day that it started it was just like amazing because there's 60 people work in the shop and they're all seasoned professionals have seen everything they've restored the first Duesenberg production car they've done can-am cars they've done everything right but when it time to start this everybody stopped and turned like you were going to church and it fired up the little 3.32 v12 fired up and goes right and you're like oh my god like you'd be for the gates of heaven open right and out of little flames and some smoke and it comes to life and it's just sitting there purring making the greatest sound ever and it's popping and making weird sounds because I've been sitting forever right but oh my god to hear that motor that one limb aw when those years ago working again was just tremendous and we spent a few months getting it ready and it ended up going to Amelia Islands went to the quail at one at the quail so it finally got the credit and Gloria deserved and in that time is when I did all my research on it and we found out all the stories behind it which were just phenomenal and I'm really that's what a great car is is the stories that are behind it and this car has one of the greatest racing stories ever then wiki wants to thank Otto tempest for supporting our channel and making it easy for our viewers to find their dream cars we love Otto tempest because it allows you to compare the results from Craigslist nationally with all the top listing sites so visit Otto tempest comm today and find your next dream car

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 1,972,862

Keywords: John Ficarra, The 2904, Canepa, Motorsports, Ferrari, Ford, GT40, 250GTO, 250 LM, P2, Shelby, Daytona, Le Mans, France, racing, Chinetti, Enzo Ferrari, Henry Ford, VINwiki, Car Stories, storytelling, interview, restoration, ferrari 250, Indy Museum, Whittington Brothers, track, tires, goodyear, dunlop, privateer, revenge, breakdown, 289, 427

Id: iR8FP1_pjn0

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019