Go Like Hell

by A. J. Baime

  The Le Mans shakedown was over. For the team, the accident was devastating. The work was undone, their car unproven. Would the brakes last 24 hours? The suspension, gearbox, and engine? The car was fast, but there was an element of mystery to it, one that would come to haunt Ferrari when the flag dropped at Le Mans.

  By early June, the world press was all over round two of the Ford/Ferrari war at Le Mans. “Enzo Ferrari believes that victory at Le Mans sells more of his cars than all other victories combined,” the New York Times stated. The papers were calling Ford’s quest to end Ferrari’s dynasty the biggest American invasion of Europe since Normandy. “With the great increase in power in the last 12 months,” wrote a columnist in England’s Autosport magazine, “it is more than likely that the Ford and Ferrari prototypes will be capable of achieving 220 mph on the Mulsanne Straight. The sobering thought is that the men who will drive these projectiles must be carefully chosen, for it is certain that not even a Grand Prix driver has driven anything before which could attain this type of speed.”

  At Ferrari’s factory, the big transporters with racing cars stacked on their reinforced spines lumbered out of the gate. The news of Ford’s new big-engined Mk II had reached Maranello. “The pistons are as big as wine bottles,” Ferrari was heard saying. At LAX, airport employees carefully wheeled Shelby American racing cars onto TWA big birds as Shelby and Leo Beebe looked on. The two posed for a ceremonial photograph. Shelby flashed his famous smile. Beebe had the look of a man standing under a noose.

  Six Fords were entered (plus five Cobras) and ten Ferraris. The prognosticators had picked their winners. But no one was prepared for what they were about to see that weekend.

  15

  Le Mans, 1965

  Once, in my racing days, I was in third position when I suddenly saw a car ablaze on the edge of the track. I could make out the number: it was the car that had been just in front of me. What thoughts do you think passed through my head in that instant? Well, my first thought was: One less, now I am second. My second thought was: I wonder if he’s hurt. And my third thought was: It could have been me.

  —ENZO FERRARI

  ON THE NIGHT OF Wednesday, June 16, 1965, World Champion John Surtees sat in a restaurant in Le Mans staring out the window. A violent storm had leveled trees and brought down power lines all over western France. For the first time in anyone’s memory the opening day of practice on the circuit was canceled. Already things weren’t going as planned.

  Surtees quietly ate his dinner. The wait was a drag. He wanted to get in the car and get going. Someone asked him about last year’s Ferrari Le Mans sweep.

  “The car that won wasn’t going the fastest,” Surtees said. After all, he was fastest, and he didn’t win. “But it kept going while the others had silly troubles.” A gust swept through so fierce it threatened to shatter the window next to him. “I’ll have to get out my slide rule to check on the flexibility of glass,” he said.

  Surtees had a lot on his mind. The secret was out; it had hit the papers, this “mid-season rift” between him and his team manager Dragoni. And the 330 P2. It was lightning fast, but Surtees believed that the car had not been properly developed for a 24-hour competition. He knew the Americans were coming at him with some heavy machinery, and Ford’s Le Mans lineup was world class: Phil Hill, Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney. Surtees had battled these athletes in Formula One and knew how skilled they were, how hard they fought. All this, not to mention the mental preparation for the physical punishment of a 24-hour grind, the stress on the brain, the body, the nervous system.

  How could any man endure such anticipation? Outside the rattling window, the rain continued to fall.

  When Surtees finally stepped into the Ferrari pit the next morning, he was completely focused. He was wearing clean white coveralls and racing shoes, holding his helmet in his hand. Journalists and some die-hard fans attending the first day of practice watched the weekend’s star step into his car. Though the track was still wet, it had been cleared of downed tree branches. The sun had appeared and the red Ferrari shined bright, the number nineteen painted on the nose and doors. Surtees’s wife sat quietly, holding a stopwatch and clipboard. Dragoni stood hunched, saying little. The team manager wore thick-frame glasses over a striking nose; he looked like an older Peter Sellers. Surtees checked his instruments and revved the V12 engine. Its song brought such joy to enthusiasts, it was available on LP record. Tires dug in and Surtees was gone.

  On the track he chose the perfect lines, owning every bend and corner, every gear shift and touch of the pedal. No man had ever made it around this 8.36-mile strip of pavement faster than Surtees. When he posted his best lap time that day, applause came from the Ferrari pit. He stepped from his car and the mechanics congratulated him.

  “Bravo, bravo.”

  Surtees set a new mark on the first day of practice. Just three years earlier, drivers were challenged to be the first to break a four-minute lap here. Surtees’s wife logged the time on her clipboard: 3:38.8, an average of 137.701 mph.

  In the Ford pit, confusion reigned. Some fifty technicians were standing there, most wondering what it was they were supposed to be doing. Even the lineup of cars was confusing: two Ford Mk IIs with their 427 engines entered by Shelby American; five Cobras entered by four different teams; four GT40s with 289 engines entered by four European teams, one from Switzerland (though the car was prepared by Shelby American), one from Britain (prepared by Shelby American), one from John Wyer and Ford Advanced Vehicles, and one from Ford of France. So much for national colors; the cars were painted different colors so that each could be identified easily in sunlight and darkness, the two new Mk IIs in white and black. No fewer than 840 Goodyear tires had been shipped in. Once the first practice session got under way, the pull and tug between Shelby’s men and the Dearborn engineers frayed everyone’s nerves. Who was in charge?

  Shelby’s men don’t have college degrees, the Dearborn suits argued. They aren’t real engineers.

  Phil Hill arrived in the pit that morning in the strange position of knowing very little about his car. He would be in one of the new big-engined Mk IIs. Ken Miles had performed last-minute development work, and though Miles was a brilliant engineer, there was no way he could’ve made the car bulletproof in that short amount of time. Hill looked over the vehicle and its heavy 427 before heading out onto the track.

  It’d been an awful spring for Hill. His career was now in a complete state of collapse. He’d been known in previous seasons as one of the safest drivers, having never crashed seriously. But in the past couple months, competing in Europe for the Cooper Formula One team, Hill had pulled himself out of two smoldering wrecks and had blown a handful of very expensive engines. His boss John Cooper had cursed him out in public and had fired him. “There comes a time when every race driver becomes emotionally unsuited to this type of driving,” Cooper had said. “Hill has reached this point. There may be some kind of driving Hill still can do, but I don’t know what it is.”

  Just before heading off to Le Mans, Hill had read a profile of himself in the Saturday Evening Post. It showed an image of his soot-stained face next to a headline that read “Sundown of a Champion.” The story told of “defeats and humiliation.” It dragged Hill through his 1961 championship Grand Prix again, the last race of Wolfgang Von Trips. Hill hadn’t so much come into his World Champion status as he had collided with it. Ever since, he seemed to recoil, falling deeper into a world of failure and danger.

  That first morning of practice, Hill pulled the Ford Mk II into the pit and stepped out of the cockpit shaking his head. “It’s absolutely frightening,” he said. The 427 provided ungodly amounts of torque and power, he reported, but there was no stability. “If we could get it more stable, it’ll go like a bat out of hell.”

  Roy Lunn had an idea. He turned to one of Shelby’s men, Bill Eaton, and told him what he wanted. Eaton went behind the pits and got his hands on some sheet aluminum. He cut the sheets and bent them ov
er the side of a trailer, fashioning two dorsal fins. He then riveted the fins to the Mk II’s rear deck like the vertical stabilizers on a fighter jet. Soon there were more fins: eyebrows over the front wheel wells to keep the front end from taking flight. Hill motored back onto the track.

  By Friday evening, the last practice session, the Mk II began to behave. Ken Miles and Bruce McLaren had posted competitive lap times. As the sun was setting, Hill pulled on his helmet. He had one last shot at a strong qualifying time. Shelby approached him. The two men had known each other for a long time. Shelby trusted Hill.

  “Let it out,” he said.

  “All the way out?” Hill asked.

  “All the way out.”

  Hill climbed into the car. Tucked behind him, inches from his spine, was a mechanism with the power of a herd of 450 horses. Out on the track he let those thoroughbreds go. In the pit, stopwatches clicked away the seconds. Necks craned to watch as Hill dashed down the pit straight. Unlike the Ferrari’s violent high-pitched wail, the Ford 427’s roar was throaty and thunderous. When Hill posted his best time, morale soared. Everyone in the pit suddenly realized that their car was faster than the Ferraris.

  Handshakes and high fives. Phil Hill had won the pole at Le Mans.

  The next morning’s New York Times: “Phil Hill of Santa Monica, Calif., at the wheel of a 7-liter [427-cubic-inch] Ford prototype, shattered the lap record for the Le Mans track today when he toured the eight-mile circuit in 3 minutes 33 seconds at an average speed of 141.362 mph. Hill gave a great lift to the Ford cars, now favored to beat the Italian Ferraris in . . . the most grueling auto test in the world.”

  In the early afternoon on Saturday, June 19, ABC’s Jim McKay stood on camera giving prerace commentary. Behind him the grandstands were loaded. Once again, the race was drawing unprecedented numbers, more than 300,000. The camera crew prepared to cue McKay. For the first time in history, a European sporting event was being piped into America’s living rooms via satellite.

  It wasn’t taped. It was live.

  McKay: “Why did we pick this event here for the first one to be brought to you live via early bird satellite? First of all it’s the biggest sports event in Europe. Secondly, along with Indianapolis, it’s the world’s most famous automobile race.”

  Never had the French, English, and Germans heard so many American accents. Fans had crossed the Atlantic in droves. To them, guys like Shelby, Gurney, and Hill were true American heroes.

  Behind the pits, Shelby was taking a breather with an old friend—Masten Gregory, “The Kansas City Flash.” The two had known each other since the early 1950s. Gregory was from Missouri, Shelby from Texas, and in the early days of the postwar sports car Renaissance in America, they won everything between the two coasts, always in the latest machinery from Europe. At Le Mans, Gregory was going to race a year-old Ferrari 275 LM for Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team. Sure, it was a Ferrari, but it was a station wagon compared to the 330 P2 Surtees had. Gregory’s car had no chance of winning. Gregory’s eyes met Shelby’s through his trademark Coke-bottle glasses.

  Jesus Christ, he said in his Missouri drawl. Ah must say, this is some scene.

  Shelby sure knew it. The old days—when a man showed up, tested his car, played some gin rummy, then raced—were over.

  As the two stood talking shop, Gregory worked a cigarette between his fingers. Shelby loved ol’ Masten. He hadn’t changed a bit. His story was legendary in motor-sport circles. Masten Gregory had inherited a fortune at nineteen from his deceased father’s insurance company. Already by that time he’d honed his skills drag racing on the streets of Kansas City in a hopped-up 1949 Ford (thus the “Kansas City Flash” nickname). He had moved to Rome with his wife and four kids in 1954, one of the first Americans ever to try to make it in Europe. He became famous as much for his aggressive style as for his bizarre crash technique. Twice he’d stepped out of cars speeding toward immovable objects. Simply stood up and jumped. Injured—very much so. But he’d survived. Most believed Masten Gregory was simply out of his mind. And those glasses! Without them, he couldn’t see the steering wheel in front of him.

  Now, in 1965, Gregory had long since blown his money on fast cars. He was thirty-three, and by his own admittance, he never believed he’d live past thirty. “I hadn’t made any plans,” he’d said. “I didn’t think it was worthwhile.” Few men appeared less competitive than Masten Gregory, until you looked deep into his eyes. And then it hit you. He had a monkey on his back. Going as fast as a car could possibly go. That’s all that mattered. At Le Mans he was about to compete in a back-up car for the back-up Ferrari team. Looking at him, Shelby saw what he himself might’ve become if health problems hadn’t forced him to retire: an aging talent riding the inertia of a once-great career.

  They shook hands and parted ways. They were, after all, competing against each other. Just like the old days.

  A few minutes before the start, an announcement came over the loudspeakers in French: “Drivers take your positions please.” Fifty-one men lined up across from their cars at the base of the grandstands. Phil Hill was in the press box giving television commentary; his teammate Chris Amon, of New Zealand, would start the race. Ken Miles ambled restlessly in the Ford pit; he would take second shift after Bruce McLaren. Surtees stood ready to sprint across the road to his car. The sun was out; speed conditions were perfect. France’s Sports Minister Maurice Herzog stood in the middle of the road holding the flag high. Television cameras were rolling, ushering in the era of instantaneous global electronic coverage of world events.

  At 4:00 P.M. precisely, Herzog dropped the flag. The race began.

  From the grandstands the fans watched the drivers sprint across the narrow two-lane road. The smoke, the noise, vehicles accelerating violently—no one could witness this spectacle and not think of war. Then, in a matter of seconds, the cars had disappeared under the Dunlop Bridge and into the Esses, leaving only the sound of the crowd’s murmur and the commentator’s shrill voice piping from the loudspeakers.

  Some four minutes passed before the first cars came back into view. The crowds rose to their feet and leaned in, waiting to see who would loop around at the front of the pack at the end of lap one. The leaders appeared to be traveling slowly in the distance, two white and black cars followed by a red one. The engines could barely be heard. But as the cars approached the grandstands, the noise resounded and eyes adjusted to the relativity of speed.

  It was one, two. Chris Amon and Bruce McLaren ran nose to tail in the two Shelby American Ford Mk IIs at roughly 195 mph. Surtees’s Ferrari chased. The rest of the field followed—Ferraris, Cobras, Fords, Porsches, Triumphs, Alfa Romeos, an experimental turbine-engined British Rover. . .

  Shelby settled in, shaking the early jitters loose. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Leo Beebe standing quietly. The early minutes had unfolded exactly according to plan. McLaren took front position and left Surtees in the dust. Lap after lap, the Fords added to their lead. News piped from the loudspeakers: McLaren had set a new lap record. A few minutes later, he lowered the mark yet again. After thirty-eight minutes, McLaren stretched his lead to thirty-eight seconds.

  The crowds standing on either side of the track along the Esses watched the leader maneuver his Ford through, exhaust pipes firing showers of sparks as McLaren downshifted. Through that blistering downhill run into the uphill lefthander, the car hugged the pavement on the edge of adhesion. Every revolution of the camshaft, the engine gulped a great breath of air and exhaled the smoke. Spectators who saw that leading Ford power down the road could not help but wonder what it would feel like inside the cockpit. As Mark Twain once wrote of steamboat racing, “This is sport that makes a body’s very liver curl.”

  But was McLaren moving too fast? In the press box Phil Hill watched and questioned.

  “What do you think, Phil?” Jim McKay asked.

  “This is quite a pace for so early in the race,” Hill said ominously. “It’s a bit quick
.”

  A few minutes past 5:00 P.M., McLaren and Amon came in for scheduled pit stops, the lead over Surtees at fifty seconds. Ford’s 427 engines guzzled fuel at five to six miles per gallon, well more than a gallon per lap, but the car’s sheer speed would make up for time lost refueling. Shelby watched both drivers step out of the cockpits. They were laughing; they couldn’t believe what was happening. Both claimed to stay 400 revs below max—which was 6,000 rpm and 6,500 on straights in top gear—as instructed. And yet they were murdering the Ferraris. Amon’s take on the car: “It’s like a rocket ship!”

  Shelby spotted the first sign of an impending disaster in the third hour. As cars flew past, one Ford motored through the grandstands streaming white-hot smoke from its engine compartment.

  Before the sun at Le Mans had set, and the challenge of night racing confronted the pilots and pit crews, a strange fever began to spread among the Ford engines. The contagion struck the GT40 driven by Bob Bondurant first. When he pulled his car into the pit, the mechanics could immediately smell the overheating metal. Exhaust pipes glowed red. The driver explained that his temperature gauge had hit 266 degrees Fahrenheit. Minutes later, another GT40 pulled in, the engine also overheating. And then a third. All the Fords with the smaller 289 engines were suddenly infected. No one knew the source of the fever, nor how to treat it. One by one, the Fords were wheeled out of the pits into the paddock, and an overwhelming sense of embarrassment set in.

  At 8:00 P.M., McLaren pulled the leading Mk II into the pit to hand over to Ken Miles, who’d been itching to get into the race. Miles started with a comfortable lead, but as he ripped through his first laps, he began to feel his transmission choking. He was losing gears. All those late-night hours of work, the dangerous test laps turned at Romeo and Riverside—all of it for naught. Miles could’ve put his fist through the windshield. He was done for the weekend. His teammate McLaren was in the Shelby American tent eating dinner when he heard the news: The gearbox in his car had failed. McLaren would be home in London in time to watch the finish on television.