“We took the trophy back to Dearborn and had a celebration,” he recalled, after saying that he began to calm down and appreciate the Le Mans win only on the plane back to the United States. “Something like four thousand people turned out, when it was over ninety degrees.”
Everyone at Ford had been following Pericak’s every move, listening to his every utterance, sharing in the ups and downs, the wins and losses. And although his emotions had been a challenge to manage throughout the year, Pericak’s confidence in the GT and the racing team, and in Multimatic and Ford itself, never waned.
“I knew we could do it,” he said. “To see Joey make that pass, to do it on command, that proved there was no looking back. I really felt that if the car stayed together, we had it won. Winning Le Mans had a way of washing away a lot of the pain and fears that had emerged early in the season.”
After the balance-of-performance controversy in France, he was also glad Ford had followed up Le Mans immediately with the Watkins Glen one-two victory. “That made a statement and closed the book on the skepticism.”
Pericak was optimistic about his future—and happy about his job, looking forward to finishing up the IMSA/WEC season and going for a championship. He’d be back for the 2017 Le Mans campaign as well. “If they don’t fire me, I’m planning to stick around.”
On July 28, Mark Fields presented Ford’s second-quarter 2016 earnings, the company’s first report after Le Mans, to Wall Street. Fields was only the second Ford top boss, and the first whose name wasn’t on the Glass House, to win the race.
Ford was continuing to make money, piling up profitable quarter after profitable quarter. Unless the economy was to get cratered by something totally out of Ford’s control, the company coffers were adequately stocked to keep it going back to Le Mans for the rest of the decade. Would four consecutive wins in the late 1960s be matched or exceeded in the late 2010s? Everyone at Ford hoped so, and the company was ready to put its money behind its magnificent new Le Mans–conquering GT. But Ferrari, Porsche, and, most important, Corvette weren’t going to sit out the next few years. History can’t ever be perfectly replayed, of course. Ferrari wanted revenge. Corvette wanted redemption. The plot points were already in place for other carmakers to stage their own returns to glory.
When Lime Rock was over, I walked back to the parking lot and thought about why auto racing exerts such a powerful emotional pull on the human psyche. There’s always something melancholy about the hours right after the end of a race, especially if the sun is slowly setting as the venue is cleaned up, the race cars are stowed in their semitruck transporters, and everyone who’s part of motorsport’s gypsy spectacle heads for the next contest. But this time does give you the opportunity to take a close look at the racetrack. I always check out the racing line, that black, grippy streak made from the bits of tires that burn off as the drivers sling through the corners and down the straights.
In a way the racing line is high-performance automotive artwork, the only tangible thing the machine leaves behind, like a signature that will rapidly fade. But just after the race, it tells a story. Something remarkable happened here. We made something incredible. We brought it here and pushed ourselves. We ached and burned. We went fast. We looked down the track and lived a few seconds in the future. We risked injury or even death. For two hours—or six or twelve or twenty-four—we could touch all the danger and excitement and promise that anyone in human history could ever ask for.
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful for the support, assistance, and inspiration of the many people who helped make this remarkable story happen. My agent, Dan Mandel, at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, came up with the idea after a conversation with my stupendous, dapper editor, Grove Atlantic’s Jamison Stoltz, and from there it was a wild ride for a year, taking me from Florida to France, with stops in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Paris.
At Ford, Bill Collins was the first person I told about the project, and he immediately put me in touch with Paul Seredynski, who then connected me with Dave Pericak and Ford Performance. Mark Fields was generous with his time, as was Henry Ford III. Alan Mulally declined to be interviewed more kindly than anyone else in my professional experience. Raj Nair was forthcoming at exactly the right time, while Ray Day made sure that I got the executive access I needed. Rhonda Belluso told me the first of many inspiring One Ford tales. Mary Beth Childs made my transition from West Coast to East Coast motoring journalist an easy one, and Whitney Eichinger introduced me to Bob Shanks, whose regular insights into the nuts and bolts of Ford’s business were invaluable. In Europe, Marcus Baumann made life easy for me as I dealt with my first Le Mans. Francesca Montini set me up with Moray Callum, and Moray was his usual entertaining self on the top-secret design of the GT. Amko Leenarts provided an additional point of view. Mike Levine kept me up-to-date on all things related to Ford trucks. At Lincoln, Kumar Galhotra, supported by David Woodhouse, provided me with a fantastic story line about renewal, while Amy Horta kept me in the loop with all the news. Special thanks as well to Warren Crone at Ford Images.
At General Motors, Mary Barra was a great interview, and Mark Reuss was never less than straightforward and candid about his ups and downs. Both helped expand the scale of my narrative. Thanks to David Albritton and Jordana Strosberg for their assistance with the executive suite at the Renaissance Center. Tony Cervone has been a fine guide to GM’s post-bankruptcy transformation, and Tom Henderson provided me with terrific access to Chuck Stevens, who is as sharp as they come on the auto industry. Kimberly Carpenter represents Chevrolet very capably in the Northeast, and Steve Martin has kept me steadily posted as Cadillac becomes a New York auto brand. Johan de Nysschen helped explain Cadillac to me. Ray Wert has a terrific eye for what makes a good digital-media story, and the incomparable Pierre Kanter has been a true friend and confidant.
At IMSA, Nate Siebens ensured that I got what I needed from my visit to Daytona, and Scott Atherton gave me my first juicy indication that the GT had almost been a Mustang.
Elodie Leboulleux and Inge Moreau Horsten of Le Mans and the ACO were immensely helpful and ever gracious with media accreditation for the 24 Heures.
Coralie Garandeau and Olivier Mirguet and their sons, Achille and Raoul, were welcoming in Paris before Le Mans, and their hospitality, as well as their guesthouse, enabled me to complete a large part of the book before I left France.
At Ferrari, Morgan Theys, Didier Theys, Krista Florin, and Efrain Olivares started the journey to Le Mans with me at Daytona and ended it in France. Special thanks are due to Giancarlo Fisichella, as great a driver as has ever slipped behind the wheel.
Khobi Brooklyn and Alexis Georgeson at Tesla have helped with countless stories about their company, as has Elon Musk himself. Led Zeppelin provided the sound track for my writing, and I doubt I’ll get another chance to thank Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and the late John Bonham, so what the hell? Thanks, Zep!
Special thanks to Alistair Watkins and Sophie Stansfield of Influence Sports, whom I met at Daytona, and who saved my life in Le Mans, after I had been up all night and was more than ready for the Rolex-hosted media breakfast when the sun rose. Equal thanks to the Michelin Guide staff, who kept us all provisioned through the long night.
Many thanks to my colleagues at Business Insider, especially Benjamin Zhang, Will Fierman, Mo Hadi, Christina Sterbenz, Justin Gmoser, Hollis Johnson, Ashley Lutz, Julie Zeveloff, and our fearless founder, Henry Blodget. A special mention for Jim Ledbetter and Elinor Shields at Slate’s The Big Money, where I wrote about the Detroit meltdown every day for two years. And thanks to Madeleine Brand of KCRW, who occasionally lets me come on her radio show, Press Play, to talk cars.
My colleagues in the auto writing game are too numerous to mention with any comprehensiveness, but I’m grateful to all of them, collectively, for keeping this mad passion for writing about automobiles, both fast and slow, alive.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Chip Ganassi and his spectacular team of drivers, on both sides of the Atlantic. In particular, I’m grateful to Joey Hand for his always-cheerful embrace of competition, speed, and ultimately, victory.
Amy Hughes provided stupendous, scrupulous copyediting, Susan Gamer executed a careful and thorough proofread, and the production and design teams at Grove Atlantic, directed by Julia Berner-Tobin, created a gorgeous finished book. Special thanks to Nicole Nyhan for getting this book across the finish line. Will Pittenger created a marvelous map of the Circuit de la Sarthe, and George Gibson, Deb Seager, and Amy Hundley sent the book out into the world with great engagement and professionalism.
Finally, thanks and adoration go to my lovely and brilliant wife, Maria Russo, who helped me in countless ways all along. Our children—August Larkin, Mario James, and Dante Nicholas—never stopped asking me how the book was going. Pressure and motivation, all at the same time! In the end, it was a family effort, with even my mother, Nora, and my in-laws, Mario and Jacquie Russo, kicking in encouragement and enthusiasm.
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