When Ford so convincingly dominated the Le Mans 24 Hours this year European journalists with a bias towards Ferrari wrote about the might of Detroit and described in detail why the Ford driver Miles, who had intended to dead-heat with his Ford team-mate, wasn’t given the win when the tie was disallowed.
Not unnaturally, perhaps, the American monthly Road & Track has been considering how it can justify the Ford victory. Its John R. Bond points out that although the Fords had 7-litre engines, against Ferrari’s 4-litre, they were rocker-arm Stock units, but with alloy heads, and used a single 4-choke carburetter. Whereas Ferrari used a twin OHC V12 engine.
Road & Track quotes the standard NASCAR Ford engine as giving over 520bhp, with a single carburetter and the Le Mans power units as being a detuned version developing about 475bhp. As, says Bond, the Ferraris were around 600lb lighter than the Fords, and had a smaller frontal area and smoother lines, they gave away very little speed to the Fords, in spite of being down by 50-75bhp. He quotes the 1966 Le Mans Fords as slower than in 1965 – capable of over 200mph but not the 218mph top speeds seen on the straight during the 1965 race.
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Having equalised the rivals technically. Bond turns his attention to the myth of the mighty dollar. He suggests that the claim that Ford spent 9 million dollars to win this year at Le Mans applies to its racing expenditure since 1964. He says, further, that Ferrari has also spent lots of dough on this race, more, argues Bond, provided one equates labour costs at a proper ratio, Ferrari having admitted that an F1 car costs him 30,000 dollars, and a sports/racing car costing as much if not more.
Bond finishes up by reminding us that Briggs Cunningham must have spent close on 5 million dollars trying to win at Le Mans with his own team effort, and that was over 10 years ago.
“The point is,” he concludes, “that it seems unfair to criticise Ford for beating the old man of Maranello just because they could afford to do it.”
