With all the excitement surrounding the new Ford GT that was unveiled this week, I think it’s a better idea to just enjoy these laps of the 1965 Ford GT40 Roadster Prototype that sold at last year’s RM Monterey auction as she takes in the sights at Willow Springs.
Thanks for pointing this our way, Ryan!
Marvelous 20 minute film of Team Shelby’s racing exploits. Even if this film was just the Willow Springs chalk talk with Peter Brock it would be worth the watch. That it’s interspersed with sequences of Dan Gurney or Ken Miles illustrating his lecture on the track makes it mandatory viewing. You might just learn a touch of racecraft that’s just as true today as it was 50 years ago. Of course that first-generation GT40 and a spinning and drifting 289 Cobra aren’t hard to look at either.
Thanks for sending this one in, Craig!
In the hours leading up to the start of the 1965 running of the Sebring 12 hours race, it seemed like a perfect day for racing. A bit hot maybe at 94° but that wasn’t unusual for a Florida afternoon—even in March. There were rumors of hard weather on the way, but radio jamming between the US and Cuba meant that there was no solid local weather report available trackside.
After 6 hours of racing the sky began to threaten rain. An hour later, at 5:25 pm the sky opened up. By the time the race was over, prototype drivers were saying that their cars were filling up to their elbows with rainwater. It sounds like hyperbole until you see the photos. Rain delay? What’s a rain delay?
There’s endurance racing, and then there’s endurance racing.
More on the race and the spectacular conditions it was run in at Sportscars.tv. Some photos from BARC Boys, Via Retro and The Inside Line.
BARCboys‘ photo archives never fail to turn up a unique angle on the races they travelled to. Dave Nicholas’ shots from the 1965 Sebring Endurance Race are no exception. The race was a wet one and the sparse accommodations for spectators at the race makes me wonder if a greater percentage of competitors or spectators made it to the end of the race. Thankfully, Dave stuck it out to document the race.
What interests me just as much, though, are these images that Dave managed to capture of the Mecom team making some final preparations on Friday night—and look like they could well have been included in our factories at work series. I always enjoy seeing the pit facilities from years past and while Sebring may be an extreme example owing to its reputation as a “primitive racetrack”, the team garages at LeMans or Monaco were little better.
Seeing the Hansgen/Donohue Ferrari 250LM and Cannon/Saunders Lola T70 wedged in here between the tractor and the steel tubing, though, really illustrates the shocking range of difference in amenities between contemporary racing facilities and those of 40 or 50 years ago. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about when I talk about the kinship that vintage racing teams had with Hot Rod garages. They were damn near the same thing.
Walt Hansgen and Mark Donohue’s Ferrari 250 LM finished 11th overall (4th in class). John Cannon and Jack Saunders qualified in 6th, and were fast runners in the opening laps of the race, but dropped out with a failed oil cooler after 55 laps.
More of Dave Nicholas’ photos on BARC Boys’ 1965 Sebring Gallery. Sports Car Digest did a lovely profile of the race that’s well worth a read.