I do not think Shelby was ever the engineer. He was a driver, then became the vision/big-idea guy and the salesman. But Carrol was great at finding the right people like Miles and Peter Brock to do the real engineering.
The movie title comes from the book, which is a great read and gives alot better description of everything. I specifically remember all the difficulty they had with the brakes and aero that are not particularly detailed in the movie.
The movie was Hollywoodized of course.
My Dad worked with/alongside Bruce for a while. He was an engineer at Cooper F1 for Phil Hill and McLaren was in the other car. When Hill left my Dad went to Jochen Rindt’s car and that was the year that Rindt won Le Mans (the year before this movie).
In '66 Ron Dennis joined the Cooper team as a Junior mechanic, also on Rindt’s car. Dennis would go on to to take control at McLaren and run the team through their most successful era in F1.
That’s an awesome story! Thank you for sharing. Your dad must have had some crazy experiences being an engineer in that era.
That’s awesome, did they bring him to Le Mans? I know BP sponsored Cooper F1, and despite it being the middle of his F1 season with Cooper, BP persuaded Rindt to come drive Le Mans because they also sponsored a private team that was entered, North American Racing Team (NART). I assume BP sent additional support, but I’m not sure. NART’s win at Le Mans in '65 is one of the legendary comebacks in racing!
For you non-racing fans, Rindt’s co-driver (Masten Gregory) had so many mechanical problems early in the race that both drivers thought they were done, and the car would not restart after Gregory was forced to make an unscheduled pit stop with engine trouble. The crew literally banged on the starter with a hammer to restart the car, and Gregory managed a few more laps before the engine lost one bank of cylinders and Gregory was forced to pit again. Rindt was so sure the car was dead after the trouble restarting it he had changed back into his civilian clothes. But the mechanic crew pulled off a miracle, repairing and restarting the car in only half an hour, and now it was Rindt’s shift. It was maybe 25% of the way through the race, night had not yet fallen, and they were “only” in 18th place. NART had Rindt and Gregory driving a newly-made but older model Ferrari 250LM, while NART also entered one of Ferrari’s new P2 prototypes, which were intended to hold off the threat from Ford. They knew they were NART’s second string. They had come to the race thinking the new & untested LM would break early and they would get an easy payday. Nobody, even them, expected them to win. But with the car purring again and the P2s and GT40s showing early signs of failure, the two decided they still had a chance if they went flat out and took every chance. Rindt quickly changed back to his uniform and took off.
This was an engine that had lost 6 of its 12 cylinders to force Gregory back to the pits, but whatever the mechanics had done revived it and held it together with the hand of an angry god. Rindt and Gregory weren’t kidding about the “flat-out” push. By the halfway point at dawn they had reached second place, behind only another privateer LM. They passed a legion of factory-sponsored Ferrari P2s, LMs, and Fords (Ford’s 1966 Le Mans win was actually its third try) as those expensive cars suffered major mechanical failures trying to match the frantic pace of the privateers. Rindt and Gregory went through four sets of brake pads as they drove like hell for the lead. There was no way that engine should have held together - but it did.
NART’s owner held the rights to sell Ferraris in the eastern US, and had won Le Mans as a driver twice himself. NART’s race was primarily sponsored by BP like I said above, and was running Goodyear tires, while the leading LM was sponsored by Dunlop, which had a very close relationship with Ferrari. Word was passed to NART’s owner from Enzo Ferrari himself that if the Dunlop car were to win, there would probably be a discount on the Ferraris he purchased for import to the US…
But Enzo should have known you don’t ask an old gearhead to throw the greatest race in the world, so NART continued its push. Plus NART didn’t think the drivers would even obey a sign to slow down - they had just spent a day and a half pushing as hard as they could.
The Dunlop car was right behind the NART car, but a lap ahead, and NART would need one more stop for tires and brakes while the Dunlop car had already made its last stop. So the Dunlop team thought they had it in the bag, all they had to do was follow the NART car and hold their one-lap advantage, which would grow when NART made its last pit stop. Rindt was at the wheel, knowing he had to gain a lap and build a lead big enough to account for the last stop. If people thought Rindt looked fast as he drove through most of the night before, reeling in car after car, now it appeared he had been holding something back, and he began to pull away from the Dunlop car. Again, this was an engine that earlier the two professional F1 drivers thought was done, and instead it had now been going about 17 hours straight, balls-out. By any reasonable measure, it should have blown a cylinder ring or thrown a piston rod by now - but it didn’t.
Rindt had extended his lead to about 20 seconds in a few laps when the racing gods reached down to make sure the impossible would happen - the Dunlop car blew a rear tire, destroying much of the rear bodywork. It was able to limp to the pits, but by the time they replaced the tires & bodywork, Rindt was five laps ahead, and NART cruised to a now-easy victory. Thanks to the mechanics’ miracle revival of the engine and their quick work during the next 18 hours of stops, the second-string privateers who expected to make an early exit had instead driven like a bat out of hell to defeat the best Ferrari and Ford had to offer and win Le Mans.
Another rivalry was playing out, probably not enough to make a movie, but maybe a good subplot. 1965 was also the first time a car on Goodyear tires had won Le Mans. So Goodyear was ecstatic to finally break Dunlop’s hold on the race. Just before Gregory took his last turn in the car, he removed his Dunlop overalls in full view of everyone in the pits and donned a set of Goodyear ones. A rubbery middle finger, as it were.
So if your father was one of the mechanics that pulled off that Le Mans miracle in '65, it reminds me of Roger Ebert’s comment about winning the Pulitzer Prize: “It’s the world’s shortest job resumé.” Among the racing cognoscenti, those mechanics are legends who will go down in history. Heck, if he wasn’t there and just knew some of them, you need to get some of his stories on tape if he is still with us, racing historians will be eternally grateful!
A final sad footnote. Rindt, like many drivers of that era, had become a crusader for greater safety in Formula 1 cars after seeing too many friends die in accidents. In the 1970 season, he had won five of the ten races so far when he was killed in an accident while practicing at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix. He was only 28 years old. But his five wins gave him enough of a points lead that he became the only posthumous World Champion in Formula 1 history. Had he survived, he probably would have continued his winning ways and become a household name like his friend Jackie Stewart, his replacement Emerson Fittipaldi, and the other greats of that era.
My Dad wasn’t involved with sportscars, which is funny because he engineered for Rindt who won Le Mans in '65 and then the following year for Chris Amon who did one race for Cooper as reigning Le Mans champion having won with McLaren in the Ford.
After Cooper and a spell at Lotus he went to Graham Hill’s team. When Hill’s airplane accident happened it meant that McLaren, Rindt and Hill had all died and this was the point he started thinking about getting out of the sport and moved really to a sort of consulting role, rather than constantly travelling.
Then it was Ronnie Peterson’s death that really was the tipping point. My Dad had come into the sport from the RAF and there he had seen two jets land one on top of the other and the lower pilot was trapped in his burning aircraft and had died. Seeing Peterson trapped in the fire, even though the fire wasn’t the ultimate reason for his death had a serious effect on him and he resolved to get totally out at that point.
So he started his own business and made a success of that and then in the summer of 1985 on the way to work he was killed… in a car accident, because life has a bitter sense of humour sometimes.
Hey @Supertanker and @Mr_Bismarck I feel like I just witnessed something special with your two stories.
Thanks for that.
I agree. That was fascinating. Thanks guys!