Phillips Big Ask

The Story of Ford's Triumphant Return to Le Mans
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-8567-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten

'A Big Ask' is the inside story of the Ford Motor Company's return to the world's most famous sports car race - The 24 Hours of Le Mans - as told by veteran motorsports journalist David Phillips and accompanied by more than 100 color images by some of the world's top racing photographers. Half a century ago, Ford's battles with Ferrari for supremacy at Le Mans became the stuff of legends. Rebuffed in his bid to buy Ferrari, Henry Ford II spent untold millions to defeat the iconic Italian marque in a race it had come to dominate in the early 1960s. After two years of humiliating failure, the Ford GT40 delivered a storied 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans in 1966, the first of four straight wins for the American automaker. Ford returned to Le Mans in 2016 with a 21st century Ford GT and a bold mission: Celebrate the golden anniversary of its legendary 1-2-3 finish in 1966 with another victory. But Ford did not go it alone. Boasting a driver line-up of 'Le Mans Assassins,' Ford partnered with powerful Chip Ganassi Racing, winners of the Indianapolis 500, 24 Hours of Daytona and Daytona 500, world-renowned Multimatic Engineering, and a host of world-class suppliers in an effort to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Veteran motorsports journalist David Phillips was embedded with Ford Chip Ganassi Racing throughout what proved to be an exhausting and exhilarating journey, from the development of the Ford GT and its problematic competition debut through to its first successes and, finally, triumphant performances at Le Mans and beyond. With unfettered access to all of the team's key players, he provides a detailed, insightful and compelling account of Ford Chip Ganassi Racing's audacious bid to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans that will be a welcome addition to the collection of any motorsports aficianado, automotive buff or sports fan.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Phillips, David

Leseproben

Chapter 1 Beginnings GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG ASIDE, events, human endeavors and ideas seldom have a definitive beginning. Did World War I begin with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at 11 a.m. on June 28, 1914? When Germany declared war on Russia and France six weeks later? Or with the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882? When did NASA’s Apollo program originate? On May 25, 1961 when President Kennedy announced the goal of sending an American safely to the Moon and back by decade’s end? When Orville Wright took flight in Kitty Hawk? Or when Paleo Man’s gaze first fixed on that ivory orb in a sky unsullied by light pollution? And when was rock ’n roll born? With the release of Rock Around the Clock or My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)? With gospel, R&B, boogie-woogie, rockabilly or jump blues? With Bill Haley and the Comets? Alan Freed? Chuck Berry? Howlin’ Wolf? Elvis? Jelly Roll Morton? Fats Domino? Carl Perkins? Ike Turner? Beginnings, it seems, are in the eye of the beholder. Indeed, for more than a generation the great flashpoint of American politics has been the question of when life itself begins. So to point to a definitive moment when The Ford Motor Company set out to re-capture the glory of its most fabled international motorsports triumph—a 1-2-3 finish in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, the first of four consecutive victories—is nothing if not an exercise in subjectivity. Better to explore the roots of Ford’s Le Mans reprise in the minds of some of the principle characters spearheading and contributing to the effort. Of one thing we can be certain: Henry Ford II’s fascination with the 24 Hours of Le Mans—in fact, an obsession that spurred his bid to acquire Ferrari in the early ’60s and, when he was rebuffed, to spend untold millions to win “La Ronde Infernale” courses through the veins of his company and heirs to this day. “My real grandfather died when I was seven,” explains Henry Ford III, Ford Performance Marketing Manager, “so my early consciousness of Le Mans was more wrapped-up in Carroll Shelby. Not just for me, but for a lot of Americans, he was Le Mans. What he orchestrated with Ford at Le Mans is certainly part of the family DNA. “After college, I was working at Galpin Ford in LA when Carroll arranged to meet for dinner. The first words he ever spoke to me were ‘Your grandfather was a son-of-a-bitch.’” Although many might have retorted, “it takes one to know one,” the fact remains that Ford formed a familial bond with the Le Mans-winning driver who was destined to mastermind the 1966 triumph (not to mention father the Shelby Cobra and Shelby Mustang); a bond so close that Ford refers to Shelby as his “de facto grandfather.” One would be hard-pressed to find a man who bears less of a physical resemblance to the forbidding Henry Ford II or larger-than-life Carroll Shelby than Raj Nair. But as Ford’s Executive Vice President, Product Development and Chief Technical Officer, the jockey-sized Nair is every bit the father of the EcoBoost Ford GT as The Deuce and Shelby were of the Ford GT40. Edsel B. Ford II, Henry Ford III and 1966 Le Mans-winning Ford GT40 Raj Nair The son of India-born college professors, Nair was not exactly born to a household keen on, let alone obsessed with, motorsports. However, from his earliest days the St. Louis native was a car guy and that passion eventually led him to race Formula Fords and, later, in the Skip Barber Racing Series. “There’s a certain feeling that can only be experienced racing wheel-to-wheel, both man and machine at their absolute limits,” says Nair. “I’ve since come to enjoy racing on three levels: as a driver competing on the track, as an engineer appreciating the incredible innovation required for success and, of course, as a fan.” But it was a fourth perspective—as an automotive executive who abhors the status quo—that drove Nair to formulate Ford’s return to Le Mans and, with the backing of Ford CEO Mark Fields, champion the program to Ford’s Board of Directors, opting to develop a 21st century Ford GT for the Le Mans GTE-Pro class rather than going for the overall win in the esoteric and astronomically expensive LMP1 class or building a GTE-Pro class super-Mustang with but a passing resemblance to its namesake. At the same time, Nair launched a thorough revamp—termed a rebirth in some quarters—of Ford’s motorsports programs corresponding with a newly aggressive line of high-performance road cars under the “Ford Performance” rubric. Quick-witted and gregarious, it’s hard to imagine anyone calling Nair a “son of a bitch”—although nobody climbs the corporate ladder from a body and assembly operations engineer to director of new model programs, Advanced and Manufacturing Engineering, Vehicle Operations at Ford in a dozen years without sharp elbows. Not so Chip Ganassi. The son a WWII veteran who made a fortune in the Western Pennsylvania construction industry was a race driver short on patience and long on talent, out-qualifying fellow rookies Bobby Rahal, Danny Sullivan and Hurley Haywood in the 1982 Indy 500 and earning the STP Most Improved IndyCar Driver award the following season. Ganassi, who still owns a Ford GT40 slot car he raced as a youth, stepped away from the cockpit after competing in the 1987 24 Hours of Le Mans to build “the kind of team I would have wanted to drive for.” Success was not instantaneous. But as he stocked his organization with a potent brew of seasoned veterans, up ‘n comers and “first adopters” including managing director, Mike Hull, Ganassi matured into a kinder, gentler but still fiercely competitive team owner; one who demands excellence of his employees but treats them like his extended family; one whose vocabulary does not include the phrase “that’s good enough” and whose team has earned 17 series championships and more than 160 race wins including four Indianapolis 500s, the Daytona 500, Brickyard 400, a half dozen Rolex 24s at Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring…at last count. Indeed, among his contemporary team owners, only Roger Penske’s statistics compare with those of Ganassi who, to be fair, was still driving race cars when Penske Racing captured its sixth Indy 500. While the two enjoy a personal friendship and mutual respect, only those close to Ganassi appreciate how much he enjoyed snatching the 2015 IndyCar title from Penske’s grasp in the final laps of the final race of the season…or what it would mean to him to be the first of the two to occupy the top step of the podium at Le Mans. Chip Ganassi Just as Ford called on the racing expertise of Shelby’s team (together with rival squads Holman Moody, Alan Mann and John Wyer Racing) to achieve its Le Mans success in the 1960s, so Ford partnered with Ganassi and his organization to campaign the EcoBoost Ford GT. The partners were hardly strangers. Having captured a pair of 24 Hours of Daytona and Daytona Prototype (DP) series championships with BMW power and a team of drivers including Joey Hand and Scott Pruett, Ganassi joined forces with the Blue Oval in 2014 to campaign a Riley chassis powered by Ford’s 3.5 liter, turbocharged V6—aka the EcoBoost—taking five wins in two seasons including the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring. “We watched Chip’s organization for a while and saw what his organization did in DP as our partner,” says Nair. “Obviously his organization has enjoyed a tremendous amount of success. When we decided to up our game in preparation for the Ford GT program we wanted the best, and it would be hard to say in IMSA DP that Ganassi is not the best. So as we started the discussions the cultures fit and the personalities fit…maybe fit a little too much! “I’m not going to say we had this grand plan written down where the end game was 2016 Le Mans, we’ll do a production Ford GT with the EcoBoost engine therefore we’ll need to put the EcoBoost in a DP and race it with Chip,” he continues. “Having said that, certainly in my mind it was ‘If we’re going to do that, then we’d better have this step now…this is a real opportunity in 2016. But if we’re going to do it, then we have to lay some groundwork right now. If we don’t do it, the groundwork is still great. But if we’re going to do it with a new car and a new engine, let’s have some things stable, including the organization we’re partnering with.’” Chip Ganassi Racing achieved considerable success with BMW, but the Bavarian automaker never truly seemed to embrace the Daytona Prototype program; didn’t give it much credence internally or leverage the success publicly. Committed to moving forward with the team’s sports car racing program,...