With Ford vs. Ferrari fresh in the theaters, everyone wants to know how much of the story was real and what has been revved up for added drama.
There is truth in the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari. As the movie shows, Ford attempted to buy Ferrari and use the new Ford-Ferrari brand to launch a line of state of the art race cars. The sales team thought that introducing a sleek and speedy car would spark interest in the minds of younger generations, while hopefully increasing their sales. However, when Enzo Ferrari was looking over the proposed contract, he was insulted and sold stakes to Fiat. Enzo, thinking that this was not a big enough attack at Ford's reputation, went as far as to insult Henry Ford II. Calling him things such as “fat” and denoting that even though he has the name Henry Ford, he would never be the man Henry Ford I was.
Any rational person would overlook this but, thankfully, Henry Ford II took this personally and began creating his own line of race cars to defeat Ferrari in the Le Mans race, a very prestigious French race.
This is where the stories contradict, only slightly, but still a contradiction. The real story of the Le Mans race is much less dramatic. There was no bad guy who had it out for one of the racers.
In the story, Ford hired a retired race car driver who was the only American up until this point to win Le Mans 24 hour race, Carrol Shelby, to build a racecar that will win the race. Shelby teams up with the mechanic and later driver, Ken Miles. With a bit of work, they created a race car like no other. At the risk of sounding incredibly unprofessional, A Beast. The Ford GT. The thing that sets this car apart from all the race cars that Ferrari was putting out was that this car had an interchangeable break. This allowed the car to reach fast speeds, even with the risk of overheating the current breaks that were already in use. This was a brand new concept and allowed for Ford to dominate in the race.
Ford came in not only first place, but second and third place as well. While this sounds iconic, it had consequences. Ken Miles, driver extraordinaire, was the racer in first place. Taking out Ferrari like it was nothing. He was instructed to wait for his two fellow drivers so all the cars could cross the finish line at the same time, creating one of the most recognizable photos of all time. While he did cross the line first, followed by the other cars, he was awarded second place. Cheating him out of not only the esteemed first place Le Mans title but from the title of being one of the best drivers of all time. He had won the Daytona 24 hour race and the 12 hours of Sebrings earlier that year. If he had won the Le Mans race, he would have been the only driver in the world to have won all three endurance races.
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