Autoweek Magazine

[Historybuff]

Looking back, I regret Miles' wasn't given the chance to do a "triple crown" by winning LeMans. But after reading lots of books and talking to some team members, I realized that, if you look at an endurance race from a sponsor's viewpoint, the sponsor being Ford, the last thing you want is your own team members racing against each other, and breaking their cars in the process when, if they would have just cruised along, they could have won your brand the race. Miles was well known for wanting to race even other Shelby team members (back when he was racing Cobras) and more than once Shelby had to stand on a pit wall waving a hammer to get him to slow down and to quit inciting other S-A drivers to go faster than they needed to in order to sew up the race. Up in the Ford hospitality suite, in June, 66, the brass wanted a Ford GT to finish first and not see them break right and left because one team member or another was willing to break team discipline in order to be first in the winner's circle. So, in sum, the sponsor is the one whio writes the checks, and governs the strategy and thus calls the shots.If a racer doesn't want to work under team rules, he could always start his own team....

It is a little like combat--you haul in only so much ammo, and unless you can have fire discipline in the ranks, you are going to be in a heap of trouble if your boys expended their ammo early and it's too late to be resupplied.