New FIA regulations under Appendix J redefined competition categories for 1966. The ACO opened its entry list to Group 3, 4 and 6. A record 103 entries were received, with 43 prototype starts on the grid.
Ford arrived with an overwhelming eight Ford GT40 Mk.II entries — six prepared by Holman and Moody — plus five customer Mk.I cars in the Group 4 class. The 7-litre Ford NASCAR-derived engine produced around 550 bhp, conservatively registered at 485 hp for the 24-hour event. Carroll Shelby ran three works cars for Dan Gurney with Jerry Grant, Ken Miles with Denny Hulme, and Bruce McLaren with Chris Amon. Holman and Moody fielded three more for Mark Donohue, Ronnie Bucknum and Lucien Bianchi. Alan Mann Racing brought two further Mk.II cars.
Ferrari responded with the new 330 P3, shorter and wider than the P2 with fuel injection pushing the 4-litre V12 to 420 bhp. Works cars were assigned to John Surtees sharing with Ludovico Scarfiotti, and Lorenzo Bandini with Jean Guichet. However, Surtees walked out during race week after a dispute with team manager Eugenio Dragoni over driver order, leaving Ferrari without their fastest man.
Porsche brought the new 906 Carrera 6, designed by Ferdinand Piech's team, with the 2-litre flat-six from the 911 in long-tail form for the prototype class. The American Chaparral 2D of Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier was an intriguing wildcard. New for 1966 was a significant French underdog: the Mini Marcos, a tiny kit car entered by Frenchman Hubert Giraud with Jean-Louis Marnat and Claude Ballot-Lena, ridiculed by spectators before the race.
Gurney qualified on pole with a 3:30.6. From the first lap Fords led the race in formation. Miles clawed back from an early pit stop to run competitively despite team orders instructing the cars to hold station. At the eight-hour mark Ferrari's challenge was spent, with the Surtees car already retired and the remaining P3s succumbing to overheating. By halfway Ford GT40 Mk.IIs occupied the first four places, with the Mk.Is fifth and sixth.
The major drama of the morning involved Gurney's car retiring from the lead at nine hours with a blown head gasket. That left three Mk.IIs — Miles and Hulme, McLaren and Amon, and the reserve Bucknum and Hutcherson — in commanding positions.
With six hours to run it became clear Miles and Hulme would win. A decision was made in the Ford camp to have all three factory cars cross the line in formation as a publicity gesture commemorating the first American victory at Le Mans. Miles was instructed to slow and allow McLaren to close. On the final lap all three cars cruised to the line virtually together.
The ACO declared McLaren the winner. The official reasoning was that in a tie, the car that started further back had covered greater distance during the race; McLaren's number 2 car had started roughly 14 metres behind Miles's number 1, and therefore had travelled a marginally longer total distance. McLaren and Amon were declared the winners at 3,009.3 miles covered — a new record average of 125.38 mph. Miles, who had driven the bulk of the development work on the GT40 program and was aiming for the endurance Triple Crown having already won Daytona and Sebring that year, was publicly gracious but privately devastated. Carroll Shelby later admitted guilt at the outcome.
Two months after the race, Ken Miles was killed testing the next-generation Ford J-Car at Riverside.
The race was the decisive blow in the Ford-Ferrari War. Porsche finished fourth through seventh with Jo Siffert and Colin Davis winning the Index of Performance. Four Alpines finished ninth through twelfth. The lone Mini Marcos finished fifteenth to become the crowd's beloved underdog. The car was dubbed "la puce bleue" — the blue flea — by French spectators, and remained raced and rallied for years before disappearing, stolen in Paris in 1975 and only recovered in Portugal in December 2016.
The race became the subject of A. J. Baime's 2009 book Go Like Hell and was dramatised in the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari (released as Le Mans '66 outside North America), directed by James Mangold with Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale as Ken Miles, which won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing.
Gallery · 4 related images
