A Big Ask:


[h=2]EXCERPT: A Big Ask - The Story of Ford's return to Le Mans[/h] Wednesday, 30 November 2016


RACER Staff

In "A Big Ask: The Story of Ford's Triumphant Return to Le Mans," author David Phillips chronicles Ford's return to Le Mans 50 years after Henry Ford II opened the Ford Motor Company's checkbook to defeat bitter rival Ferrari.
They partnered with Chip Ganassi Racing, six-time winners of the 24 Hours of Daytona and America's most successful racing team, Multimatic Engineering, among the world's leading automotive engineering and manufacturing firms, and a host of world-class suppliers in an effort to win the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Here's another sneak peek. For an additional look, head here.
By 1:30 p.m. the cars were lined up on the grid [at Daytona] awaiting the 2:40 p.m. start of the 2016 racing season and, in the case of the Ford GTs, the next step on the road to Le Mans. The mood at FCGR was a mixture of cautious optimism, pragmatism and uncertainty.
“I don’t think it really sank in until I sat in the car before the start of the race that, ‘We haven’t raced a lap in this car,’” said [Joey] Hand. “‘We haven’t drafted in this car; we haven’t run side-by-side; we haven’t had to out-brake anybody yet.’”
The fact that Hand was even thinking about out-braking his competitors testified to the progress made in overcoming one of the car’s few shortcomings.
“We never did find a silver bullet for the brakes,” [Larry] Holt explained. “It was just a case of massaging every single component, over and over and, eventually, they become a nonissue.”
In fact, apart from minor teething problems, Ganassi’s dedicated race car and the development-come race car had run largely trouble-free throughout the testing program; nothing had cropped up that would have prevented them from finishing a race or even required a time-consuming fix that would have knocked them out of contention in a long-distance race.
Not unlike the B-grade movie where the protagonist says, “it’s quiet…too quiet” the Ford GTs’ remarkable reliability was, at once, a source of satisfaction and cause for concern.
“I’m kind of worried,” said (Chip) Ganassi, only half in jest. “We’ve run a couple thousand miles, done a 12-hour test and nothing’s broken – yet.”
“The only thing I know for sure is that sometime in the next 24 hours we’re going to say ‘Gee, that never happened in testing!’” quipped (Raj) Nair.