| ficke |
10-07-2021 06:57 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by svandamme
(Post 11473686)
917 at 69 Le Mans was just it's 3rd entry in any real competition, they weren't fully ready yet. But it lead for most of the race till they dropped out with issues.
The performance was there for Le Mans, handling was not yet fully developed, reliability not yet either.
The GT40's were instantly obsolete so were the Ferrari's of those days., only reason the GT40's still won is that reliability issues on the 917's.
Ford gave up trying for Le Mans after 1969 , they had their issues with the MkIV, ran it in Canam but it just didn't work anymore, it wasn't competitive.
The 917's performance at Le Mans prompted Enzo to sell half his stock to Fiat just to build 25 512's in response..
The 917 really was a game changer on all levels.
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Technically Ford quit racing the GT40 in Le Mans in 1967 when they sold the whole GT40 mess to John Wyer, John still believed the GT40 could be competitive even with the new FIA mandated rules of max. displacement of 5.0L for 1968. The agreement with Ford is they could not call it a Ford so used the Name 'Mirage". (FIA did not award points for the 68-69 Le Mans wins to Ford) Jhon Wyer Engineering got the points for Le Mans for 68-69, JWE beat the 917 with the obsolete Mirage MK1 (GT40) and Porsche asked JWE to take over the 917 project and make it win. The head engineer/team manager for Wyer was John Horseman who modified the GT40 and the 917 and built some other cars that won. Jhon Horseman lived in Tucson and one year he had a friend drop some off some of his old race cars for him to enter in the local car show, The car John regularly entered in the car show was a 1979 RX7.
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