1967 Le Mans 24 Hours

From the Motor Sport Archive

Ford win a great battle

Le Mans, France, June 10th/11th.

After the usual problems arising from scrutineering, such as insufficient rear vision in the mirrors on the Fords, too much petrol in the tanks of the Lolas, bodywork too narrow about the wheels on the Mirage, windscreen too shallow on the Marcos, all the competitors tackled practice on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, practice times deciding the order of lining up for the classic start. Phil Hill set the ball rolling in a big way with the Chaparral on both evenings, recording 3 min. 27.4 sec. the first night and 3 min. 24.7 sec. the second night, with no bother at all and it was not until after dark on Thursday that McLaren beat the Chaparral with 3 min 24.4 sec.-147 m.p.h. average (in the dark !). The other Fords could not match this and the Ferraris were a long way away. Practice was not without trouble as the Mark IV Fords were suffering broken windscreens and there was a lot of high pressure panic between Corning Glass in Detriot and Le Mans. Ferrari had a lot of work to do when a slow car moved out in front of Klass and he crashed number 19 Ferrari, but it was all repaired in time for the race. Conditions were very good when 54 cars lined up for the start, the 55th being ruled out at the last moment as it was found that it had not done sufficient laps to qualify, this being a GTE Ferrari in the G.T. class.