2017 Spotters Guide:
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Just saw this....Gurney and Foyt and the winning Mark IV will be at Le Mans this year for the anniversary. I'm sorry to see Dan Gurney looking in rough shape - he was always the fit, tall one who looked like a runner. No one has accused Foyt of healthy living!
"After winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in his first and only attempt, legendary driver A.J. Foyt said there was no need to return to the iconic French circuit.
“I went there as a rookie and won, I have no reason to go back,” Foyt used to say.
However, with the 50th anniversary of that triumph he scored with co-driver Dan Gurney to become the only All-American team to win the historic endurance race, Foyt has decided to return to the site of one of his most prestigious victories. As a guest of Ford Performance, Foyt will visit the track and see his winning Ford Mark IV GT 40 again.
Foyt, the driver with the most Indy car wins in history (67) and now a Verizon IndyCar Series team owner, was reunited with the Ford Mark IV GT in April when he was awarded the Spirit of Ford award at the Road Racing Drivers Club dinner during the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend. The photo above taken at Long Beach shows (from left) Edsel Ford III, Gurney, Edsel Ford II and Foyt with the famed Ford GT.
The car was loaned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum in May to be part of the Foyt exhibit before being shipped to France for this month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans race June 17-18.
“I am looking forward to seeing the course again,” Foyt admitted. “I know it has changed a lot over the past 50 years. I probably won’t even recognize it.” "Leave a comment:
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#40 looks like a Mirage, yellow #1 and #2 are two of the three other original MkIVs, and of course the white with black in the rear is the first MkI which sucked. That's all I know, though.Leave a comment:
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I may have this wrong, but aren't the three on the right (#2, 1, 5) the '66 "tie" winners, Red #1 427 is Dan Gurney / AJ Foyt '67, and #6 is the famous car that won both '68 and '69?
I don't know about yellow #1 and #2, I don't know about Gulf blue #40 (those front "winglets" were a much later idea, weren't they?), and I don't know about light blue #1.
How cool is it to have them all in one place like that?
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Hans Herrmann in the left front sitting on #23, Norbert Singer at the far right in black - he engineered most of these cars.Leave a comment:
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France, June of 1951. A garage on the Rue du 8 Mai in Teloché, a village some four miles south of Le Mans. On the eve of the nineteenth 24 Hours of Le Mans race, mechanics are working feverishly on two silver Porsches with starting numbers 46 and 47. The atmosphere is tense. The lead-up to the race has been anything but smooth—three of the four 356 SL cars prepared in Zuffenhausen did not survive the test-drives. The night before the race, the mechanics are still trying everything they can think of on number 47, but to no avail. Porsche enters only one car in the contest.
The automotive world is stunned to hear that Porsche will race in Le Mans. The carmaker, founded in 1948, is the first (and only) German brand to enter this most venerable of French endurance races in the aftermath of World War II. The announcement is not only motorsports news but also a political statement. Just a few years after the war, German carmakers are not exactly welcome in France. True, at last year’s motor show in Paris, Charles Faroux—the director of the race in Le Mans—expressly called for Porsche to participate, but his compatriots still harbor a good deal of resentment toward Germans, stemming from the occupation. The decisive impetus for Porsche to take part finally comes in the form of Auguste Veuillet, the future exclusive importer for Porsche in France. He wants to drive in the race himself, and he also plans to handle local organizational matters for Porsche with motorsports director Paul von Guilleaume.
A small auto shop a few miles from the circuit has been the home of the Porsche team in Le Mans for more than thirty years. It is here, in the village of Teloché, where preparations are made to win the famous endurance race.
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1967
Night before Le Mans
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(Different car here, but Gurney / Foyt / Phil Remington...wait, that's Daytona)
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Daytona grandstands again - Gurney / Remington / Foyt
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