Between the Ford v Ferrari film and a general knowledge of the 1966 sweep at the 24 Hours of LeMans for Ford, you probably have a fair understand of what happened to Shelby American driver Ken Miles that day. After miles of competition, a race of attrition between Ford and Ferrari, and an assured victory for Ford if they just managed to cross the finishing line, Ford racing director Leo Beebe concocted the now famous three-wide finish, with the Ken Miles/Denny Hulme car and the Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon Fords crossing the line in a dead heat, which was a conservative move after Miles and Dan Gurney had spent the better part of the early morning hours racing each other, as there really wasn’t anyone left for a challenge. When they crossed the finish line, the win was given to the McLaren/Amon team under the rule that since they started further back on the starting grid (by approximately twenty-five feet) that they had traveled the furthest distance, and as such, were the winners.

Miles had been instrumental in the development and testing of the GT40, and had he won, would’ve taken the Triple Crown of endurance racing: Sebring, Daytona and LeMans. Beebe was vilified for engineering the end of the race, but to keep an open mind on the subject, he was running on his own orders from Henry Ford II: put Ford into the winner’s circle by any means necessary. Beebe saw Miles as a “daredevil” and a potential liability for the overall goal, while many saw Miles pretty much as he saw himself at the end of the race with his infamous line that he spat after the race was finished: “I think I’ve been fucked.”

In truth, Miles really didn’t harbor that much ill will towards Ford in the end. In his interviews after LeMans, he was careful to not badmouth Ford and went out of his way to make reporters understand that he appreciated what the company had done for him. And then, months later, he was gone, killed during testing of the “J-Car” prototype at Riverside due to a mechanical failure. Such is the way a racing driver’s life could go back then.