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Enzo's Ferraris
The Later YearsAlthough Ford was gone from the sports car racing scene during the 1970s, Ferrari faced a new challenger -- Porsche. In 1970, Ferrari scored just one victory, Mario Andretti's win at Sebring in a Ferrari 512S. However, Ferrari returned full force in 1972, and its new Ferrari 312PB won an amazing 10 races and the World Sports Car Championship. The Ferrari 312PB won two more races in 1973. But with the rising dominance of Porsche, Ferrari withdrew from factory sponsorship of sports car racing, instead concentrating on the Formula One World Championship.
Ferrari was not to return to sports car racing, except for occasional privateer entries, until the introduction of the IMSA World Sports Car Championship in the United States in 1994. That year, the new Ferrari 333SP, raced by private teams but with factory support, won four races and placed 2nd in the championship behind Oldsmobile. Then, in 1995 Ford also returned to sports car racing, as supplier of engines for privateer teams. The stage was thus set for a revival of the Ford-Ferrari wars of the mid-1960s, and what a revival it would be! In 1995, Ferrari 333SPs and Ford-R&S Mk. IIIs each won five races, with Ferrari beating out Ford to the manufacturer's championship by 41 points, and Ferrari's Fermin Velez beating Ford's James Weaver in the driver's championship by only 2 points! In 1996, Ferrari and Ford each won three races, but the championship went to Wayne Taylor and his Oldsmobile-R&S MK. III by a single point over Ferrari and 15 points over Ford. In 1997, Ferrari and Ford began the season with a grand battle at the 24-Hours of Daytona, where an ailing Ford-R&S Mk. III held off a charging Ferrari 333SP. Fords went on to win six races (to Ferrari's five), clinching the manufacturer's championship and the driver's championship for Ford driver Butch Leitzinger.
The 1998 season (split by internal politics into the rival U.S. Road Racing Championship Can-Am series and the Professional Sports Car Racing series) got off to an equally competitive start. In the USRRC season opener at Daytona, the leading Ford-R&S dropped out with less than 4 hours to go in the 24-hour race, giving the victory to the MOMO-sponsored Ferrari 333SP of Gianpiero Moretti, Didier Theys, Mauro Baldi, and Arie Luyendyk. In the PSR season opening 12-Hours of Sebring, another Ford-Ferrar battle brewed throughout the day, with Gianpiero Moretti's MOMO Ferrari 333SP coming out the victor again. But in the end, the Dyson Racing Team's Ford-R&S drivers took the driving championships in both the USRRC Can-Am and the PSR World Sports Car series.
The 1999 season took up just where the 1998 season left off, with the Dyson Racing Team Ford-R&S machines battling it out in the driving rain against several Ferrari 333SPs in the 24-hour USRRC opener at Daytona. This first victory went to the Ford-R&S of Andy Wallace, Butch Leitzinger, and Elliott Forbes-Robinson, over the 2nd place Ferrari 333SP of Allan McNish, Didier de Radigues, Massimilliano Angelelli, and Wayne Taylor. But a changing of the guard started at the Sebring 12-hour race, the opening race of PSR's new American Le Mans Series (ALMS). In its very first race, a new factory-sponsored BMW LMR roadster took first place. More amazingly, the BMW LMR went on to claim victory at its first outing in the Le Mans 24-hour race in June 1999. Meanwhile, new Ford-powered Panoz LMP-1 roadsters, featuring unusual front-engined, driver offset designs kept the Ford name alive, by winning ALMS races at Mosport, Canada and at Portland, Oregon in the early summer of 1999. The combined 1-2 punch of the new BMW and Panoz cars relegated the Ferrari 333SP and Ford-R&S to "also ran" position.
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1996-2008 Arnold E.
van Beverhoudt, Jr.
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