Yesterday was a great GT/GT40 day.
In the morning I was over at the Ford Racing offices talking about some stuff re: next summer's Ford GT Rally 10 in Dearborn with Ford Racing Director Jaime Allison and some additional staff. Those guys are great support leading up to our 10th Anniversary homecoming event and it's always fun to talk GT with them. They loved the pics from Rally 9, especially the "family photo" with all the cars and owners over at SAI. He had a new table outside his office that incorporated a magnesium Shelby American Halibrand wheel from one of their race GT40s. I should have paid closer attention but I think he said it was on one of the winning cars. It showed up along with the long lost 1967 Le Mans winner trophy that was recently returned to Ford. The trophy had been secreted away by an individual that had had it for many years, using it for a most unusual purpose (it's sort of shaped like a vase...) before it found it's way back and was restored.
Then last night I was lucky to attend the ceremony at The Henry Ford Museum where Dan Gurney was presented with the museum's Edison-Ford Medal. John Hennessey was going to attend and very graciously arranged for tickets for my wife and I, but regrettably had to cancel the trip at the last minute. Major bummer, but many, many thanks to John for getting me a seat at the table and letting me give his tickets to some SVT employees. It was a really nice event put together by Edsel & Cynthia Ford and there were a good number of racing legends in the room. Obviously Dan Gurney and his wife Evi, Sir Jackie Stewart, Roger Penske, Leonard Wood, Jim Hall, Ray Evernham, etc. And of course lots of Ford luminaries were there including Edsel Ford, Henry Ford III, Jamal Hameedi, Jaime Allison, Raj Nair, etc. I finally got a chance to spend some time with Raj which was great, because he is a real car nut (and he owns 6Y40001) and he's the top engineer in charge of the entirety of product development at the company. Of course I saw Cobrar as well, who is very active within the Henry Ford.
Charlie Rose emceed the evening and after showing a very nice short documentary about Dan Gurney's achievements in racing, engineering, innovation and such, he did a conversation-style interview with Dan on the stage. It was very, very cool. Dan expressed characteristic humility towards his legendary achievements behind the wheel and was passionate as ever about his engineering, past and present. They also brought back the 1967 winner (which of course looked glorious alongside the winner's trophy), which AAR had been repairing because of the damage incurred during a transport "mishap." I think Edsel personally put a lot of energy behind getting this together immediately because Dan is such a legend and Carroll's passing emphasized that the time to to express appreciation is now, and I was really happy to be there for it.
[video=youtube;82NfzehTPWo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82NfzehTPWo[/video]
In the morning I was over at the Ford Racing offices talking about some stuff re: next summer's Ford GT Rally 10 in Dearborn with Ford Racing Director Jaime Allison and some additional staff. Those guys are great support leading up to our 10th Anniversary homecoming event and it's always fun to talk GT with them. They loved the pics from Rally 9, especially the "family photo" with all the cars and owners over at SAI. He had a new table outside his office that incorporated a magnesium Shelby American Halibrand wheel from one of their race GT40s. I should have paid closer attention but I think he said it was on one of the winning cars. It showed up along with the long lost 1967 Le Mans winner trophy that was recently returned to Ford. The trophy had been secreted away by an individual that had had it for many years, using it for a most unusual purpose (it's sort of shaped like a vase...) before it found it's way back and was restored.
Then last night I was lucky to attend the ceremony at The Henry Ford Museum where Dan Gurney was presented with the museum's Edison-Ford Medal. John Hennessey was going to attend and very graciously arranged for tickets for my wife and I, but regrettably had to cancel the trip at the last minute. Major bummer, but many, many thanks to John for getting me a seat at the table and letting me give his tickets to some SVT employees. It was a really nice event put together by Edsel & Cynthia Ford and there were a good number of racing legends in the room. Obviously Dan Gurney and his wife Evi, Sir Jackie Stewart, Roger Penske, Leonard Wood, Jim Hall, Ray Evernham, etc. And of course lots of Ford luminaries were there including Edsel Ford, Henry Ford III, Jamal Hameedi, Jaime Allison, Raj Nair, etc. I finally got a chance to spend some time with Raj which was great, because he is a real car nut (and he owns 6Y40001) and he's the top engineer in charge of the entirety of product development at the company. Of course I saw Cobrar as well, who is very active within the Henry Ford.
Charlie Rose emceed the evening and after showing a very nice short documentary about Dan Gurney's achievements in racing, engineering, innovation and such, he did a conversation-style interview with Dan on the stage. It was very, very cool. Dan expressed characteristic humility towards his legendary achievements behind the wheel and was passionate as ever about his engineering, past and present. They also brought back the 1967 winner (which of course looked glorious alongside the winner's trophy), which AAR had been repairing because of the damage incurred during a transport "mishap." I think Edsel personally put a lot of energy behind getting this together immediately because Dan is such a legend and Carroll's passing emphasized that the time to to express appreciation is now, and I was really happy to be there for it.
[video=youtube;82NfzehTPWo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82NfzehTPWo[/video]
