Word: ferraris
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Slot-car racing seems to have been invented in England, but it might have been made to order for the U.S. market. Model builders and tinkerers have almost unlimited scope for fiddling the hours away with a tool kit; automobile buffs can at last possess that low-slung Ferrari or that hot-rod Model A (or both); will-to-winners can frazzle their adrenals with high-test competition, and Walter Mittys can pocketa-pocketa to a screaming finish in the Grand Prix without risk of fracturing their spectacles...
...preparing for the race, figuring gear and axle ratios, tuning engines, using computers to help adjust the suspension to the track conditions at Florida's Daytona International Speedway. In the time trials, Mexico's Pedro Rodriguez won the pole position by clocking 113.7 m.p.h. in his V12 Ferrari prototype, and Shelby decided he needed a little strategy too. His plan: turn California's Dan Gurney loose in a Lotus-Ford sprint car as a "rabbit" to lure the Ferraris into a car-killing speed duel...
...17th lap, one of the three team Ferraris was already out of action. On the 64th lap, Rodriguez' V12 Ferrari prototype was hitting 150 m.p.h. when the tread peeled off a rear tire and flailed the underside of the car, smashing the battery and exhaust pipes. Ferrari mechanics slapped on a new wheel, and turned the car over to Britain's Grand Prix Champion John Surtees. But the rear axle snapped on the 116th...
Champagne & Beer. "Fine, fine," murmured Shelby as Gurney's Lotus-Ford blasted round and round the 3.81mile track, trailed by the lone remaining team Ferrari and a phalanx of Fords. He flashed a signal to the GTs and Cobras: EZ-slow down. On the 137th lap, the last Ferrari's clutch failed. Job done, Gurney's Lotus also pulled into the pits, with a sick engine...
...sweep past the checkered flag in his blue-and-white Ford GT. A Cobra finished second, a Ford GT was third, and another Cobra was fourth. The winning GT's average speed for 1,243 miles was a record-smashing 99.9 m.p.h. At long last Ford had beaten Ferrari, and a U.S. automaker had scored its biggest victory since Jimmy Murphy won the 1921 French Grand Prix in a Duesenberg...