1965: The last time Ferrari won at Le Mans

March 6th 2023

Ferrari's association with Le Mans dates back to the 1960s. However, the automaker has been absent from the competition for 48 years.

To younger fans, it’s a stretch to associate Ferrari with Le Mans. Sure, the pseudo-works AF Corse team kept the flame alive, but vying for GTE class victories – no matter how competitively fought – can never carry the weight of an overall win. Ferrari is obviously keen to change that with its new Hypercar, but there are no guarantees.

There was a time when a Le Mans 24 Hours without the Prancing Horse would have been unthinkable. By the 1960s, Le Mans was at least as important to Enzo as F1 – and the red cars were often dominant. Its tally of nine victories, seven of which came between 1958 and ’65, still leaves the Italians third in the all-time list of winners, behind Porsche on 19 and Audi’s 13. Remarkable, given that Ferrari’s last hurrah was 48 years ago, in a race that marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

By 1965, Ford was hell-bent on beating Ferrari at Le Mans to avenge Enzo for spurning its buy-out advances. Five GT40s and two new 7-litre MkII ‘X-cars’ came up against Ferrari’s armada of four prototypes, plus two North American Racing Team cars and a pair from Maranello Concessionaires.

“Once Ford brought the 7-litre engine and employed Carroll Shelby, I knew it could not be dismissed,” says John Surtees, Ferrari’s ace in the pack. ‘Big John’ had set the pace in the previous two Le Mans races, but missed out on victory. Would it be third time lucky? In practice Phil Hill set a new speed record of 213mph on the Mulsanne in his 7-litre X-car, and lapped two seconds faster than Surtees managed in the new P2. The F1 champion was unruffled. “It was obvious the Fords were going to be competitive, especially with the strong line-ups they had,” he says. “But I always thought that was actually the secret of beating them. We believed mechanically the Ferraris could be driven as hard as GP cars. If we could go hard from the start, Ford’s drivers couldn’t afford to sit back.”

The tactic worked. Surtees took the fight to Hill and Chris Amon in the Fords, which proved as fragile as he suspected. After just three hours, the challengers were spent, a broken clutch, a blown headgasket, a gearbox failure and chronic overheating derailing American hopes. The inquest began as Ferrari swept to another victory.

But there were twists. Cracking brake discs delayed the prototypes, while Surtees and Ludovico Scarfiotti lost time with collapsed front suspension, then retired with transmission trouble. So another chance went for Surtees, who would never win Le Mans. To their own surprise, Masten Gregory and Jochen Rindt scored an unlikely win in NART’s outpaced 275 LM, the first privately entered victory since team boss Luigi Chinetti’s Ferrari win in 1949. The US importer thus recorded Enzo’s first Le Mans success – and his last. DS

1965: The last time Ferrari won at Le Mans

Ferrari's association with Le Mans dates back to the 1960s. However, the automaker has been absent from the competition for 48 years.

The winners

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

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