My lamented friend Jabby Crombac always considered the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hours to have been the greatest in the long history of the race. The quality of the entry, he reckoned, had never been equalled. Not long out of school, I weighed up the options for my one ‘foreign race’ of the year and plumped not for a grand prix, but for this ultimate scrap between Ferrari and Ford.

There was real needle between the two manufacturers, not least because of Enzo’s decision not to sell out to Henry a few years earlier. Those close to Ferrari have always maintained he never had any intention of selling, but it suited his purposes to string Ford along. This made the Dearborn hierarchy very angry: in 1964 and ’65 Ferrari had the better of Ford at Le Mans; in ’66 it was the other way round. Now the 1967 race loomed and Ford was desperate to make amends for Daytona in January, where Ferrari had finished 1-2-3 on American soil, crossing the line in formation.

AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney’s Ford GT40 beat what was perhaps the strongest Le Mans entry of all time