Page 29 - Against All The Others

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CHAPTER 6
1968 Racing Season Review
Ford won the 1968 FIA International Championship for Manufacturers with 51 total points (of which 45 counted for the title). Porsche finished second at 42 usable points despite its overall total of 67.5. Alfa Romeo took third, with 15.5 points. Alpine, Chevrolet, and Howmet each earned 4 points, placing them in a tie for fourth; Ferrari earned 2 points, and Lola, 1.
These were not precisely the results Porsche had sought for 1968. It was especially galling to the Rennabteilung, because the “Ford” in question was not the massive global corporation race fans might have imagined upon seeing the name. The “blue oval’s” European racing operation, Ford Advanced Vehicles in Slough, England, was a far cry from Ford Motor Company’s huge campus in Dearborn, Michigan, and its facilities for design, engineering, marketing, management, and testing.
“Team resources at J. W. Automotive were nothing like as deep as Porsche,” Peter Morgan wrote in Porsche 917: The Winning Formula, explaining this discrepancy between perception and fact. “For the 1968 season, even one of the previous year’s Mirage-Fords was converted back to GT40 specification. Wyer mostly used just two GT40s through 1968 and won the championship—defeating the massive effort by Porsche—by easily winning that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. In race after race, Wyer relied on the fact that the very innovation that was so impressive about the Porsche effort was usually their
OPPOSITE: Porsche’s endurance team at the season’s sixth round, the Nürburgring 1000 Km, was as good as it gets. Above from left: Jochen Neerpasch, Hans Herrmann, and Ludovico Scarfiotti. Below from left: Jo Siffert, Vic Elford, Helmuth Bott, and Ferdinand Piëch. [COURTESY PORSCHE CORPORATE ARCHIV]
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1968 Racing SeaSon ReVieW