Quote:
Originally Posted by Harpoon PV2
Actually, they won the GT Championship Division III over 2000cc. Ferrari took the Prototype Championship. Cobra's only had one first place win in any FIA races, 1963 Bridgehampton, driven by Dan Gurney. Besides Ferrari finishing before them, Porsha 356 2000cc, Abarth-Simca 1300cc and Alfa Giulia TZ 1600cc cars finished ahead of Cobra's on a regular bases. As Alan Mann, who gave Ford the 1965 class win said, "don't forget that Enzo Ferrari wasn't even looking in our direction that year, if we'd been faced with a serious Ferrari factory effort we wouldn't have known what hit us.
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I think it is more likely Ferrari knew that they didn't have a car to compete with the Daytona Coupes for 1965 so they did not bother. Ferrari would have likely lost in 1964 if they had not canceled the last race when the Daytonas were actually competing against the Ferrari GTOs.
For 1965 Alan Mann just seemed to need to show up with the cars and not bother to push the Daytonas hard to win. So being beaten by smaller displacement cars is understandable when Alan just wanted the cars to finish the races. On the other hand Bob Bondurant wanted to actually race and go for the overall wins, but Alan did not want that.