[Trevor Legate]

Such fun and jollity! (BTW, there's an 'e' on the end of Shakespeare, otherwise it becomes Shakes-pear. I know you appreciate accuracy...)

I did visit Lee Holman and have sat in his office discussing this matter and came to the conclusion that the truth lies someplace in the middle ground - as always! There is 'history' betwixt the two companies and that's hardly suprising when you imagine sitting in John Holmans office as he took the call from his good friend Jacques Passino, saying that the upstart Shelby has walked off with a sizeable chunk of the racing budget that was (supposedly) heading south. Pi$$ed or what? It was also clear that the Cobra entered by H&M - at Passinos 'request' - at the Bahamas Speed Week was not properly prepared since H&M knew little or nothing about such cars and that kinda racing. A bit like throwing Shelby into the deep end in a NASCAR race! The Shelby cars ran off and the H&M Cobra was 34th-ish.

As for Le Mans, if you ask the drivers - Gurney, Gardner etc - they will tell you that the main competition was between the three Ford teams - and no information passed between them, so they were racing each other plus Ferrari. But H&M had little experience of the European circuits and insisted on using their own drivers who ahd often never seen a circuit like Le Mans (it was Frank Gardner who had to show AJ Foyt the way round...!) Lee Holman was THERE, even though he was 16 and admits his role was a gofer - but he was there, not in an office in the USA. He recalls that it was the H&M mechanics who prevented the souvenir hunters from emptying the GT40 pits when all the Shelby hot-rodders ran off to celebrate, leaving all their tools and equipment lying around - that's called experience (or maybe a mistrust of the French)

Just to clarify the Alan Mann/American driver situation - he was a young guy with a promising career in front of him. He had been promised a role in the GT40 game if he won the GT championship for Shelby. To do that, his job was to win at the slowest possible speed and that's what he did. This saved the cars, the engines and prevented having to keep shipping new parts in. Jack Sears and Sir John Whitmore understood this and agreed to honor this demand, even though it was beyond boring at many of the races, but that's was their job!! Other drivers had their own agenda and took a different view. Sears ran slowly for 18 hours at Le Mans with a sick engine - he could have blown it up at any time and gone home, but he flogged it around to be the only Cobra to finish and score points. Even Alan Mann admitted he not have been so honest.

and so on and so forth....all water under the bridge.