39 / 103
times in the “Roar Before the 24”, and
looked to be very competitive. The
number 66 Ford GT, driven by Joey
Hand, was actually in the lead for a
few laps at the beginning of the race
(lap #13 and #43). Twenty minutes
later, though, the car pulled into the
pits, stuck in sixth gear. Raj Nair’s
worst fear had come to light, as shift-
ing problems with electro-hydraulic
shift actuators that control the Getrag
transaxle began to plague both Ford
GTs. Hours of testing at Sebring and
Daytona had failed to make this issue
surface, so here they were at race
time, with a transaxle that “
…never
did THAT before
.” Apparently some
transducers were added to the cars for
the race that had not been there in
testing, and they were creating electri-
cal havoc with the shift actuators on
both cars. You really can’t get the best
performance out of the car on the
track when it’s stuck in sixth gear, or
when it gets stuck in reverse coming
out of the pit garage.
There were way too many pit stops
to fix transaxle issues for the new Ford
GTs to make up the time. When the
transaxles were performing properly,
their lap times were quite consistent
with those of the race leaders. To my
amazement and delight, both cars
were still running on track after
twenty-four hours, but they were just
too far behind to catch the two
Corvettes leading the GTLM class.
So the Rolex 24 was not the re-
sounding success that Ford GT fans
had hoped for but, nonetheless, the
event provided Ford and Ganassi Rac-
ing with valuable input on what needs
to be done with the new cars to pre-
pare them for Ford’s return to LeMans
this coming June. Since the Rolex,
Ford has announced that they will
field a four-car team at LeMans. The
cars will be numbered 66, 67, 68, and
69…how cool is that? Hopefully, they
will be able to perform like their
grandfather GT40s did on the Sarthe
course back in 1966, 1967, 1968, and
1969.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Spring 2016 39