1966 12 Hours of Sebring

The 1966 12 Hours of Sebring was an endurance race held at the 5.2 mile (8.3 km) Sebring International Raceway, Sebring, Florida, United States on March 26, 1966. It was the sixteenth running of the endurance classic and the second round of the 1966 World Sportscar Championship season. The race proved to be a disastrous event; one of the darkest in American motorsports history.

Ford had just come off a 1-2-3 triumph at the first 24 Hours of Daytona in February, with 2 of their 7-liter engined GT40 Mk.II's being run by Carroll Shelby. They had effectively trounced Ferrari and Porsche, and were looking to do the same thing at Sebring in March.

Ford's assault on Sebring (which has always been a good preparation run for Le Mans) was unprecedented, considering that a mega-corporation like Ford was taking their endurance racing commitment so seriously. There were 11 GT40 Mk.I's, Mk.II's and a special X-1 Roadster (which was a heavily modified GT40 Mk.I with an aluminum chassis, a Mk.II nose, no roof and a 7-liter 427 engine, the same motor in a Mk.II) at Sebring- these cars were entered by at least 5 different teams- all of whom had direct factory support. The two main works teams, however, were the Los Angeles-based Shelby-American, a team with direct connections to Ford and seasoned with lots of road-racing experience in Europe and North America; and the Charlotte-based Holman & Moody team, which was known for its successes in NASCAR. There were also 2 works Ferrari's (originally there were supposed to be 5) and 2 Chaparral 2D's. American Dan Gurney qualified his Shelby-entered Mk.II on pole position with a lap record of 2:54.6, followed by the new Ferrari 330P3 of Bob Bondurant and Mike Parkes, then a Mk.I of Britons Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart, then another Mk.II of Americans Mark Donohue and Walt Hansgen, then the X-1 of Briton Ken Miles and American Lloyd Ruby and then a Chaparral 2D of Americans Jim Hall and Hap Sharp.

Sportscar races in the 1960s usually had Le Mans starts (which had started the late 1920s), where the drivers who started the race stood on one end of the track, waited for the host country's starter flag to drop, ran across the track towards their cars, jumped into the cockpit and drove off. This happened at 10:30 a.m. American Eastern time, and Gurney, who started the race in the pole sitting car, did not get going. In fact, his Ford GT40 Mk.II's 7-liter engine would not start and the car sat on the pit straight motionless while all the other cars passed it. After huge amounts of time were lost, the Shelby mechanics were able to start the engine, and Gurney sped off. The works Ferrari 330P3 led the race until being passed by a GT40 Mk.I being driven by Graham Hill. Hill led the first lap, followed by the 330P3, a North American Racing Team entered 330P2, a Corvette Stingray being driven by local Dick Thompson, the Donohue/Hansgen Mk.II, 2 more Mk.I's, a Porsche and a Chaparral 2D being driven by Hap Sharp.

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