By: Ed Niles

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So when Francisco Mir, who then owned the world's smallest Ferrari dealership in Santa Monica, California, announced that he was going to be racing a car at the 24-hours of Le Mans in 1973, I raised my hand to be among those who would go along as gofers. I had to pay all my own expenses, but I did get into the race free, in exchange for my promise to keep my eyes open for more than 24 hours at a stretch (something I had never done before).

When we got to France, Frank's car was just being delivered, having been driven out from Maranello on the public highways. It was a factory-modified competition "Daytona" or 365 GTB/4. The description and history of these cars has been well-covered in other articles, so suffice it to say that the factory (actually the customer service facility in Modena) made 15 of these cars, in 3 series of 5 each, and Frank's was one of the 5 cars in the third series, and 1 of 4 built with what the factory records call a "motore speciale". The car received a very special paint job designed by westside designer and Ferrari enthusiast Robert Miles Runyan, red on the left side and yellow on the right side, the colors separated by stripes of white and green. The important crew members received matching jackets; that I did not receive a jacket is testimony to my standing (or lack of standing) on the team.

The paint job was one of several "political" problems encountered by the team. The scrutineers decided that the car, being red on one side and yellow on the other, would confuse the score keepers, and decided that the car could not run.

However, Frank Mir was not a dummy, and he had already learned how political things are at Le Mans. He had therefore entered the car under the aegis of NART, the racing organization of Luigi Chinetti. Frank had a reason for this. Luigi Chinetti, although Italian by birth and American by choice, had lived in France for a number of years, and spoke French fluently. Also, he was a multiple winner at Le Mans himself, his most famous win being that of 1949, when he drove a 166MM Ferrari 23 1/2 hours of the 24 hour race, to take an over-all win. So it was that Luigi Chinetti carried a little clout at Le Mans.

Chinetti was able to force the organizers to reverse their position. It probably helped that Frank Mir had engaged two drivers with Le Mans experience, di Palma and Veiga, as his drivers.

Once the car was accepted as part of the NART entry, Frank and his crew had a chance to go over the car carefully. Surprisingly, these competition Daytonas are not that far removed from the stock Daytonas that you and I can drive on the street. In fact, my old friend, Ken Starbird, and his wife, Rosi, used to drive their competition Daytona on the street as an every-day driver for many years.

Visible changes included small fins on the tops of the front fenders, removal of the bumpers, blue cloth interior instead of leather, and small spoilers underneath the car, front and rear.

Francisco Mir’s Comp Daytona s/n 16367 before the start of the 24 hrs du Mans. Our pal Ed holds down the left rear. (Chuck Queener photo)

Once the car had been accepted by the organizers, Frank set about to make the car competitive. Remember, the car had been delivered brand new from the factory, the only miles on the car being those that had accumulated on the drive out from Modena. Frank changed every setting that he could think of to change: suspension settings, tire pressures, shock settings, even removing the rear sway bar at one point. But Frank always came back to the recommendations of that great factory engineer, Gaetano Florini, whose job it was to look after the customers' racing efforts.

With any other kind of race car, an owner would expect to spend several weekends getting the car set up properly. But here is a car, straight form the factory, to which nothing could be done to improve its handling characteristics. Quite remarkable!

I had been assigned to work the signal pits or "signalization", the Le Mans equivalent of race watcher's hell. So while the rest of them were fiddling with the car, I had plenty of time to explore the scene at Le Mans. This huge 8.5 mile course is laid out on what are the public roads during the balance of the year, and in the center a huge circus appears in the week before the race: Ferris wheels, rides of all kinds, vendors selling all kinds of merchandise for which one might spend his Francs, food booths of all sorts, and (one supposes) even hookers. It was possible to park one's own car in this great space, or to erect a tent, which many campers did, spending several days before and during the race, some of them passed out from excessive alcohol intake.

My impression was that I had seen it once, and once was enough. I would not want to go out there as a spectator, ever again. It would simply be too boring. But to be part of a team, even a small part, was a different thing entirely. There was plenty of excitement as the final touches were put on the car, in preparation for its effort.

My efforts included finding my way to the signal station at the end of the Mulsanne straight. The straight ends at a 90-degree right-hand turn, and as a driver accelerated out of the turn, he could look to his right and get a glimpse of whatever signal we put out for him. The problem was how to know what message to send the driver?

It turns out that there was a long permanent concrete shed erected at that location, with something in the nature of a rudimentary telephone system. When I say rudimentary, these were telephones of the old style where one had to crank a handle to make it ring at the other end, the other end being in the pits several miles away. The problem was that the phones were not marked in any way. So there was nothing to do except try all 60 or 70 phones, listen to the response on the other end in as many languages, until finally somebody said "yes, this is Frank Mir's pit".

Eventually, after many last minute panic runs into "town" for emergency supplies that someone had neglected to buy earlier, the race started at 4:00 p.m. on June 9th, 1973. Our car went well, in the middle of the pack, where expected. The drivers were well disciplined, and knew that they could not afford to push too hard. Neither could they afford to ease up too much, as there were a total of 8 Daytonas in the race, all of them competitive with our car in varying degrees. Worse than that, there was a veritable swarm of Porsches, this being the first year of the huge flared rear fenders which looked so ugly then, but now are quite acceptable on even the most prosaic of street Porsches.

Frank's car made it over half way through the race, when a clutch disc exploded, leaving the car stranded. With a course the size of Le Mans, and rules that prohibit outside help, when a disaster like this occurs there is nothing to do but abandon the car. So it was that we spent the rest of the race as spectators. Of the 8 Daytonas entered, only three finished the 24 hours. But one of those, the Charles Pozzi car driven by Ballot-Lena and Elford finished 6th overall and first in Group 4. The Pozzi pits were just two down from ours, so we were able to share some of their joy at the successful finish.

Cutaway line drawing artwork of a Daytona by famous Ferrari artist Chuck Queener (inspired by the trip to Le Mans in 1973).

Unfortunately, as an eerie side-bar, the venture seemed to bring bad things to Frank Mir and his team. During the race, one of his drivers had suffered a sudden attack of severe abdominal pains, and had to pull in for relief. The doctors could find nothing wrong. Later, the driver learned that his wife was being stabbed to death at that very moment! And after the team returned to the United States, one of Frank's mechanics was killed while driving a customer's car to the Virginia City, Nevada, Hill Climb. I think it was Frank Mir's first and last venture into the specialized world of long-distance racing.

No, I would not want to be a spectator at a 24 hour race. But next month I'll try to put into words the excitement of this event which drew me back to Le Mans in 1975, and to the Daytona 24 hours in 1977, with teams of Ferrari racers.

Until then, I'll be in remission!

About the author: Ed Niles, a lawyer who practices in the San Fernando Valley, has been involved and active in the world of Ferraris since Enzo's early childhood, for more than 35 years. During that time he has owned more than 100 of Maranello’s products and has met some strange and wonderful characters. During occasional moments of lucidity, he will share remembrances of cars and people he has known and loved.