Tag Archives: Ford vs Ferrari

Ford vs. Ferrari

Well….watched the Ford vs. Ferrari movie last night and I just don’t get all of the hype that surrounded it’s release. I mean, I found it cheesy and grating with race scenes that looks like they were staged by someone who knows nothing about racing…look, I know they needed to add some action from the drivers when they were supposedly passing someone but to downshift to go faster on the Mulsanne straight at LeMans? This was a theme throughout the movie and so damn annoying….as was the repeated shots of a speedometer from inside the car…did they ever look inside a race car? You will never find a speedometer because it is information that is just not relevant to the driver as the engine’s rpm is…now, in some of the modern electronic displays in some race cars you can select MPH but not back in the 60′s when the film is set….the final bit of laziness on the part of the producers is the scene where Ken Miles is killed testing a supposedly new version of the GT-40 that looked exactly like the old version….Miles was killed in what was called the “J car” and it didn’t look anything like the normal Ford GT that won LeMans…and that again points to the ignorance of the details of the story from the producers of the film and their laziness in getting the details right…cripes, I remember the story of Miles’s death from when it really happened in the 60′s and I’m an old guy…couldn’t they have at least looked back at pictures and used CGI to re-create the look of the J car? One last thing where they got it wrong is the brake failures that was a sub theme through the movie…I mean, making them glow red as a sign of failure? Again, anyone who knows anything about racing knows that failure is not that dramatic and discs glowing red was not a thing with the iron discs of the 60′s…especially the red with flames coming out of the wheels…usually, the pedal just goes to the floor after the brake fluid boils or the pads are worn out…no flames unless the fluid leaks out on the hot discs. As with most racing movies done by non racing people, the details will really grate on a race fan…as it did to me….I got through the movie but I am disappointed in how they could take the story of the GT-40 at LeMans and make it boring…but maybe for the non-race fans it would be okay…but I don’t think so.