Six snapshots from the 24 Hours of Le Mans through the years (5)
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Six snapshots from the 24 Hours of Le Mans through the years (5)

For this summer series, let's take a look a closer look at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and some extraordinary stories at different moments in its history. The focus of this fifth installment is 1967.

A bridge through time - Though they look the same, the cars in each photo are going in different directions. In 1967, after finishing second, the Ferrari P4 shared by Ludovico Scarfiotti (seated on the wing) and Michael Parkes headed to the podium ceremony by way of the service road at the foot of the grandstands. In 2018, after passing under the checkered flag, the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid driven by the winners Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi (from left to right, respectively) and Kazuki Nakajima (at the wheel) took pit lane in the wrong direction to reach the podium.

The 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans - In front of a record crowd of more of than 300,000 spectators, the 35th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans provided the climax of Ford and Ferrari's long-running duel. Ford won its second victory in a row as a result of Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt's efforts, and the American duo established a new distance record by surpassing the 5,000-kilometer mark in the race. But it wasn't a shutout: Ferrari placed not one but two cars on the podium thanks to Ludovico Scarfiotti-Michael Parkes (second) and Willy Mairesse-Jean "Beurlys" Blaton (third) ahead of another Ford driven by Bruce McLaren and Mark Donohue. Porsche proved its merit in prototypes by rounding out the top 5 with the 907 shared by Jo Siffert and Hans Herrmann.

Motorsport in 1967 - A.J. Foyt became the first driver (and sole to date) to win both the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, less than two weeks apart! The 1967 season boasted the first triumphs of the Ford-Cosworth 3-liter V8 atmospheric engine that would dominate Formula 1 until the use of turbocharged engines became widespread in the early 1980s. 1967 was also the birth year of 24 Hours of Le Mans win record-holder Tom Kristensen on 7 July in Hobro, Denmark (nine victories).

In other news that year - Directed by Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols respectively, "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate" served as the death knell for the Hays Code, a set of motion picture industry moral guidelines in American cinema, and paved the way in the 1970s for what emerged as New Hollywood, largely represented by Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Peter Bogdanovich, Michael Cimino, Sidney Lumet and Jerry Schatzberg.

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