Ford v Ferrari - update

I've just found myself having to explain the movie Ford v Ferrari to someone who recently saw it on a long haul flight. The movie clearly fails in many respects as the person I spoke to had missed several key elements.

They had no idea that New Zealanders played a major part in the events depicted. New Zealand drivers won the race, and a New Zealander was one of the two drivers that came second. The person viewing the movie for the first time completely missed this and did not notice that the Bruce McLaren car was painted black and had a silver fern on the side with the letters NZ clearly displayed. 

I blogged about the movie when it came out, you can see my comments at that time here: https://kenhorlor.blogspot.com/2019/11/ford-v-ferrari-2019-movie.html

Adding to what I said in 2019, some points can be made:

1. Bruce Miles was not asked to lose the race. He was running second, but on the track he was in front of the first placed car. If the GT40's crossed the finish line as they were on the track, the photo of the cars crossing the line would be 2-1-3. They're all Fords but out of sequence. Not enough time was left for Miles to race ahead and challenge McLaren for first, so if he did that the photo would be Ford 1-3. This presents a problem, so Miles was asked to let the McLaren Ford come through to make the photo 1-2-3. 

Here's that famous photo:

Ford GT40 1966 1-2-3 Finish

2. The winning GT40 was completely rebuilt by McLaren. He asked that a GT40 be delivered to him and then he stripped it and put it back together in its winning format. This is never mentioned in the movie, we are led to believe that Carroll Shelby supplied the winning car to Bruce McLaren. Not so, Ford made the car, Shelby helped design it, but the race configuration was all McLaren - as you'd expect.

I feel my early criticism is justified as the movie has failed to age well. Yes, I get that it's about the conflict of personalities between Miles and Shelby, then Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari. But leaving out more about the great Bruce McLaren misses the mark as his setup and driving won the race and made Henry Ford II's vengeance real.