Ken Miles was the Ford driver denied the official victory in the controversial 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans finish.
Miles and co-driver Denny Hulme were leading in a Ford GT40 Mk II when Ford arranged a formation finish involving its two leading cars. Miles’s car crossed almost level with Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon’s Ford, but the officials declared McLaren and Amon the winners.
The deciding issue was the rules’ treatment of starting positions and distance covered. McLaren’s car had started farther back, so officials judged that it had travelled slightly farther when the cars reached the line. Ford’s public-relations plan for a symbolic tie therefore produced an official win for the other Ford crew.
Miles was not erased from the result—he and Hulme were classified second—but he lost the chance to complete an endurance-racing triple crown of Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans. The episode became even more poignant when Miles died testing Ford’s J-car at Riverside two months later.