This weeks BLAST is another piece of Kieran Roberts’ great art – Long Road to Victory.
Let’s hear from the artist himself about this piece, this is from his website:
In the early 60’s Ford wanted to win the most prestigious road race – the Le Mans 24 hours. Ferrari had a stranglehold on the event, so Ford attempted to buy out the Italian firm. The deal would be Ford would run works Ferrari’s under the name Ford-Ferrari, and the road going Italian classics would be Ferrari-Ford. The deal was all but signed when Enzo Ferrari suddenly got cold feet, and backed out. Ford were furious, and embarked on an expensive multi-million dollar GT build project, culminating in the legendary GT40.
Here in 1966, driving a GT MkII we see Kiwi Bruce McLaren (driving with compatriot Chris Amon) on their way to the first of four-in-a-row wins for the American auto giant. The Fords would crush Ferrari and record a 1-2-3 finish at the end (a story within itself). Chasing hard behind, on the short blast from Indianapolis to Arnage, is the lone Chaparral 2D of Jo Bonnier and Phil Hill, and a works entered Ferrari 330P3 of Lorenzo Bandini and Jean Guichet, of which both cars retired.
As always, we will continue to feature Kieran’s work as he produces it, but you can head to his website www.kieranrobertsart.com to see more, or buy some of his brilliant work.
