AS CAN be seen from the results appended below this year's opening round of World Manufacturers Championship turned out to be little more than an American club race. Daytona Organiser Bill France, for some reason, decided to revert back to the original 24-hour format despite the fact that last year's 6-hour event proved popular. This, coupled with a marked reluctance to offer sufficient starting money, reduced the serious competitors to a total of only four fully-fledged 3-litre Group 5 cars. Ferrari and Alfa Romeo decided to Stay away leaving Matra to field a single car for Cevert/Pescarolo/Beltoise (actually the exGanley/Cevert Le Mans second placed MS670), Gulf Research Racing to field two Mirages for their new pairings of Ganley/Bell, and Watson/Hailwood and there was the latest Lola T282, sponsored by Gitanes cigarettes, for Wisell/Lafosse/de Fierland. The rest of the field was completed by a couple of older Porsche 908s, umpteen Porsche 911s, a quartet of Ferrari GTB4s from NART, a couple of Chevron B19s, various Chevrolet Camaros and Corvettes and a few other motley machines. Amongst the Porsche 911s were two of the latest Carreras loaned by the works to the Roger Penske and Brumos Porsche teams, for Donohue/Follmer and Gregg/Haywood respectively. Both cars were included in Group 5 as their Group 4 homologation does not officially become effective until March 1.
Early testing by the Gulf team, who brought along their two last year's V8 Cosworth-powered cars, plus a new V12 Weslake-engined example, showed up a weakness in the gearbox due to the forces created on the banking. This was more noticeable in the V12 car and for this reason it was decided to race the V8 cars.
The early stages of the event saw the Hailwood/Watson Mirage tempt the Matra into a race while the second Mirage played a waiting game. But later both the Gulf cars ran into trouble with broken clutch release bearings which lost them almost two hours apiece. The problem re-occurred on the Ganley/Bell car so it was retired while the Hailwood/Watson car was making up time when the rear suspension broke sending Hailwood into a massive spin at 180 m.p.h. and the car was retired. This was just after half distance and by this time the Matra was also out when a connecting rod ventilated the block. It had a massive lead at the time over the two Porsche Carreras which seemed equally matched, with the Penske car gaining at pit stops but losing on the road as it was running on some Goodyear radial tyres rather than full-racers as was the Brumos example. The Lola had retired with electrical failure.
