By Colin Wood
I went a little crazy with pictures of that particular 250LM, seeing as it was the last Ferrari to win Le Mans (so far...). Piloted by Masten Gregory, Jochen Rindt, and (maybe) Ed Hugus in the 1965 event, I couldn't take my eyes or my Nikon off it.
My favorite part, though: when the sun came slanting through the west-facing opening in the tent covering the Le Mans exhibit at Laguna Seca, it brought into stark relief the chips, pits, and scars across the 250's nose.
It's become expected to see perfectly restored sports and racing cars in Monterey, with paint jobs that probably cost more than the cars themselves did when new, sporting what looks like a pound or two of carnauba wax.
This one, though... each pit, each scar was achieved running at top speed down the Mulsanne Straight, a bit of gravel or at those speeds, maybe a grain of sand hitting with enough force to peel off a tiny speck of rosso da corsa. It called to mind the line from Tennyson's "Ulysses:"
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
