Ken Miles

One of the big, I can say semi-disappointments in my life was a race I had with Ken Miles at Laguna Seca in, I want to say, 1967. Anyway, we both were to race matching Porsche 906s. Ken had just come back from that controversial Le Mans finish thing that he was involved in with Ford and was going to run the second car at Laguna with me. I’d been running ’em all along and had quite a bit more experience in them, not that that really made a whole lot of difference in my opinion, because I know from my standpoint I was always able to adapt to cars rather quickly and I’m sure Ken did too. But, in any event, I was a little concerned about this event since he was a sort of mentor to me and this was going to be the first time the two of us ever raced each other in the same car.

So I went to our team owner, Otto Zipper, and asked him about it and he brought us both together and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. There’s no rule as to who’s going to win or finish ahead of the other, but if you can’t do it cleanly, don’t do it and whoever’s ahead is ahead and that’s it.”