As in any good story, achieving Ford's goal would require assembling a crack team. The Drive reported how Ford brought in Carroll Shelby (played in the film by Matt Damon), a world-class driver and automotive engineer. Shelby also brought along Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale), a British race car driver with whom he frequently worked. Their mission? To design and build a new car, from scratch, that could defeat Ferrari's entrants in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race, a Grand Prix race in France.
The team eventually developed the model called the GT40, specifically designed to be able to topple Ferrari's cars off the top spot at the track. Along with Shelby, renowned auto executive Lee Iacocca (played by Jon Bernthal) and a top-notch team of experts worked through multiple iterations of the car.
In the 1966 race, in which two-man teams drove in an endurance race, both Ford and Ferrari had multiple entrants. Ford's strategy involved sticking together so that a Ford car — any Ford car — could win. There were a total of eight Ford entrants in the race, compared to four from Ferrari.
