Today Is The 115th Anniversary Of Ford’s First Race

Ford Motor Company is calling today the 115^th anniversary of the “official start of Ford’s racing program,” as it was on October 10^st, 1901 that Henry Ford himself drove the famous race car Sweepstakes to victory in the entrepreneur’s first (and only) automobile race.

It’s a tale as old as time: Henry Ford, then 38-years-old, had just walked away from the failed Detroit Automobile Company that he’d founded. He needed financial backing for his next venture, and saw automobile racing as a means to acquire it. So, with a bit of outside help, Ford created the Sweepstakes: a simple race car powered by a 26-horsepower, two-cylinder engine displacing an incredible 539 cubic inches (about 8.8 liters).

With a paltry volume-specific power output of around 3 horsepower-per-liter, the car nonetheless overcame its competitor being driven by Alexander Winton – then considered the greatest automobile racer in America. The crowd, we imagine, went wild.

Now, 115 years later, Ford Performance has just wrapped up a thoroughly successful season of racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with the new Ford GT. Technically, it’s about as similar to Sweepstakes as an Olympic athlete to a microbe; spiritually, they’re very much the same, in that both are pioneering showcases of automotive innovation for their respective eras.

Here’s to another 115 years of Ford racing.