Sixty Years of Kiwi Magic at Le Mans

June 9, 2026

June 1966. Two young New Zealanders make history, driving an all-black Ford GT40 through the night to beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Six decades later, two more Kiwis are lining up at the same circuit. Same race. Same ambition.

Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon were the first New Zealanders to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, handing Ford its first-ever victory there in the process. They covered nearly 4,850 km at over 200 km/h, swapped tyre brands mid-race, clawed back from eighth place, and took the lead with eight hours still to go.

Carroll Shelby put the car in New Zealand's colours. Jet black, twin silver stripes. A silver fern and the letters NZ on the driver's door. A Bruce McLaren nameplate on the side windows. Small touches, but deliberate ones. These boys weren't just racing for Ford. They were racing for New Zealand.

Photo credit - Ford Chip Ganassi Racing

That same year, the Giltrap Group opened its doors. And the man who founded it, Sir Colin Giltrap, knew Bruce McLaren personally. They were friends; part of the same tight world of New Zealand motorsport in the 1960s, when Kiwis were punching well above their weight on the international stage and everyone knew everyone. Colin went on to become a patron of the Bruce McLaren Trust, a supporter of McLaren the team, and one of the great enablers of New Zealand motorsport. The drivers he backed over the decades include Scott Dixon, Shane van Gisbergen, Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber. The thread from Bruce to Brendon and Earl runs, in part, right through Giltrap Group.

And it kept giving. It was also the year Bruce McLaren entered his own Formula One team for the first time, racing the M2B at Monaco. Last weekend, sixty years on, that same car came back to Monte Carlo. Mika Hakkinen fired up the Ford V8 and took it around the streets as McLaren celebrated their 1000th Formula One Grand Prix, a milestone only Ferrari has reached before them. A Kiwi's car, a Kiwi's team, still writing history.

Then there's 2017. Brendon Hartley from Palmerston North and Earl Bamber from Whanganui lined up at La Sarthe in a Porsche 919 Hybrid. An hour into the race, they were in the pits with a failed front axle motor. By the time they rejoined they were running 56th, effectively last. Most teams would have called it a day. These two didn't. They picked off car after car through the night and when the flag fell, the Kiwis were first across the line. The first New Zealanders on the Le Mans podium since McLaren and Amon, half a century before.

This weekend, both of them are back.

Hartley lines up in the #8 Toyota TR010 Hybrid alongside Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa. Bamber is in the #38 Cadillac for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA. Between them, five Le Mans wins. For a country of five million people, that's a hell of a return.

Bamber won on his first ever attempt in 2015, alongside Nico Hulkenberg, now Audi's Formula One driver, and Nick Tandy. It was the first Kiwi win at Le Mans since McLaren and Amon. He was back on the top step in 2017 with Hartley and Bernhard. Hartley now has three: 2017 with Bamber and Bernhard at Porsche, 2020 with Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima at Toyota, and 2022 again with Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa.

No factory programme. No government academy. Just Kiwis who know how to win the hard ones.

For Giltrap Group, turning 60 this year alongside all of this, it feels like more than coincidence. McLaren and Amon set the tone in 1966. This weekend, Hartley and Bamber head back to the same place.

Sixty years on, we're still cheering them home.