Ford GT, meet Ford's Sweepstakes racer

[Suarez™]

It was 115 years ago this month that Henry Ford won his first and only automobile race. While the trappings and technology of big-league racing have evolved through the intervening century, the essential point for automakers hasn’t changed a whit.

Ford Motor Company duly observed the anniversary of Henry’s win with a commemorative ceremony joining its first race car and its latest: the 2016 Le Mans-winning GT driven by Joey Hand, Dirk Mueller and Sebastien Bourdais. The company allowed no drives or even rides in the GT, but it did offer rides in a replica of Henry’s first race car. The original remains in the Henry Ford museum.

In October of 1901, Henry Ford was 38. His first effort to mass produce automobiles -- the Detroit Automobile Company -- had just dissolved in failure after a production run or 19 or 20. Never a fan of racing, or at least not race driving, a desperate Ford nonetheless had a plan. If he could build a car to beat Alexander Winton -- at the time, America’s most famous racer, and also one of its most successful car builders -- he might re-establish his credentials as an engineer and kick start his flagging automotive career.

In May of that year, Ford and a handful of associates began construction of the Sweepstakes, named for the race in which it would participate, at a shop in Detroit.

The Sweepstakes’ primary load-bearing structure was two ash wood rails. It was driven by chain and sprocket, with a two-speed planetary transmission, full leaf-spring suspension and constricting-band brakes on the rear wheels only.