Headscratchers / Ford v Ferrari

• During the race, it's said that Miles is 'laps ahead' of the other drivers. In a 24 hour race, if they all finished at the same time, wouldn't Miles still have those laps of distance on Bruce McLaren?
  • He slowed down to allow the other Ford GT drivers to catch up, Bruce just happens to arrive at the same lap as Miles by the time the race finished (there's a bit of an offscreen Time Skip for movie pacing). Basically, in the last lap of the race, both Miles and Bruce have driven the same amount of laps. Since 24 Hour endurance races determine a winner by the distance driven, Bruce gets the win because he started at a position behind Miles when the race began, so technically he covered a little further distance than Miles when they crossed the finish line together. Historically, the third car was in fact several laps behind, but was still in third place, and it did make a nice photo.
• Why couldn’t Shelby have simply given Ford an ultimatum of either letting Ken drive at Le Mans or he and his crew will quit and Ford will be forced to build the car themselves? Its made clear that Ford needed their help to build a car that could beat Ferrari, so why couldn’t Shelby have leveraged that instead of gambling his company?
  • Shelby and his team are very good at what they do, but they are not the only ones who are good at what they do. Ford has deep pockets, they are perfectly capable of going elsewhere, and they are by far the more powerful ones in the relationship. While Shelby is their first preference as a designer, there is still a limit to how far Shelby can push them.