'55 crash at Le Mans

  • Thread starter Sureboss
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Sureboss

Sureboss

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Not quite sure where to put this tbh.

Me and Dad were chatting about cars yesterdy and he mentioned a crash in 55 involving a Mercedes racing car made of Magnesium. It was something I'd not heard of before which surprised because upon googling it I found out that the crash had killed 82 people.

http://members.aol.com/healeypics/lemans.html
 
Yeah, that was a terrible crash for sure. It was really just an unfortunate series of events, but Mercedes are still touchy about it to this day. I think it was the engine that did the most damage, is was pretty much a cannonball through the crowd. :scared: :ill:

I'm not sure it helped that the fire crews started pouring water all oven the car - it burnt for hours afterwards. :indiff:

There's a very high quality pic of the chassis remains on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Le_Mans_1955_crashed_car_remains.jpg
 
And motor racing in Switzerland is still banned because of that accident.
 
daan
And motor racing in Switzerland is still banned because of that accident.
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Seriously? That's....that sounds insane. Banning motorsport because of one accident, that happened in another country no less? To me that seems like snuffing out fire because somebody got burnt. :crazy:
 
Yep, seriously.

wiki
The death of the spectators was blamed on inadequate safety standards for track design, leading for a ban on motorsports in France, Switzerland, Germany, and other nations until the tracks could be brought to a higher safety standard. Switzerland's ban on racing was never lifted and as of May 2007, it is still in place.
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It was because so many spectators died. Participants know the dangers, and to a certain degree, accept them. Spectators shouldn't be hurt.
 
Mm, I guess that's fair enough banning it right after the crash. Safety standards were laughable at the time, but they've improved so much since then that it seems ludicrous for it to still be banned in 2007. Maybe I'm naive to the entire situation, but to me it makes no sense. :dunce: Perhaps the Swiss should be introduced to something I can't help noticing at each British circuit I visit:

 
Yeah, this was probably the most (or second most) influential accident in motorsport history.
 
M5Power
Isn't this the wreck that Jaguar caused but still refuses to take the blame for?
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The Jaguar in question (being driven by Mike Hawthorn) was coming into the pits at the time, and being fitted with the then quite revolutionary all-round disc brakes was capable of using far moire of the tyres grip and as a result slowed much quicker than the rest of the field.

Lance Macklin in a much slower Austin-Healey 100 (who had been passed by Hawthorn just prior to the pit straight) misjudged how quickly the Jag would slow down and swerved to avoid it. Macklin did not notice (or did not have time to notice) that Pierre Levegh and Juan Manuel Fangio were closing fast behind him in Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR's. Levegh, who was ahead of Fangio, struck the back of the Healey and was launched into the crowd.

Wiki contains a full write=up of the incident and inquiry...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Le_Mans_disaster

...which contains the following...

Wiki
After the race, an official inquiry into the accident ruled that Jaguar was not responsible for the crash, and that it was merely a racing incident. The death of the spectators was blamed on inadequate safety standards for track design, leading for a ban on motorsports in France, Switzerland, Germany, and other nations until the tracks could be brought to a higher safety standard. Switzerland's ban on racing was never lifted and as of May 2007, it is still in place.
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...one of the main reasons why the Jaguar team are (mistakenly) blamed for the accident is that the team kept running and went onto win the race.

Regards

Scaff
 
This is a good page with info and a stills sequence leading up to the crash.

http://www.mike-hawthorn.org.uk/lemans2.php

It seems quite clear from those stills that Levegh didn't react to Macklin moving out to pass Hawthorn. There seems to be plenty of room for Levegh's 300SL to get past the Austin Healey safely.
 
Pierre Levegh was a gentleman racer who had had many previous attempts to even finish at Le Mans, never succeeding. The Mercedes drive was his best chance, but according to reports, his mental stability was nowhere near that of the racing greats. He was nowhere near the pace of Moss during testing, and he may well have been overtired at the point of the accident.

I don't think it's really possible to blame one person or team however. The incident has been gone over many times, and still there seems not to be a satisfactory answer as to who caused the accident.

I read Christopher Hilton's book on the subject, and - the odd lapse into melodrama aside - it's very good.
 

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