-At first, this 1956 video seems like just another fascinating item from the racing archives. Driver Mike Hawthorn, with a camera on the tail of his Jaguar D-Type and a microphone slung over his shoulders, narrates a pre-race practice lap around the Circuit de la Sarthe. It's a rare chance to ride along, to see and hear one of Jaguar's most legendary racing machines in the venue where it so thoroughly dominated the competition.
But this seemingly pleasant video makes grim and haunting references to the single most deadly accident in the history of motor racing, in a way that goes totally unnoticed if you don't know what to look for.
-First, let's ride along with Hawthorn around the track. Around the 3:26 mark, a glitch makes the video lag behind the audio by about five seconds, a situation which somehow fixes itself by the last few turns of the course. Full screen and decent volume are highly recommended.
--Hawthorn's narration is fascinating and informative. His off-the-cuff delivery is impressive, considering that he's driving one of the world's most challenging race courses, at speed, while avoiding cyclists and local traffic trundling along the circuit (can you imagine this happening today?).
-But his blitheness is more than a little unsettling. At 5:11, Hawthorn makes an offhand reference to an accident from the year before. "It was just up here on the left, where the terrible accident occurred last year. . ."
-"Terrible" doesn't begin to describe the 1955 disaster Hawthorn refers to. Just a few hours into that race, a chain-reaction accident sent the No. 20 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR crashing into the crowd alongside the racetrack. The driver, Pierre Levegh, was killed instantly, thrown from the car as it went airborne and crashed into an embankment. The disintegrating Benz's bodywork and drivetrain components hailed down on the crowd, crushing and decapitating several spectators; the car's fuel tank exploded, setting the magnesium body panels ablaze. The huge fire was made even bigger when unknowing track workers tried to douse it with water. The wreckage burned for several hours. In total, more than 80 spectators were killed, and 120 more injured.
-And it was a maneuver by Hawthorn that set the deadly event in motion.
-Hawthorn, in the lead in his Jaguar D-Type, had just passed the Austin-Healey 100 driven by Lance Macklin when he noticed the Jaguar crew signaling him to make a pit stop. Hawthorn braked hard to make the pit entrance; Macklin, in the Austin-Healey, swerved to avoid Hawthorn, ending up right in the path of Levegh's Mercedes, closing in at nearly 150 mph.
-Levegh collided with Macklin, the Austin-Healey acting as a ramp that sent the Mercedes flying into the crowd. Macklin's car spun into the pit barrier, ricocheted toward the burning Mercedes, and struck a spectator; miraculously, Macklin emerged unharmed.
-Here's first-hand footage from the accident, annotated:
--And an unsettlingly terse report from the sidelines, filed by British Pathé:
--Despite the severity of the crash, officials allowed the race to continue—in part to prevent crowds of departing spectators from impeding the arrival of the many ambulances needed. Eight hours after the crash, with its remaining two cars well in the lead, Mercedes solemnly decided to withdraw from the race. The team invited Jaguar to do the same, an offer the British declined.
-Hawthorn and teammate Ivor Bueb eventually won the race. The next day, while funeral services were held in the Le Mans cathedral, French newspapers pointedly ran photos of Hawthorn and Bueb celebrating with champagne alongside headlines detailing the horrific mass accident.
-The reaction to the bloody catastrophe was swift and far-reaching. Mercedes-Benz withdrew from direct involvement in motorsports, staying away until 1987; Jaguar's factory team avoided Le Mans for more than three decades. American automakers turned away from factory-backed racing for a few years, though they maintained clandestine involvement. Racing organizers throughout Europe scrambled to improve the safety of their tracks. Switzerland banned racing entirely.
-Le Mans officials also flew into action with safety improvements, rearranging the grandstands and pit areas. They also installed a key piece of safety equipment—one that Hawthorn indifferently points out at 3:12 in that video from 1956:
-"On the right we have the new signaling pit. It's been put up this year. All the signaling is now done from those pits and not from the pits up at the grandstand."
-Had the signal been there during the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans, Hawthorne's unplanned swerve into the pits, and the disastrous crash that unfolded behind him, might never have occurred.
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Hawthorn's apparent detachment as he points out the landmarks of racing's single greatest disaster may seem crass with the perspective of hindsight. But given the era, perhaps his reaction is not out of place. Racing, quite simply, was a deadly sport in the 1950s. Drivers had perished at Le Mans in three of the six years preceding the horrific 1955 event; in Formula One, three drivers were killed the same year. The official inquiry ruled that the disaster of 1955 was a racing event and not Hawthorn or Jaguar's responsibility, and the unforgettable tragedy helped invigorate calls for improved racing safety for both drivers and spectators.
-Hawthorn may not have been the most sympathetic figure in racing at the time, but he soon became a tragic one: After winning the 1958 Formula One Championship with Ferrari, the British driver immediately retired from racing, deeply affected by the death of his close friend and teammate Peter Collins at the German Grand Prix. A mere six months later, Hawthorn was killed in a traffic accident in his 1958 Jaguar 3.4 Mk.1, five years after his father had died on the road. He was 29 years old.
--In the years since the 1955 Le Mans disaster, the famous track has been continually updated to rein in speeds and protect drivers and spectators alike. In the past 35 years of competition, only three drivers have been killed during the legendary 24 hour race. Each death is tragic. But as we prepare for the 83rd running of the race this month, it's important to remember the atrocity that occurred there sixty years ago, and the permanent impact it's had on racing ever since.
-This story originally appeared on roadandtrack.com.
-from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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