1955 Le Mans crash documentary on BBC4

[border-rider]

Just caught this.  Interesting - I knew nothing of it before seeing this

Approx 80 spectators killed when a Mercedes took off and landed in the grandstand.  Nasty...

[Jaded]

All a bit hushed up too. No total count of the dead, race carried on, grandstand and pits area bulldozed soon after. There was some great analysis of what little record there was of the incident. A couple of cine films and some stills.

On the plus side a lot of good safety stuff came out of it for motor racing generally.

I never knew that Mike Hawthorne was going to die young anyway. (He had kidney failure, but was killed in a crash on the public roads here)

[Torslanda]

Poo! Missed it. Arse!

[border-rider]

I'd try to catch it again/on the iPlayer

As J says, some interesting stuff on the reaction, but also a lot of techie stuff on the cars.  The Mercs were superior in many ways to the Jags, but used immense inboard drum brakes which were so prone to fade that they had to fit air brakes to the cars as well   They had mag body panels, which was part of the problem when one of them caught fire...

It looks from the documentary as if the crash had multiple causes, but as J says the race was not stopped and the usual podium Champagne shenanigans from the winning Brits did not go down well in the French press afterwards.

[mattc]

I don't think the race should have been stopped.

It's possible the safety concerns were correct (50,000 people leaving the track would have hindered the emergency services), and
The dead would mostly have wanted it to go on.

But the podium celebrations were bang out of order.

[Mr Larrington]

Motor racing nerd that I am, I found it somewhat disappointing.  A preview in a motoring comic last month promised new evidence of what happened and all kinds of woo, but there was nothing in it that hadn't already appeared either in Chris Nixon's Mon Ami Mate¹, or Christopher Hilton's Le Mans '55: The Crash That Changed the Face of Motor Racing.

Elsewhere I've seen interviews with Juan-Manuel Fangio (who credited Pierre Levegh with saving his life by giving a hand signal immediately before he hit Lance Macklin's car), Jaguar team manage FRW "Lofty" England (who was always very keen to blame Levegh and absolve Hawthorn of even the slightest shred of responsibility), and Sir Stirling Moss (who thought Mercedes should not have withdrawn from the race and also isn't dead).

Moreover, in those days champagne on the podium was strictly for drinking.  The spraying-around bobbins was first perpetrated by 1967 winner Dan Gurney - it is difficult to imagine a dedicated piss-artist like Mike Hawthorn wasting good drinkohol on something as frivolous as making the spectators damp.

I told you I was a nerd

1 - Double biography of Hawthorn and Peter Collins.  Essential reading for petrolhead fanboiz but big zlotys.

[mattc]

Mr L:
I can remember most of the gory details, but not which driver did to what to whom

IIRC driver X overtook a slower car immediately before slowing to make his pit-stop (hope this is correct). Who was Driver X?

EDIT: thanks. My excuse is that we watched this about 2 weeks ago, so some details have faded. I expect Auntie will show it again one day.

[Mr Larrington]

Mr L:
I can remember most of the gory details, but not which driver did to what to whom

IIRC driver X overtook a slower car immediately before slowing to make his pit-stop (hope this is correct). Who was Driver X?

Driver X: Mike Hawthorn.

[border-rider]

Hawthorn overtook Macklin (who was on the right, at the edge of the track) just before he (Hawthorn) started to slow for the pits. Macklin's car either twitched onto the dirt at the side of the road or he lost control for some other reason and he went hard left, right across the track and into the path of Levegh who was doing 150 mph+ down the straight.  There was little Levegh could do, and when he rear-ended Macklin's car his Merc rode up the slopey back of it like a ramp and just took off.  It ploughed into the grandstand in pieces at head-height and decapitated loads of people.

Gory details, as you say.

[Mr Larrington]

Macklin went to his deathbed blaming Hawthorn - he said he (Macklin) had braked as hard as possible and pulled left to avoid ramming Hawthorn's Jag (which was braking hard for the pits and had much better brakes than the Austin-Healey) and thus lost most, if not all, control of his car.  The narrow track and the gentle right-hand curve in front of the pits didn't help matters.

[border-rider]

Nice touch when they commented that Hawthorn met his end on a wet Guildford Bypass, trying to overtake a Mercedes...

[mattc]

It's a funny business:
You can blame Hawthorn, and you can build better crowd safety fences etc, but the incident would most cheaply have been avoided by a painted white line
i.e. the pit-lane entry that is used in many modern race series.

[ok, so they might have needed a wider bit of pit-straight too, but anyway ... ]

[Woofage]

I missed this prog but I've set my Myth box to record the next showing, whenever that may be.

I have an old book about Le Mans that was written in the 60s. It describes each race in detail so I'll have to have another read of its report on the 1955 massacre. ISTR something about the functioning of Hawthorn's brake light being a crucial piece of evidence that cleared him of any wrong doing. Was this mentioned in the prog?

[Mr Larrington]

Had the pits been separated from the track by a wall rather than, er, nothing, Hawthorn would have had to slow for a proper pit lane entrance well in advance.

Nice touch when they commented that Hawthorn met his end on a wet Guildford Bypass, trying to overtake a Mercedes...

According to pre-war driver and serial private entrant of motor-cars for Stirling Moss Rob Walker, whose Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing it was, it was a truly horrible day with heavy rain and a strong crosswind.  Walker said he'd just changed into top, which he rarely did at under 100 mph, when Hawthorn overtook.  Hawthorn's car was apparently running on some experimental Dunlops with marginal wet weather grip, and Chris Nixon unearthed a statement that he'd recently had a hand throttle fitted to alleviate ankle ache on long runs.  Since Walker stated that the Jag's engine was still running flat out when Hawthorn lost control, Nixon postulates that said hand throttle had jammed open

[Exit Stage Left]

I'd try to catch it again/on the iPlayer

As J says, some interesting stuff on the reaction, but also a lot of techie stuff on the cars.  The Mercs were superior in many ways to the Jags, but used immense inboard drum brakes which were so prone to fade that they had to fit air brakes to the cars as well   They had mag body panels, which was part of the problem when one of them caught fire...

I saw it last week and found it so harrowing that I put it out of my mind. There are interesting parallels with Group B rallying where it was amazing that so few people were killed given the proximity of the spectators and the cocktail of carbon fibre and magnesium in them, what is less reassuring is that the descendants of those cars, the likes of the EVO, wander our streets today.
Group B Rally Cars: The Killer B's - autoevolution

      YouTube
            - The End of Group B
   

[DrMekon]

It's here if anyone missed it

BBC iPlayer - The Deadliest Crash: the Le Mans 1955 Disaster

[Andrew Br]

I saw it last week and found it so harrowing that I put it out of my mind. There are interesting parallels with Group B rallying where it was amazing that so few people were killed given the proximity of the spectators and the cocktail of carbon fibre and magnesium in them, what is less reassuring is that the descendants of those cars, the likes of the EVO, wander our streets today.

I also gave this programme a miss because I didn't think that I'd enjoy it.

I have to disagree about the connection between Gp B rally cars and the Gp A/WRC cars- Imprezas, Evos (and Delta Integrales, Escort Cosworths  ).
Most surviving Gp B cars are in the hands of collectors and they are either kept in museums or used occasionally at track days and demonstrations.
The Imprezas and Evos are conventionally built saloons (ie steel) with powerful engines and 4WD.
They can be tuned (500+ BHP) and they are, often, driven by dicks. That's the problem with them.

[rogerzilla]

The Imprezas and Evos are conventionally built saloons (ie steel) with powerful engines and 4WD.
They can be tuned (500+ BHP) and they are, often, driven by dicks. That's the problem with them.

It's the next step after a lowered Saxo for the charver-made-good.  The funny thing about the Evo is that the base car (the Lancer) is one of the dullest granny-wagons ever to hit the road, and the Evo seems to outsell it.

[bobb]

I have a mate who has a properly riced up Impreza. It has stupid amounts of BHP. Fortunately, he is a decent guy and reserves thrashing the fuck out of it for track days. Unfortunately, he's been working overseas for the last couple of years and gave it to another mate of his to look after (he did offer it to me, but I'm not 18 any more and have no interest in chavmobiles)

I will never get in a motor car driven by the current custodian of the Impreza again. He drives like an absolute twat. I'm not just talking speeding, but really dangerous moves. He crashed his own Scooby into the band stand in his home town, then just left it there and went down the pub. He is a prize prick and is the absolute last person on Earth I would lend a car to. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Scooby is written off by the time my mate returns home.....

[FatBloke]

Bugger! Missed it!!
I'm off there for this year's race in a couple of weeks in a 1977 convertible Porsche 911 Flatnose.   
Well, that's the plan, in previous years it has involved various recovery vehicles.   

[Andrew Br]

It's the next step after a lowered Saxo for the charver-made-good.  The funny thing about the Evo is that the base car (the Lancer) is one of the dullest granny-wagons ever to hit the road, and the Evo seems to outsell it.

Wasn't the "base" car called the "Carisma" at one time ?

Oh the irony......................

[Cudzoziemiec]

The Mitsubishi Lancer is also the preferred vehicle of Bangalore racer boys, with wings and things on the boot and flashing multicoloured lights on the front. There's one nearby which has a panel cut out of the bonnet and replaced with perspex...  No idea if these are the Evo version or just riced up (oh, what an ironic phrase! So far from the idli-vada) standard Lancers, though.

[Von Broad]

Motor racing nerd that I am, I found it somewhat disappointing.

Well, I've just watched it, and coming from the opposite end of the scale to you Mr L (having no interest whatsoever in motor racing, either past or present) I found it really quite compelling, and if laced with enough imagination at what it must have been like in the thick of it, really horrific. The picture of that body panel [if that what it was] flying through the air...just dreadful.

From the point of view of informing the uninformed, like myself, I thought it was really well made. It reminded me of the Tom Simpson documentary - plenty there to interest somebody not actually interested in the sport.

I was quite astounded to realise they were doing those kind of speeds in 1955, with what seemed, virtually nothing betweem them and the spectators!

[border-rider]

From the point of view of informing the uninformed, like myself, I thought it was really well made.

That was my view

I'm also someone with little interest in motor racing, but I found it fascinating.  Doing those speeds with drum brakes 

[rogerzilla]

As Jobst Brandt (who worked on the first disc brakes for Porsche) will tell you ad nauseam, drums are neither less powerful nor worse at heat dissipation than discs.   They have two main problems, especially for racing: (1) the brake force is not proportional to the pedal force, which leads to lock-ups and (2) they suffer from a particularly nasty type of fade whereby the expansion of the drum means its curvature no longer matches the shoe.

If I drive a car that has rear drums I can tell without looking because of the slight "snatch" of the self-servo effect.