Le Mans - 6/11/1955
Anticipated by race fans around the world, only ten years after the end of WWII, the 1955 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans featured sixty vehicles (26 large engines, 17 medium engines, and 17 small engines ... two will be eliminated when they arrive at the start grid late) racing over an 8.38-mile course for a host of well known car companies that included Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari (the previous year's champion), Jaguar, Austin-Healy, Aston Martin, Triumph, Cooper, Talbot, Cunningham, Gordini, and Maserati, along with an equally international array of driving talent from the United States of America, Great Britain (with the most entrants at 27, almost half the field), Germany, France, Italy, and South America. Among the talent on hand are Maurice Trintignant (the 1954 winner of the event, along with fellow Ferrari driver Jose Froilan Gonzalez), Eugenio Castellotti, Umberto Maglioli, Phil Hill, Paul Frere, Juan Manuel Fangio (the World Championship driver of the previous year), Stirling Moss, Karl Kling, Pierre Levegh (his real name is Pierre Eugene Alfred Bouillin, but he races as Levegh to honor the memory of his racing pioneer uncle who died in 1904), Tony Rolt, Duncan Hamilton, Mike Hawthorn (the personification of a fast life liver, he is a 26-year old British racer and playboy who hates all things German and has been told by doctors he will be dead by thirty due to a kidney condition), Roberto Mieres, Tony Brooks, and Ron Flockhart ... in vehicles without seat belts, as it is thought to be better to be thrown loose, rather than die in a fire if a crash should occur.
Fangio
Hawthorn
Resurfaced and widened after WWII, along with the pits and grandstands being rebuilt, the course at Le Mans is little changed from its configuration at its 1923 inception, though speeds of the racing vehicles have gone from 60 mph, to times in excess of 170 mph ... there are no barriers between the pit lane and the racing line, and there is only a four foot earthen bank between the spectators and the cars hurtling around the track. Dangers on top of dangers just waiting, as becomes clearly evident in practice runs over the course when Moss and Jean Behra collide leaving the pits, Peter Taylor crashes his new Arnott, and Elie Behra suffers a fractured skull and broken vetebrae avoiding an accident with two spectators crossing the track.
The Course In 1955
At 4:00 pm on a lovely French afternoon, before over 250,000 racing enthusiasts, honorary starter Count Aymo Maggi (the founder of Italy's famed Mille Miglia car race) waved the French tricolor of blue, white, and red, the drivers ran across the track to their cars, and the race was on. As anticipated, cars from Ferrari, Jaguar, and Merecedes-Benz quickly placed themselves atop the leader board, and in the first two hours of the event, the course lap record is broken ten times ... and the lapping of slower vehicles began (the first casualty of the race takes place when a lighter Nardi is actually blown off the course by the slipstream of larger vehicles going by). At Lap 28, Hawthorn's green Jaguar (the cars are color coded by country of origin, France is light blue, Germany is silver, Italy is red, England is dark green, and the United States is assigned white) is in the lead, followed closely by the silver Mercedes-Benz of Fangio ... the first pit stops are seven laps ahead, and there, at 6:26 in the earlier evening, disaster takes place.
The Race Begins
Signaling he is coming in, while racing hard to stay ahead of Fangio, Hawtorn brakes hard and comes into the pit area as he goes by the Austin Healey 100S of Lance Macklin, who in turn brakes hard to avoid a collision with the faster car, runs off the right edge of the track, and then control lost, veers across the center of the track, briefly out of control (the track is twenty-three feet wide). The briefly out of control is enough though. In sixth place, going 150 mph and intent on doing another lap before pitting his Mercedes-Benz, Levegh has only time to raise a hand to warn following teammate Fangio to slow (seen, the gesture is enough to save Fangio, who using his lightning quick reflexes, with eyes closed and a lots of luck, manages to escape the ensuing carnage, just brushing by Hawthorn's now stationary Jaguar in the pit area), before colliding with Macklin's car. Hitting the left rear corner of the Austin Healey with his right front wheel, Levegh's vehicle is launched into the air, slams into the earth embankment and disintegrates (thrown from the car, 49-year-old Levegh dies instantly from a fractured skull ... in front of his wife in the pit area) into a stream of red-hot shrapnel that includes the car's engine, radiator, and suspension ... a stream of red-hot shrapnel that explodes into the watching crowd.
Macklin
Levegh
Launched
Instant carnage (the debris flies 330 feet into the crowd) ... a woman is sent flying to her death when her dress is caught by the passing wreckage, fourteen people are decapitated, a doctor holding his son on his shoulders to see the race is uninjured, while his child is killed, others are crushed or burnt to death (made of a lightweight magnesium alloy called Elektron, the body of Levegh's car will burn for hours), a grandmother survives, while standing next to her, her grand daughter dies, two children are killed craning to see what is happening, while their two taller companions see, duck, and survive, a man survives, his fiancee does not, legs and arms are lost ... Le Mans becomes an abattoir (priests watching the event will go through the area giving last rites where they can). In all, eight-three spectators (many feel the number is closer to 100) and Levegh lose their lives, and one-hundred-eighty are wounded in the catastrophe (with even more bearing the emotional scars of the day for the rest of their lives)
Carnage
Incredibly, citing the panic that might ensue and clog the roads needed for rescue vehicles to arrive at the scene and deal with the dead and damaged, the race is allowed to continue! Thinking of the public relations nightmare that could ensue, its cars in 1st and 3rd, Mercedes-Benz withdraws from the race at 1:45 in the morning ... Jaguar, asked if it will follow suit, declines, and Ferraris all broken down, the team of Mike Hawthorn (yes, the same) and Ivor Bueb win the race for Jaguar by five laps over an Aston Martin. In the aftermath of the race, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and other nations ban motorsports until tracks can be brought to a higher standard of safety (a policy still in effect in Switzerland), the American Automobile Association gives up sanctioning motorsports in the United States (the prime sponsor of the Indy 500 since 1904), Mercedes-Benz withdraws from racing its cars, and several drivers retire while still in the prime of their careers (although he will still race and win, and goes down in history as one of the greatest drivers of all time, Fangio will never drive at Le Mans again).
The "Winner" Celebrates
And of course, the finger pointing begins almost immediately. Macklin blames Hawthorn for cutting in front of him at excessive speed (and as if giving proof to the argument, Hawthorn misses his own pit area when he comes to a stop), Hawthorn blames Macklin for losing control of his car (Macklin will eventually sue Hawthorn for slander, but the case is never settled ... as it ends abruptly in 1959 when the twenty-nine-year-old Hawthorn crashes his Jaguar on a rain slick road passing a Mercedes-Benz outside of Onslow Village, Great Britain), and not around to defend himself, everybody blames Levegh for not having the ability to continue driving at Le Mans. Back and forth, after 17 months of interviewing participants and examining evidence (Mercedes-Benz will not get the wreckage of its automobile back for a full year), the official French inquiry into the matter decides the crash was simply a racing accident and that no one (or company) was primarily responsible for the tragedy ... a tragedy which to this day, remains the worst in motorsports history.
Levegh And Wreckage
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