Racing's Most Bizarre Accident

The three strikes of Mercedes.

Support the Channel:

References and Further Reading:

Music List:

[highdunker]

"In the future we will have flying cars!"
The cars:

[Corrupted]

Them immediately packing up and leaving must've been an extreme case of "we fucking told them"

[its_A_me_Njobe]

this video is a cinematic masterpiece.. the way it builds up to the crash..and then showing the footage only once...it kinda hit the spot.

[RutherfordPillen]

3:09 “When Mercedes start flying, it’s usually a sign that something has gone seriously wrong.” That’s a quote that fills me with dread. Amazing work as always, Emp.

[stormix]

It'll be crazy and poetic if Mercedes returns to Le Mans in 2029, 30 years after their last disaster, just like they waited 30 years after their first disaster at Le Mans.

[DonLee]

Hathorn dying in a crash while trying to pass a mercedes, is almost poetic. celebrating a le mans victory only because your competitor left the race after seeing so many people dying on the side of the track, is just horrible.

[jayr.]

A few quick facts:

Jaguar driver who braked abruptly was using a relatively new disc brake system, allowing them to brake more sharply than most drivers were accustomed to. This led to a skewed understanding of what a safe followinf distance was. Keeping their mechanical advantage a secret at the expense of safety.

The extremely tough decision was made to not suspend the race so that emergency vehicles would have access to the scene of the carnage. French authorities knew that it was such a big spectical in an urban area and that suspending the race would mean a massive pedestrian log jam from fans leaving the event. Many people in the city didn't know what had happened until several hours after the crash. This probably saved a few lives of the injured.

National and international reception to the crash was largely very callous. People in higher society looked down on motor racing as a sport and their was a cold sentiment among the aristocrats that if someone perished as a result of attending such an event that it was their own fault.

[HiBoa]

I thought I'd jump in with a small extra fact.

According to Mark Webber himself in his autobiography, when he returned to the garage after his qualifying crash, the crew didn't believe that the car had actually caught air.

"The real injury came when I realised the team didn't believe my version of what had happened. Their response? 'No, that couldn't have happened, the car couldn't possibly flip end over end.' How could they dismiss my explanation of events so lightly? We looked at the data and they knew the car had taken off, but there was no evidence in the form of footage or even still photographs. There was just a bent car and what I said".


This is also continued after his second crash in the warm-up, as even though there was evidence of what had happened this time, they attempted to blame it on an incorrectly fitted front floor tray and that it wouldn't happen in the race.

[Dat-Mudkip]

Here's some bonus facts:

- The reason the 1955 race wasn't stopped had several reasons. The biggest three were concerns about fans clogging the narrow roads (making emergency response more difficult), concerns about race sponsors sueing over the stoppage, and the apparent fact that the race organizer _technically_ didn't actually have the right to stop the race.

- One of the big causes of the Le Mans Disaster was the Jaguars had been given disc brakes - a rather new invention for auto racing at that time that drastically reduced the distance required to stop.

- Hawthorn had been signaled to pit the lap before, and after getting in front of Macklin, raised his arm to signal he was pitting, before going hard on the brakes. (Hawthorn later recounted he had been highly focused on the racing. I personally suspect he forgot he needed to pit until he saw the pit lane!) Macklin apparently was caught completely by surprise with how fast Hawthorn slowed.

- Despite his hard braking, Hawthorn still overshot his pit stall. He was ordered by his team to do another lap to get away from all the chaos and confusion. By the time he returned, Hawthorn was barely able to get out of his car, _convinced_ he had been directly responsible for the accident.

- The semi-offical cause according to both Mercedes and Macklin was Hawthorn cutting in front of Macklin and slamming on the brakes. Jaguar responsed by questioning the fitness and capabilities of both Macklin AND Levegh.

- The firefighters could do very little about the burning car. Unfamiliar with magnesium, the first instinct was to pour water on it, which just intensified the fire. Without any other real methods to put the fire out, they simply had to wait for it to burn itself out.

- The exact cause of Hawthorn's death is a bit of a mystery. While it was eventually revealed by the driver of the Mercedes (team manager Rob Walker) he had been racing Hawthorn at the time of the accident, other factors are thought to had been at play. The stretch of road had apparently suffered 15 serious accidents in the two years prior (including two fatal ones); the roads had been wet; Hawthorn had apparently clipped a "Keep Left" bollard prior to losing control; the car actually had a glancing blow with an oncoming truck (lorry) prior to skidding back across the road; the car ultimately smashed into a tree with such force that it uprooted the tree, and managed to throw Hawthorn into the rear seat; and Hawthorn had apparently been suffering blackouts for some time prior, as he had lost a kidney to infection in 1955 (no relation to the Le Mans Disaster), and apparently had been diagnosed to live just three more years when he crashed. His death was ultimately ruled an accidental death.

- Dumbreck had, all things considered, been extremely lucky. His car had crashed in a spot of recent chopped down trees. Had these trees still been standing at the time of the accident, he almost certainly would have wrapped his car around one of them.

- Mercedes actually did not know for certain what was causing the flight problem, and so their attempts to cure it ironically made the problem worse. The modifications consisted of tweaks to the rear suspension, and the addition of winglets to the nose to improve front downforce. Ironically, these winglets would produce _lift_ when cresting a hill, which technically made the car MORE prone to taking off. Despite further tweaks between the warm up and the race, the problem wasn't cured. It wasn't until testing after the event that they discovered the issue in regards to the overhang.

- Ironically, the downfall for one German manufacturer proved to be the highlight of another. Despite not being the fastest car in the field, BMW's V12 LMR made up the difference in reliability and fuel efficiency, allowing BMW to get their first (and to date, only) overall win at Le Mans.

[packersfan]

Clearly the most bizarre racing accident was the time I went from first to twelfth on the last turn of Mario Kart Wii

[Langharig_Tuig]

There's something about how quickly they packed up after the accident. Normally people would need some time to process it as they are shocked by the bizarre thing they witnessed... But deep down, nobody was shocked, everybody expected very precisely this to happen and unspokenly agreed what they would do when, not if, it happened.

[jpaxsh]

Im sorry but that last part of the mercedes flying off into the trees with that song and how he talks just makes it beautiful

[buzzlightyearpfp]

the universe has a strange sense of humor. The jaguar driver dying because he tried to pass a Mercedes.

[eyezak_m]

Mercedes flying in F1: 😊
Mercedes flying in Le Mans: 💀

[johnvortecho]

Ever since the Dale Earnhardt video I've always wondered what an expanded sequence on the "Have you ever seen a Nascar fly?" line would be.

That CGI was it.

[RCGC]

You know the saying 'in the future we will have flying cars!'. Lets just say Mercedes made that dream a reality.

[skechers]

"...the wisest lessons are often taught by catastrophic failure."

What a quote.

[deepwebintel]

Fun fact: the Mercedes CLK class has the largest model price-range of any vehicle. At the bottom of the range there is a V6 powered convertible (worth $4, 000 on a good day), in the middle of the model range you have a 6.2 AMG V8 powered CLK 63 Black Series (worth $200K). Near the top of the model range you have the CLK DTM convertible which is basically a direct predecessor to the CLK Black Series but features a S/C 5.5L V8 instead of a N/A 6.2 (worth $500K) then unbelievably near the very tippy top you have the GT1 Homologation Special, Road Legal, V12 Powered CLK GTR (worth $10-$12 Million today). Finally at the top of the list (which barely qualifies because it’s barely a CL chassis) is Chassis 003, The only CLR in existence, originally believed to be destroyed after M-B’s many publicized motorsports blunders the 4 CLR chassis were believed to be destroyed but chassis 003 the only one left without significant damage & the only surviving CLR example which was also the fastest of the trio was sold to a private collector who occasionally tracks it at the Nurburgring every year or so. (Worth anywhere from $12-$20M).

[SpaghettiManGuy]

Holy shit I’m emping my lemon so hard rn

[ToonLinkHox]

The moment I saw Mercedes and Le Mans I just _knew_ it was gonna be about Webber. The "airborne" bits just gave it away, this man had some form of curse preventing him from keeping his car on the track, no matter which category he drove in.