Le Mans 1955 Disaster

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, JET, if that's your desire... let's continue the amicable chit chat.

Allow me to add that it seems a little funny to watch fans asking drivers to do very risky manouvers and then blame them when an accident happens.

Simple, kid: those are races. Accidents will EVER happen. As Richard Leeds explains to you, what happens after the accident depends on us, engineers.

I've heard people blaming Senna for his "recklessness". Talk to me about hypocrisy... those ain't school bus drivers, you know. There is no INTENTION, period. It's an ACCIDENT. Accidents are unforeseeable by definition, unless you prove purpose on the driver's part. Magnesium cars on fire are NOT unforeseeable, are they? Gasoline tanks, that are not self-sealing (a technology devised in the 40's) exploding in flames are an accident? Oh, c'mon. Did you even see the picture I posted of the engulfing fire on the bleachers, not to mention watch it?

You cannot blame the people on the track that easily and escape my criticism, dear JET: you're asking them to be bold (I've seen your posts, friend) and USE the &^%$ brakes we give them and to stop at the @!*&# pits we provide to them. It's very different when you see certain drivers provoking accidents in rage or for their own benefit, if I may add.

Unless you prove to me that Hawthorne did it on purpose, I fail to see what's the point in charging him with murder.

Where is the negligence: in the engineer that designs a car of magnesium or in a driver that brakes late for pits? The former knows the properties of magnesium, the second... well, it's your call. Call him what you want and then get furious when drivers don't "give it all". If that's not double standard, tell me what it is.

However, as I said, I'm not lawyer, I see accidents to learn from them, not to play the part of priest, judge or mother-in-law. Mercedes learned a lesson, the track owners and the FIA, as shown in my first post, didn't learn it completely, or so I think. Swiss are wise, if you ask me.

Last example: FIA asks circuits to sustain themselves by ticket earnings, don't they? They charge, what? 20 million dollars for the RIGHT of the circuit owner to held the race, don't they? A kilometer of road costs what? 2 million dollars for the asphalt alone. Now, they have to provide security from their own pocket, while the teams develop the cars, year by year, minute by minute, with all kind of sponsors. Where the heck are circuit owners going to get the money for safety? Who knows? Who cares?

I see nobody in this forum asking for money for tracks... while there are biblical-length threads on money distribution for teams where every detail of financing is discussed to the smallest tiny weeny point. Cars are better every year. Heck, every month. Circuits? Once built, they are static. Is that stupid? You tell me. But I say, loud and clear: double standard. Swiss know it.

There are a million threads on car development. The minute shape of a wing is scrutinized more than Leonardo's Mona Lisa painting or Keat's poems. On the other hand, what happened to my threads on circuit design? Where is my site on all the circuits in history and school for racers? What happened with my analysis of circuit influence on racing? Where is Tomba's feeble attempt to have a list of tracks? Dead by lack of interest, that is where it is.

Why am I not a mod here anymore? In part, because I'm sick and tired of people second guessing the INTENTIONS of drivers and fighting to boredom over it. Does it sound familiar, JET? The fault is always with the other driver. Alonso is this, Hamilton is that... heck. Some of you seem little girls arguing over other girls dresses at school. When you will you people stop?

Guess what... while this happens in front of my old eyes, nobody seems to be surprised by cars stopping in the middle of the &(*#$ road to pit!

You know I've built circuits my whole life. Do I earn the same as the people that builds the cars? Guess what... I don't. How much does Bernie earns? Who knows? How much have I earned by marshalling races for 30 years? Zilch.

Should a fence be built around F1 Tracks? You bet. Should tyres be covered with something so cars don't fly by the mere touch of a wheel? Duh. Did Hawthorne deserve the scorn? You tell me, wise judge of an accident you did not see. Now, go and crucify Hawthorne if that makes you feel better. I don't. He died in an accident for the love of Pete!

And, no, I'M NOT YELLING! Now, get off my lawn!

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Allow me to add that it seems a little funny to me for fans to ask for drivers to do very risky manouvers and then blame them when an accident happens.

We ask them to brake late on a pit straight at Le mans on the left hand side of the road when the pits are due right? No Ciro, that is not what I ask.

Did Hawthorne deserve the scorn? You tell me, wise judge of an accident you did not see. Now, go and crucify Hawthorne if that makes you feel better. I don't. He died in an accident for the love of Pete!

I can see you are pretty passionate about this, and I dont mean to rile you. But the whole incident was and accident because of Hawthorns actions. An accident.
Its not crucifying him, its disecting the events as they occured. The Jaguar pit direction ordered him in when he wasnt expecting it, and he chose to brake in the fashion he did. There is not much value disputing this, manchild has put the video up for you to look at(the accident you also were not at, if we are to level things)

Hawthorn died and should not be villified, I concur 100%. And as he hasnt been villified I will ask, should we cover the truth because he died?

[Richard]

JET

- The stills I posted show Hawthorn tucked into the right a long way before the accident.

- The Jaguar team used a 3, 2, 1, countdown system to prepare drivers for a stop. The source is the website I posted earlier.

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, I asked Gérard Mariscalchi, who I know was a witness to this accident, to contribute to this thread. Let's hope he can clarify a bit the issues at hand and give us his opinion on Hawthorne guilt and fire and explosion impact on people. BTW, he seems to concurs with JET on the people being injured by flying pieces of the car, he doesn't even mention the fire, but... it's a chance to mention again how dangerous is carbon fiber on impact, ehem.

Meanwhile, thanks for the chance to defend drivers and circuit owners again, JET. Sorry if I seem passionate... I think people prefers to read that kind of posts, I have the utmost respect for your opinion, Johnson Evil Twin. Who knows, you might be right and Richard wrong, but I differ. Besides, I'm always with the drivers, even with Hamilton... I admire all of them.

[manchild]

I agree, it was just an accident with one of two possible origins - technical failure or driver's error. It was the driver's error.

Magnesium burst in flames after the engine including other parts had flown away and killed people, hundred meters further and more.

Another documentary, this time by arte

Check first part @ 14:25
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09IPlz8oaQE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jujwHYoWUzA[/youtube]

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Sorry if I seem passionate... I think people prefers to read that kind of posts

Dont be sorry, its a good thing! It makes reading it more enjoyable.

@richard
I have seen the RTE documentary, and Hawthorn was right of centre with Levegh on the far left. It seems Hawthorn braked then moved right, with another car to his left that moved right avoiding him moving directly infront of Levegh's speeding Mercedes... every inch was covered by investigators.
At the end of the day we lost around 90 innocent souls, and Mercedes-Benz for a couple of decades from motorsport. Before start of play, nobody would either have predicted or intentionally created the circumstances that unfolded. It was a different time back then as Just_a_Fan correctly stated.

[SiLo]

Thank you to everyone for posting so much information, really given me a lot of stuff that I can hazard a guess other people on my course will not find!

I will hopefully remember to post a link to the essay on here for you all to read, then you can all tell me just how bad my prose really is!

And thanks to Ciro and JET for some real entertaining reading

[mep]

Regardless the danger to provoke Ciros hot temper again I am going to post here.
(but I am not going to write every second sentence in bold, and just to make sure you know it: It took me more than a hour maybe even two to writte this. It's not just you ciro that spends much time with his comments)

I watched the arte docu of manchild where the crash is analyzed very well. For me it's clear that Mike Hawthorn made a serious mistake when he positioned his car in front of another one and brakes hard. I have some personal emotion with such kind of behaviour as I was in a similar situation once in road traffic. I drove down a hill with my bike and got passed by a car which once it was right in front of me braked very hard to turn left. With much worse brakes you have absolutely no chance to avoid the collision and you will immediately realise this and feel the helplessness. Lucky me there was just enough space on the right to repass the car. Both drivers had to know that the following vehicle has absolutely no chance to brake but they did not care.

You think such behaviour is OK?
You think those people are not guilty when somebody dies because they cause an incidents where other people have no chance to safe themselves?
You think you are alone on this planet or only your interest’s count?

Everybody must be mature enough to understand the consequences of his behaviour.
Everybody must take responsibility of incidents caused by actions done even by knowing better.
It's the arrogance and stupidity of the people that is dangerous.

For sure Ciro I have to agree building a car made of magnesium falls under the same kind of arrogance. Also allowing to drive on a dangerous track or as a fan standing on a dangerous position. If I place myself on a dangerous position and get killed it’s my own fault and I should not blame someone else (maybe a bad example in this relation but thing about rally). Everybody is responsible for his own health. However when someone else is causing a situation where I come into danger without own guilty then this one is to blame.

Regarding that magnesium car, aren't there many similar technical machines around?
How about placing some men on a rocket full of fuel and shot them into space?
Or where do we get most of our energy from? -Nuclear power plants
Everybody knows how dangerous they are.
Who of you never takes a plane to go somewhere? When it crashes you can be sure to die.

The important point there is to avoid an accident by any means simply because you can’t prevent the fatal outcome an accident would have.
Yes sure that’s ridiculous when talking about a race car because you must expect at least one accident for every car and season (at least today, maybe they had less crashes during that time?). During that time the cars where dramatically insecure. Any crash would have caused the driver to die. Maybe for the engineers a magnesium chassis just didn’t seem increase this probability?

Today the race would be stopped instantly and it wouldn't be an issue. Times and attitudes were different then. Lots of those involved in motorsport had grown used to being close to death in the war that was still very fresh in everyone's memories. I think many of us will struggle to understand that today.

Exactly this keeps me thinking for long time (once I already tried to discuss this here but Ciro did’t like it). Those drivers climbed into the cars and they knew how --- dangerous it is to drive them on a track shared with many crazy people.
However they still did so. I wonder what lead those drivers to risk their life. For sure things must have been different for those generations.

How can everybody continue his business after seeing the fire in the grandstand?
The drivers passed that accident many times without caring.
Everybody who saw the fire or even the accident must have realised that many people died or fight for their life.
Dead must have been a much more dominant thing, a every day issue whereas today it turned to be a more fictional thing.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Mep

I respect your opinions here, in fact I agree with all of them 100%. I also appreciate that you spent the best part of 2 hours to post your comments. But I think out of respect for the actual incident, we should keep this purely fact or point based rather than move into tit for tat territory. Both you and Ciro are better for good constructive argument, as is the actual thread.

As a Mercedes fan, I have to say I'm not proud to know that the magnesium based SLR contributed to some deaths. But there is no way Mercedes were culpable for the accident. There was a string of events that led to this that basically boils down to this:

Its 1955, there is no such thing as safety, and machines doing 190mph are miracles of engineering. People want to be close to the spectacle, and oragnisers allowed it.
As Humans we make errors, and that black day in Le mans there were many errors made. Whats important, is that we learn from them.

Looking at what happened to motorsport and Mercedes in particular after 1955, you can safely say there was a shift towards a safety conscious sport.

[SiLo]

I think you will find that apart from the banning, not much was actually done in the way of safety changes until the 70's when F1 drivers started refusing to race because of the conditions on the track and it's facilities.

Also, my opinion on the accident has always been that the odds of something like that happening were quite low, and even by todays standards, would it be possible to stop an engine block that is doing 150mph from hitting a crowd?

In one respect, yes it could, as if you increased the size of the runoff areas, the mercedes may well have hit ground then hit the barrier (mostly mud and wattle), which in all honestly would of still caused the fuel tank to rupture and for a fire to break out, but we may have only lost the life of Levegh then, a lot less than 84.

In another, no, considering the car was airborne for quite some distance, then hit the barrier and disitegrated, would todays fencing have stopped this?

We can make a simple calculation as to the force of the engine block:

150mph*0.45 = 67.5 m/s

KE = 0.5(204)(67.5)^2 = 462,672 Joules or 462,672 Newtons.

Which by my reckoning, is a lot.

For comparison, an average wrecking ball weighs in the region of 4000 pounds and is swung at around 25mph.

So 25*0.45 = 11.25m/s

KE = 0.5(1814)(11.25)^2 = 114,792 Joules or 114,792 Newtons, and these things swing through brick walls and buildings like nobody's business.

Hope that helps you get an idea of the force the engine was moving with.
Weight of engine block came from here:
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/362/ ... -W196.html

[Mystery Steve]

I see what you're trying to get at with the wrecking ball comparison, but don't forget that you're comparing a normal impact with a brittle brick construction to an oblique impact with a relatively flexible fence. The goal of the fence isn't to deflect the energy, but to absorb and contain it. There have been incidents in oval racing in America where these fences have certainly helped to contain these incidents, such as Kenny Brack's crash in Texas and Mike Conway's crash at Indy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8fgGiI1WA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJfQ-5pYjJQ[/youtube]

Certainly, there are some improvements that could be made to the fences for driver safety. In fact, the close spacing of the upright poles in the Kenny Brack incident probably made the accident worse than it needed to be. Perhaps, if the horizontal retaining cables were spring-loaded like the catch wires on an aircraft carrier, the upright poles could be spaced further apart while still being able to absorb the impact. Regardless, hindsight being 20/20, a catch fence would probably have saved dozens of lives at Le Mans in '55.

[WhiteBlue]

I see nobody in this forum asking for money for tracks... while there are biblical-length threads on money distribution for teams where every detail of financing is discussed to the smallest tiny weeny point. Cars are better every year. Heck, every month. Circuits? Once built, they are static. Is that stupid? You tell me. But I say, loud and clear: double standard. Swiss know it.

Not quite true. viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8738 I have always advocated track safety and I have often been crucified for criticizing cornering speeds unmatched by sufficient run off and modern safety barriers like SAFER and TecPro.

When Henry Surtees was hit by a wheel from Clarks car in Brands Hatch I have pointed to the fact that the track is not up to F1 standards by a long way and that suitable run off at the corner would have prevented the wheel to be ripped off Clark's car.

I have also criticized Suzuka for old safety standards and pointed out that F1 rookies are not used to such dangerous conditions any more. But there are still people here on this board who advocate 1,200 hp cars and downforce enabling cars to take corners at 6g. This is the madness.

[mep]

We can mention the new Korea track in this connection.
It's a totally new track designed from scratch but in my opinion a very dangerous one. The pit entrance is ideal line and at least in one corner a wall is to close to the runoff area.
How can they build a new track and make so such mistakes?
It seems like some people have forgotten that danger exists.

[Just_a_fan]

In fact, the close spacing of the upright poles in the Kenny Brack incident probably made the accident worse than it needed to be. Perhaps, if the horizontal retaining cables were spring-loaded like the catch wires on an aircraft carrier, the upright poles could be spaced further apart while still being able to absorb the impact.

Not that easy. If you put springs in to the system the energy still has to go somewhere. If the poles absorb the energy then they need to be big and strong. If not the poles, then where does the energy go? Another way top look at it - the further apart the poles, the bigger/stronger they need to be to absorb the energy. Hit a bigger pole and the result is unlikely to be any prettier than those shown in the videos.

Don't forget - the fencing is there to protect the crowd, not the driver. If the fencing is strong enough to protect the crowd but doesn't help the driver then, well, so be it. The driver can be taken to accept the injury risk but the crowd can't be assumed to have done so (especially children).

[SiLo]

Yeah, catch fencing would of made a massive difference! But this was 1955 and to get people to do something you usually need something to happen first, such as this incident.

I know they used to have lots of rows of fencing to slow cars down, but they wouldn't of been high enough to stop the engine.