That's basically the story I read of the 1955 LeMans race. The press
at the time blamed Mike Hawthorn because he swerved his Jaguar into
the pits around Lance Macklin's Austin Healy. Lance Macklin changed
lanes into the path of the Mercedes, which rammed the Austin Healy and
launched itself into the crowd killing over 70 spectators. Mercedes
was in the lead when they withdrew from the race several hours later.
Jaguar subsequently won with their DType. Pierre Levegh was the
Mercedes driver and he was thought to be partly at fault because at
the time he was well over 50 years old. Someone younger with a
quicker reaction time might have avoided the Austin Healy according to
the press accounts of the time. One of the British classic car
magazines covered the story a year or so ago and had an interview with
Lance Macklin. This was a hard luck guy, later in the year he was
involved in a accident in the Tourist Trophy event that killed a
number of spectators. He retired after that race.
Jeff
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Magnesium Rods
Author: STUART_BRENNAN@HP-Andover-om3.om.hp.com at INTERNET
Date: 6/9/97 12:03 PM
That's not the way I remember the story. Some little British thing balked at a
move into the pits, and the much faster Mercedes couldn't avoid the resulting
confusion. The resulting impacts launched the Mercedes toward the crowd. The
material didn't matter. That much weight, disintegrating in the grandstand,
along with the resulting fuel and oil fire, killed the people. The team
withdrew because of the deaths of the crowd, and their driver, not because they
were scared of magnesium.
Stu
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
>
>
>
The entire Mercedes team quit at Le Mans, while running
ahead of everybody, when one of their magnesium
structure cars struck a wall and sent burning pieces
onto the spectators, killing some. This was caused by
the friction between the concrete wall and the mag skin
which ground the metal to small hot particles. .
>
>
Steve Laifman
|