This is another story about the 1956 video with a reference to the tragic 1955 race. I had forgotten that Hawthorn was involved in that accident that took the lives of over 80 spectators. The story from Road and Track is below the video.
At first,
this 1956 video seems like just another fascinating item from the racing archives. Driver Mike Hawthorn, with a camera on the tail of his Jaguar D-Type and a microphone slung over his shoulders, narrates a pre-race practice lap around the Circuit de la Sarthe. It's a rare chance to ride along, to see and hear one of Jaguar's most legendary racing machines in the venue where it so thoroughly dominated the competition.
But this seemingly pleasant video makes grim and haunting references to
the single most deadly accident in the history of motor racing, in a way that goes totally unnoticed if you don't know what to look for.
First, let's ride along with Hawthorn around the track. Around the 3:26 mark, a glitch makes the video lag behind the audio by about five seconds, a situation which somehow fixes itself by the last few turns of the course. Full screen and decent volume are highly recommended.
Hawthorn's narration is fascinating and informative. His off-the-cuff delivery is impressive, considering that he's driving one of the world's most challenging race courses, at speed, while avoiding cyclists and local traffic trundling along the circuit (can you imagine this happening today?).
But his blitheness is more than a little unsettling.
At 5:11, Hawthorn makes an offhand reference to an accident from the year before. "It was just up here on the left, where the terrible accident occurred last year. . ."
Photos: 1955 Jaguar D-Type
"Terrible" doesn't begin to describe the 1955 disaster Hawthorn refers to. Just a few hours into that race, a chain-reaction accident sent the No. 20 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR crashing into the crowd alongside the racetrack. The driver, Pierre Levegh, was killed instantly, thrown from the car as it went airborne and crashed into an embankment. The disintegrating Benz's bodywork and drivetrain components hailed down on the crowd, crushing and decapitating several spectators; the car's fuel tank exploded, setting the magnesium body panels ablaze. The huge fire was made even bigger when unknowing track workers tried to douse it with water. The wreckage burned for several hours. In total, more than 80 spectators were killed, and 120 more injured.
And it was a maneuver by Hawthorn that
set the deadly event in motion.
1955 Jaguar D-Type
Hawthorn, in the lead in
his Jaguar D-Type, had just passed the Austin-Healey 100 driven by Lance Macklin when he noticed the Jaguar crew signaling him to make a pit stop. Hawthorn braked hard to make the pit entrance; Macklin, in the Austin-Healey, swerved to avoid Hawthorn, ending up right in the path of Levegh's Mercedes, closing in at nearly 150 mph.
Levegh collided with Macklin, the Austin-Healey acting as a ramp that sent the Mercedes flying into the crowd. Macklin's car spun into the pit barrier, ricocheted toward the burning Mercedes, and struck a spectator; miraculously, Macklin emerged unharmed.
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