1955 Le Mans disaster

The 1955 Le Mans disaster was a major crash that occurred on 11 June 1955 during the 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race at Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans , Sarthe, France. Large pieces of debris flew into the crowd, killing spectators and French driver Pierre Levegh . It is unknown exactly how many people were killed, but the number is known to be at least 82 [ 1 ] (81 spectators plus Levegh), and many sources estimate 84 deaths. Regardless of the exact death toll, this crash was the most catastrop...

There was much debate over blame for the disaster. The official inquiry held none of the drivers specifically responsible and criticised the layout of the 30-year-old track, which had not been designed for cars as fast as those involved in the crash.

There was great anticipation for the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans , as Ferrari , Jaguar , and Mercedes-Benz had all won the race previously and all three automakers had arrived with new and improved cars. The Ferraris, current champions at the time, were very fast but fragile and prone to mechanical failure. Jaguar concentrated their racing almost exclusively on Le Mans and had a very experienced driver lineup including Formula 1 (F1) Ferrari driver Mike Hawthorn . [ 3 ]

After conquering F1, Mercedes-Benz had debuted its new 300 SLR in that year's World Sportscar Championship , including a record-setting win at the Mille Miglia for Stirling Moss . The 300 SLR featured a body made of an ultra-lightweight magnesium alloy called Elektron . The car lacked the more effective state-of-the-art disc brakes featured on the rival Jaguar D-Type , instead incorporating inboard drum brakes and a large air brake behind the driver that could be raised to increase drag and slow...

Mercedes team manager Alfred Neubauer assembled a multinational team for the race: pairing his two best drivers Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss in the lead car, 1952 race winner Karl Kling with Frenchman André Simon (both also in the current F1 team), and American John Fitch with one of the elder statesmen of French motor racing, Pierre Levegh . It had been Levegh's unprecedented solo drive in the 1952 race that failed in the last hour, which allowed Mercedes-Benz their first Le Mans victor...

Aside from two layout changes to make the circuit shorter, the Circuit de la Sarthe was largely unaltered since the inception of the race in 1923 , when top speeds of cars were typically in the region of 100 km/h (60 mph). By 1955, top speeds for the leading cars were over 270 km/h (170 mph). That said, the circuit had been resurfaced and widened after the Second World War . The pits and grandstands had been reconstructed, but there were no barriers between the pit lane and the racing line, and ...

The 1955 race began at 4pm on Saturday, and, as predicted, the lead cars of Eugenio Castellotti (Ferrari), Hawthorn (Jaguar), and Fangio (Mercedes-Benz) were at the head of the field in the first hour. The other team cars were being kept on tighter leashes to conserve the cars, but still racing in the top ten. Going into the second hour, Castellotti started dropping back, but Hawthorn and Fangio continued the duel, swapping the lead and dropping the lap record further and further, lapping most o...

On lap 35, Hawthorn and Fangio were racing as hard as ever. In his biography, Hawthorn said he was "momentarily mesmerized by the legend of the Mercedes superiority ... Then I came to my senses and thought 'Damn it, why should a German car beat a British car. ' " [ 8 ] [ 9 ] The lap before, Hawthorn's pit crew had signalled for him to come in the next lap . He had just lapped Levegh (running sixth) after Arnage (one of the corners of the race track) and was determined to keep Fangio at bay for a...

There were two key factors regarding the track layout at that time – first, there was no designated deceleration lane for cars coming into the pits, and second, that just before the main straight, there was a very slight right-hand kink in the road just after which Hawthorn started braking.

Macklin, who also braked hard, ran off the right-hand edge of the track, throwing up dust. Noticing that Hawthorn was slowing down, Macklin swerved left to avoid Hawthorn, whether it was an instinctive reaction, a loss of control from going onto the change of road-surface, or his car's disc brakes operating unevenly. As a result, Macklin's car veered across to the centre of the track, briefly out of control. This put him into the way of Levegh's Mercedes, closing in at over 200 km/h (120 mph), i...

Levegh's front-right wheel rode up the rear-left of Macklin's car, which acted as a ramp and launched Levegh's car into the air, flying over spectators and rolling end over end for 80 metres (260 ft). [ 5 ] Levegh was thrown out of his tumbling car and hit the ground, crushing his skull upon impact and killing him instantly. [ 11 ] [ 16 ]

The critical kink in the road put the car on a direct trajectory toward the packed terraces and grandstand. The car landed on the earthen embankment between the spectators and the track, bounced, then slammed into a concrete stairwell structure and disintegrated. The momentum of the heaviest components of the car – the engine block , radiator , and front suspension – hurtled straight on into the crowd for almost 100 metres (330 ft), crushing all in their path. [ 16 ] The bonnet lid scythed throu...

Jaguar driver Duncan Hamilton , watching from the pit wall, recalled, "The scene on the other side of the road was indescribable. The dead and dying were everywhere; the cries of pain, anguish, and despair screamed catastrophe. I stood as if in a dream, too horrified to even think." [ 18 ] [ 19 ]

Hawthorn had overshot his pits and stopped. Getting out, he was immediately ordered by his team to get back in and do another lap to get away from the total confusion and danger. When he pit stopped during the next lap, he staggered out of the car completely distraught, adamant that he had caused the catastrophe. Ivor Bueb and Norman Dewis , both Le Mans debutants, had to step into their respective cars for their first driver stints. Bueb in particular was very reluctant, but given Hawthorn's co...

John Fitch, Levegh's American co-driver, had suited up and was ready to take over the car at the upcoming pit stop, and was standing with Levegh's wife, Denise Bouillin. They saw the whole catastrophe unfold. [ 16 ] Levegh's lifeless body, severely burned, lay in full view on the pavement until a gendarme hauled down a banner to cover it. Levegh's wife was inconsolable and Fitch stayed with her until she could be comforted. [ 16 ] Half an hour after the crash Fitch realised that news was probabl...

Despite expectations for the race to be red-flagged and stopped entirely, race officials, led by race director Charles Faroux , kept the race running. In the days after the disaster, several explanations were offered by Faroux for this course of action. They included:

After an emergency meeting and vote of Mercedes-Benz company directors by telephone in Stuttgart , West Germany , Neubauer finally got the call approving his team's withdrawal just before midnight. Waiting until 1:45 am, when many spectators had left, he stepped onto the track and quietly called his cars into the pits, at the time running first and third. [ 26 ] [ 27 ] Their retirement was briefly announced over the public address system. The Mercedes trucks were packed up and gone by morning. C...

Hawthorn and the Jaguar team kept racing. With the Mercedes team withdrawn and the Ferraris all out of commission, Jaguar's main competition had gone. Hawthorn and Bueb won the race by a margin of five laps from Aston Martin . The weather had closed in on Sunday morning and there was no victory celebration. However, a press photograph showed Hawthorn smiling on the podium drinking from the victor's bottle of champagne. The French magazine L'Auto-Journal published it with the sarcastic caption, "...

More than 80 spectators, plus Levegh, were killed, either by flying debris or from the fire, with a further 120 to 178 injured. Other observers estimated the toll to be much higher. [ 5 ] [ 1 ] [ 26 ] It has remained the most catastrophic crash in motorsport history. A special Mass was held in the morning in the Le Mans Cathedral for the first funerals of the victims.

The death toll led to an immediate temporary ban on motorsports in France , Spain , Switzerland , West Germany , and other nations, until racetracks could be brought to a higher safety standard. In the United States , the American Automobile Association (AAA) dissolved their Contest Board that had been the primary sanctioning body for motorsport in the US (including the Indianapolis 500 ) since 1904. It decided that auto racing detracted from its primary goals, and the United States Automobile C...

Most countries lifted their racing bans within a year after the disaster. France in particular, as the host of Le Mans, lifted their complete ban on 14 September 1955. On that date, the Ministry of the Interior released new regulations for racing events and codified the approval process that future racing events would need to follow. [ 31 ] In contrast, Switzerland's ban persisted for decades. This forced Swiss racing promoters to organize circuit events in foreign countries including France, It...

The next round of the World Sportscar Championship at the Nürburgring was cancelled, as was the non-championship Carrera Panamericana . The rest of the 1955 World Sportscar Championship season was completed, with the remaining two races at the British RAC Tourist Trophy and the Italian Targa Florio , although they were not run until September and October, several months after the catastrophe. Mercedes-Benz won both of these events, and was able to secure the constructors championship for the sea...

Much recrimination was directed at Hawthorn, saying that he had suddenly cut in front of Macklin and slammed on the brakes near the entrance to the pits, forcing Macklin to take desperate evasive action into the path of Levegh. This became the semi-official pronouncement of the Mercedes team and Macklin's story. [ 10 ] [ 17 ] The Jaguar team in turn questioned the fitness and competence of Macklin and Levegh as drivers. [ 17 ] The initial media accounts were wildly inaccurate, as shown by subseq...

Both Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz issued official statements, mainly in self-defence against the accusations levelled against them and their drivers. Neubauer limited himself to suggesting improvements to the pit straight and making pit-stops safer. [ 10 ] [ 17 ]

Macklin, on reading Hawthorn's 1958 autobiography, Challenge Me the Race , was embittered when he found that Hawthorn now disclaimed all responsibility for the crash without identifying who had caused it. With Levegh dead, Macklin presumed that Hawthorn's implication was that he (Macklin) had been responsible, and he began a libel action. The action was still unresolved when Hawthorn was killed in a non-racing crash on the Guildford bypass in 1959, coincidentally while overtaking a Mercedes-Benz...

The official government inquiry into the accident called officials, drivers, and team personnel to be questioned and give evidence. The wreckage was examined and tested and, finally, returned to Mercedes-Benz nearly twelve months after the catastrophe. [ 26 ] In the end the enquiry ruled that no specific driver was responsible for the crash, and that it was merely a terrible racing incident. The death of the spectators was blamed on inadequate safety standards for the track design. [ 5 ] [ 26 ] ...

Over the next year, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) set about making extensive track improvements and infrastructure changes at the Circuit de la Sarthe—the pit straight was redesigned and widened to remove the kink just before the start-finish line, and to give room for a deceleration lane. The pits complex was pulled down and rebuilt, giving more room to the teams, but thereby limiting spaces to only 52 starters rather than the previous 60. The grandstand was demolished and rebuilt with n...

Fitch became a major safety advocate and began active development of safer road cars and racing circuits. He invented traffic safety devices currently in use on highways, including the sand-and-air-filled Fitch barrels . [ 41 ]

Macklin's Austin-Healey 100 was sold to several private buyers before appearing on the public auction block. In 1969, it was bought for £ 155 (equivalent to £3,222 in 2023). [ 42 ] In December 2011, the car, estimated to raise £800,000 before the auction, [ 42 ] was sold for £843,000. [ 43 ] The car retained the original engine SPL 261-BN, [ 42 ] but was reported to be in ' barn find ' condition. [ 44 ] It was then restored to its original condition. [ 45 ]

Mercedes-Benz withdrew from motorsports until 1985, although the withdrawal had already been decided before the race and had not been caused by the accident. [ 46 ] After returning to sports car racing in the mid-1980s, initially as an engine supplier, Mercedes went on to win the 1989 Le Mans race in partnership with Sauber Motorsport . Mercedes went on to compete in the championship during the 1990s as a works team before withdrawing for a second and final time in 1999, following a series of sp...