On Auto Racing’s Deadliest Day

It was a brilliant, sunny Saturday, June 11, 1955, and more than 200,000 spectators had showed up in Le Mans for the 24-hour race that was featuring many of the greatest Formula One drivers and endurance racers of the era.

There were stars like Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, and lesser-known drivers like Paul Frère and Olivier Gendebien. It was a great year for the cars, as well, brands like Aston Martin, Ferrari, Jaguar and Porsche. But the attraction of the race that year was to be the return of Mercedes-Benz, which had won the event in 1952, but had then been absent in 1953 and 1954.

Its 300 SLR was a prototype based on its winning Formula One car. Its star drivers were Moss and Fangio, sharing the No.19 car. There were two other Mercedes cars, one driven by Karl Kling and André Simon, the other by John Fitch and Pierre Levegh.

The new Mercedes were exciting to watch. To compensate for their conventional drum brakes, they had a so-called air brake, which looked like the rear trunk of the car opening up to use an aerodynamic drag effect to powerfully brake the car. The body of the 300 SLR was made of an ultralight magnesium alloy called Elektron.

But if that all sounds familiar to contemporary racing enthusiasts, there were other aspects of that mid-20th-century race that were quite different. The track was only about 10 meters, or 35 feet, across; the pits on the main straight were part of the track itself, not separated by a pitlane; and, facing the pits, the spectators sat on benches and bleachers, and some even made their own viewing perches, standing on trestle tables they had set up trackside.

It was a hodgepodge, a ragged mass of humanity grouped along and over the edge of the track, with only bales of straw and a mound of earth separating them from the racing cars traveling at top speeds of 300 kilometers, or 185 miles, an hour. Given those conditions, a disaster could have been in the making on that June day should anything go wrong.

And only two and a half hours after the 4 p.m. start of the race, something indeed went terribly, tragically wrong.

Hawthorn’s Jaguar was leading the race when it came up the main straight to pass a much slower car from a lower category, an Austin Healey driven by Lance Macklin.

Hawthorn passed Macklin, and then belatedly noticed that his mechanics had signaled him to stop in the pits to refuel. So Hawthorn slammed on his disc brakes and slowed abruptly, shifting over to the right side of the track to stop at the pits.

This took Macklin by surprise. He braked with his own less powerful drum brakes and swerved to the left to avoid the rapidly decelerating Jaguar.

Meanwhile, Fangio, who was in second position, about 200 meters behind Hawthorn, was coming up to pass the Mercedes of Levegh.

Levegh, though, was surprised by Macklin’s Austin-Healey swerving across the track. He could not slow in time. So while racing at 240 kilometers an hour, with Fangio right behind him, Levegh’s Mercedes made contact with the left rear of Macklin’s car and was catapulted into the air.

It crashed on the embankment on the spectator side of the track and exploded in a ball of flames from the fuel.

Levegh, 49, was thrown from the car and killed instantly. His car broke into several pieces. Both the engine and the rear hood, with the air brake, were ripped out of the car and plowed a furrow through the crowd.

Worse, the hood spun around like a disc through the packed group of spectators, decapitating dozens of people. Many other spectators were killed by the explosion.

The initial flames caused by the burning fuel raised the heat level of the chassis, causing the magnesium to explode in white-hot flames, sending embers into the crowd.

Firefighters, unaware that pouring water on burning magnesium was counterproductive, tried to douse the conflagration and only ignited it further. The flames burned on for hours.

In addition to Levegh, 83 spectators were killed and 120 were injured.

The race organizers decided to continue the race, to keep spectators from clogging the roads, which would hamper efforts to evacuate victims.

Mercedes withdrew from the race after midnight, with Fangio leading, but the race ran to the end on Sunday, with Hawthorn winning.

Several countries immediately banned auto racing, including France, Germany and Switzerland, until safety was improved for spectators. Switzerland still has a ban on circuit racing in force today.

Mercedes had withdrawn from racing by the end of the year, and did not return until more than 30 years later, first in sports cars racing, and then, as an engine supplier, in Formula One in the mid-1990s.

This year, the 60th anniversary of the 1955 accident was marked at Le Mans with a minute of silence and wreaths laid near a plaque beside the track honoring the victims.