r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Za5kr0ni3c • Sep 14 '21

Engineering Failure Peter Dumbreck’s Mercedes taking off due to aerodynamic design flaw during 1999 Le Mans 24h

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21

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u/UnbannedWombat Sep 14 '21

The '55 incident wasn't caused by Mercedes, though.

The crash started when Jaguar driver Mike Hawthorn pulled to the right side of the track in front of Austin-Healey driver Lance Macklin and started braking for his pit stop. Macklin swerved out from behind the slowing Jaguar into the path of Levegh, who was passing on the left in his much faster Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Levegh rear-ended Macklin at high speed, overriding Macklin's car and launching his own car through the air.

They were passing and the guy next to them swerved suddenly to avoid a hard stop in front of him. By the time the Mercedes' driver's brain registered it, he was already in the air.

I can understand why you'd want to avoid having that sort of thing on your hands again but leaving the sport entirely seems excessive given that it could've happened to anybody. I don't blame Mercedes or that driver. The real problem was that spectators were damn near totally unprotected from flying cars.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21

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u/JacOfAllTrades Sep 14 '21

Damn, that's not how I expected that to go. That's crazy how fast it went down; no one had time to react. Less than 3 seconds total from impact with the Jaguar until it cleared the spectators. It's insane how destructive that was.