Anyone who thinks the crash scenes in Seve McQueen's Le Mans are overdone, here's the real thing today... YouTube - Allan McNish Crash Le Mans 24 Hours 2011‏ Allen McNish ( and several photographers ) were very lucky indeed to get away with that one.
No...Spa-Francorchamps is more to my liking. But that was a truly massive crash - for just an instant, the echoes of 1955 were there....
Blimey I heard about it in commentery during the qualy for Canadian GP not seen it until now. Nasty crash. I think McNish was in the safest place during the impact, it was all those bits of flying carbon fibre & that loose wheel that was the worrying bit.
Wow, I am so glad the change in "where" spectators can be, and the barriers were in place. It might have easily been as bad as the '55 tragic death toll if not for the changes made since. For those who don't know what that was, this prompted Mercedes to withdraw from the race. Goto: The Le Mans Tragedy (1955) The Worst Disaster in Auto-Racing History - Video The changes at the track since then certainly were in play here.
A truly horrific crash made all the more incredible by the fact that McNish walked away from it. It says a lot for modern cockpit and barrier technology. The same can't be said for the 1955 tragedy, I've never seen that footage before, it sent a chill down my spine.
watch the journalists trying to dodge the debris. It's incredible noone was hurt because pieces were scattered all around them and that little motorbike wasn't going to protect them from flying metal.
Well, this is a Le Mans to remember....another Audi taken out by another Ferrari in the darkness... YouTube - CRASH Le Mans 2011 - Mike Rockenfeller Audi R18 - Live FR‏ Motorsport forums are already referring to it as 'Le Mans 2'...and in fact, this second major accident happened a very short distance from where the Ferrari goes into the trees in the 1970 movie......
And the sole surviving Audi just crossed the line, only 13 seconds in front of the three Peugeots..... What an incredible and dramatic Le Mans !
I watched those clips, not here but on another link, over and over again and both times it appeared (to myself) that a slower moving car from a different class (both Ferraris?) turned right and down into a passing Audi which was overtaking them. I know that the different classes of cars will many times overtake the slower ones, but perhaps they themselves should be careful to NOT do the overtaking on a corner which requires steering to the right to stay the course. Wait for a longer straight or something rather than "push the envelope" that much. Just a thought.
It's a reasonable thought but not so easy when you're racing......slower cars have always been a hazard, from LM '55, through Gilles Villeneuve, to what we saw at Le Mans. The 'slower' cars are often surprisingly fast and difficult to overtake on the straights - races are usually won in the curves. Thanks mainly to carbon-fibre technology and a large slice of luck, it seems that no-one was seriously injured. It's still the thing that sets motor sport apart ; golfers risk a strained back, premier league footballer risks drunken punch-ups in night clubs....but it's not quite the same as McNish's Audi virtually disintegrating at 140mph......
Still , Iwouldn't to be hit by flying carbon fibre at 140 m/ph. The barriers were there too, but luck was really part of the game, for heads could have been easily chopped off with flying debris
Really the "great thing" about carbon fiber seems to me that it has little "mass" for its weight, and as such probably doesn't deliver as much kinetic energy as metal parts might. Those dang tires and wheels "bouncing" around were nasty looking though. Just glad that the damage to both drivers and spectators was so minor for that violent a crash and impact. Back in the "day" that wouldn't be the case for sure, and without doubt "dame fortune" had a hand in the affair as well.
Carbon fibre ( or carbon fibre/Kevlar, etc ) just doesn't 'fold up' in the way the old alloy chassis' used to. If he'd been driving a carbon-fibre car, Stefan Bellof ( killed at Spa in a Porsche 956 ) would still be alive today. Mike Rockenfeller's LM crash was almost exactly the same and he's OK. And if the car doesn't fold, the fuel tanks don't rupture...and so on. Countless F1 drivers owe their lives to the stuff ( which was pioneered in motor sport by John Barnard of McLaren ). It's the single biggest reason why so many of them 'walk away' instead of being crippled ( like Didier Pironi or Jacques Laffite ) or worse.....
Wow, I've heard of the 1955 Le Mans crash, but never seen the footage before. That was chilling stuff.
