That's basically the story I read of the 1955 LeMans race. The press
at the time blamed Mike Hawthorn because he swerved his Jaguar into
the pits around Lance Macklin's Austin Healy. Lance Macklin changed
lanes into the path of the Mercedes, which rammed the Austin Healy and
launched itself into the crowd killing over 70 spectators. Mercedes
was in the lead when they withdrew from the race several hours later.
Jaguar subsequently won with their DType. Pierre Levegh was the
Mercedes driver and he was thought to be partly at fault because at
the time he was well over 50 years old. Someone younger with a
quicker reaction time might have avoided the Austin Healy according to
the press accounts of the time. One of the British classic car
magazines covered the story a year or so ago and had an interview with
Lance Macklin. This was a hard luck guy, later in the year he was
involved in a accident in the Tourist Trophy event that killed a
number of spectators. He retired after that race.
Jeff
-I personnaly don't know how over time any other racing venues
"stack-up" safety-wise, but I've seen some of the old film-clips of
the "lead-sleds" racing around Daytona Beach on the sand within feet
of the spectators,and no barriers were evident except a couple of old
tires stacked up in the "turns".
-Sadly, it's taken some extreme tradegies like the above to make
motorsports safer for everyone.
Phil
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