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Short Stuff: 1955 Le Mans Disaster · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. So let's get
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: it going about a really terrible disaster that happened back
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five in France.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's right, the disaster at Lamon's very dark time for
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: motorsports history. Something I've never been into, although I did
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: see the f one movie on a plane recently.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were telling me about it. You were telling
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: me that as one of the better movies you've ever
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: seen in your life, if I remember correctly.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: No, I did not. I think I spoke to it,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: spoke about it on the show even But this all
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: occurred on June eleventh, nineteen fifty five. We should probably
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: tell you a little bit about Lamon's as a race,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: because it is different than you know, if you're just
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: sort of a casual race person and you're like, yeah,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: they they drive around a track a certain amount of
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: times and then somebody wins. Once you've completed the two
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: hundred laps.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: They just turn left a lot.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is not what happens at Lamon's. I think
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: they're going to hold a ninety fourth one this June.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: It is an endurance race where you drive along with
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: two racing partners. There's three drivers and they take turns,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: but you drive for twenty four hours and whoever completes
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: the most laps in that twenty four hours is the winter.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Yes. And in Lamon's in particular, the track is called
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the Circuit de la Sarth and it's a d shape
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: about eight and a half miles or thirteen point seven
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: kilometers around, and it's not only made of racetrack, but
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: they also incorporate some actual public roads that get shut
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: down for the race. It's made of racetrack, it's made
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: of racetrack and public roads. I think that's fascinating. Oh
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: There's other races like this, there's public road like fully
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: public road races.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I know, and I find those fascinating too.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, man, weirdly defensive about this.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So for Lemon's in particular, in this it's a twenty
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: four hour endurance race. Like you said, like really famous
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: car makers, especially by this time in the fifties, like
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the top car makers would enter a car, hire an
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: elite driver and say get to it. And the distances
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: that they're covering in this twenty four hours on this
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: eight and a half mile track are akin to driving
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in twenty four hours from New York to la or
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Berlin to Athens, which I'm not even sure you can
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: do because Athens is in Greece, which is an island,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: but you get the gist, or from Perth to Sydney.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So no matter where you are in the world, you
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: now realize that this is a really long amount of
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: miles or kilometers that they're driving on this d shaped
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: track in twenty four hours.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And they were even back then driving
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: really fast. I think the all time track record speed
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: like the tip top on a straightaway would be two
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty three miles an hour, which was nineteen
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: eighty eight. But even the nineteen fifties, you know this
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: crash occurred, I saw one hundred and twenty up to
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty miles an hour. So they were
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: driving these cars really really fast even back then. And
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I almost feel like we should take
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: an early break there.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I need too.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's do it and we'll come back. We're in agreement.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I love it, all right. So the tragedy that unfolded
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: that day in nineteen fifty five was pretty much due
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to a very poor track design along with a bad
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: maneuver by a driver. The poor design meaning, you know,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: when you're if you don't know anything about auto racing,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: there's something called a pit and a pit crew, and
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: you pull in and get like gas and get your
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: tires change and get your windows clean and whatever else
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: the car needs at the time.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Sure. Uh.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I actually watched NASCAR for like a season in thely
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: to mid two thousands. For some reason I got into it.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Did you have a favorite driver?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I did, and I can't remember his name now I
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: could picture him in my head. He drove the UPS car,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: whatever his name was.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: He drove a UPS car that be pretty impressive.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: He was sponsored by UPS.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: He was known for doing like wheelings in his UPS
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: car and going into donuts in the middle because he
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: knew he was never going And here comes a box
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: truck on the outside lane. He's wearing those shorts legs.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Oh man, this is crazy. Uh yeah it was. It
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: was a short flirtation birtation excuse me, so.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Heavy heavy bairtation, heavy heavy ritation.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: So it was a quarter mile long stretch. This pit
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: road was. In this case, everyone was really tightly packed together,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: so there wasn't enough space to begin with, and it
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: was right the on top of the track. It was
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: right along the edge. So if you wanted to complete
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: a pit stop, you had to cut to the right
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: really really quickly and then break really really severely, because
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: if you overshot and didn't do that, then you know
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: you can't go backwards, so you have to drive another
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: lap around. Sometimes you might not be able to right,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: and so you know you have every incentive to like
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: make that tough move and quick stop to get in there.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, and so the layout of the pit was bad enough,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: like it was the thing that set the stage for
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: this disaster, but it was actually a terrible, terrible decision
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: by one of the drivers that actually triggered the disaster.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Paint a picture, thank you. Here I go. I'm just
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: dabbing my paintbrush to my tongue and interceding. I got
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: to beat the devil out of the brush first.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's what they say.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: That's what Bob Ross always said. Oh that's right. So
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: this driver's name is Mike Hawthorne. He was driving a
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Jaguar for the Jaguar team and he was going in
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: for a pit stop, and as he was coming in,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: there was another driver driving in Austin Heely. His name
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: was Lance Macklin, and Lance Macklin saw that a pack
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of faster drivers, including Mike Hawthorne, were coming up behind him,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: so Lance Macklin very courteously got over so they could
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: get around him easily. But right as he got over,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Mike Hawthorne wanted to go into the pit well rather
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: than just tailgate Lance Macklin for three four seconds maybe
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and then veer into the pit. After Lance Macklin cleared it,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Mike Hawthorne overtook Lance Macklin and then slammed on his brakes.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: That caused Lance Macklin to have to veer to the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: left severely, and when he did ve to the left,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: he veered right into the path of another driver named
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Pierre Levegg, who was driving a Mercedes, and it went
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: really badly from that moment on.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So, like I said earlier, he was I heard a
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: contemporaneous call of this whole thing as one hundred and
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: twenty miles an hour, but maybe up to one hundred
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: and fifty either way. Super fast. He hit that Austin Healy,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the sort of sloped back of that car acted like
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a ramp and it launched Levegg and that Mercedes obviously
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: into the air. Apparently, Macklin said later he could feel
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: the heat from the exhaust as it flew over him,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: which is crazy to think about. The Mercedes ran up
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: afore foot embankment and earthen embankment that was supposed to
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: protect spectators, hit a concrete staircase, burst into flames and exploded,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and I mean you could look this up on YouTube.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: You can't see the actual crash, but you see the
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: explosion and very disturbingly you see very large car parts
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: just being hurled at, you know, one hundred miles an
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: hour plus into people.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is Yeah, it's bad enough that peer Leveg
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: his car burst into flames and he died. But this
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: is where it gets particularly catastrophic because the front axle
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: to the car wheels that had come loose from the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: act soul, the hood, the radiator, and the engine just
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: went flying at like over one hundred miles an hour
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: each through the crowd and just cut through the crowd
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: like a scythe and the path of destruction was just staggering.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: What happened to the poor people who were standing in
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the grand stands and were in the path of those
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: car parts.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it was randomized, because there were individual car parts,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: So you could be standing in one case this really happened.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: You could be standing and ended up just fine next
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: to someone who was decapitated. Yeah, and nothing happened to you.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Very sadly, there was one little girl who was trampled,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: still holding onto her ice cream cone. Leveg died, like
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: you said, but it was an instant thing. I think
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: fifty people died instantly, and eighty three spectators ended up
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: dying and close to two hundred ended up injured, like
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: including Leveg. Eighty four people killed at this race.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So there was a really controversial decision that was
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: made by the race director, and that was to allow
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours of Lamon's to continue. This happened at
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: like hour two and a half.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: It sounds crazy, yeah.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: And you're like, what a disgusting psychopath. But history has
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: actually vindicated the race director, I don't know his name,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: but that he made the right move because the ha
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: had He said, you know, the race needs to end
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: right now. All those spectators who needed aid in whose
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: lives would have probably ended had they not received aid
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly. The emergency crews trying to reach them would
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: have been swamped by all those spectators leaving all at
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the same time. So it seems quite heartless, but it
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: actually was the right move to make.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if that was the reason, though, do
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: we know that or if it's just like in retrospect
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: it worked out better.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I want to just believe in humanity.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to say that that guy had that
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: level of foresight.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I hope. So. Regardless, Mike Hawthorne, the guy who caused
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: the crash, won the race. And no matter how history
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: looks at that decision, like him popping the champagne at
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: the end, when twenty one hours earlier, eighty people or
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: eighty four people had died, it's a tough bill to swallow,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not just died, died because of him, and he's
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: like just celebrating like it's the end of whatever race,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: any other race, you know. Yeah, he never claimed responsibility
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: for it. He would he would never take accountability. In
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: two years after that, he died in a car wreck
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: when he was racing a friend and when he overtook
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the friend that was when he spun out and died.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: He was also driving a Jaguar, so his death was
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: quite ironic. I say, hats off to the Mercedes team
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: because even though the race continued, they withdrew and they
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: waited until the emergency crews had done their thing and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: cleared out, and they packed up, and they withdrew from
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the race at one am, and they stopped racing all
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the way until the nineteen eighties because of that incident.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it really shook up the industry. Obviously
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: in the sport. There were official inquiries. Obviously everyone was absolved.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: No one had to take the fall or anything like that.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: They said, you know, we didn't have the right safety measures,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: we didn't have the right layout. I didn't see if
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: there was any kind of like financial compensation to victims
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: or anything like that.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't either.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: It may have been at a time where that kind
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: of thing just didn't routinely happen like.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It would today.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: But there was obviously a huge public outcry, and that
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: track obviously went under all kinds of changes, including, you know,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: more safety for the spectators, more barriers put in place,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: and then a much safer pit situation, Like they fully
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: moved the pit road and made it much safer to
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: get into.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they moved it like a quarter mile back from
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the track rather than right up on the track, which
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I can't believe they ever did that in the first place,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you know, even in retrospect. Well, way to go, Chuck.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: This is a car one and we don't normally do
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: car stuff, so great, congrats, thanks right back at you.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Well and then short stuff is that.
• 12:17
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• 12:20
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• 12:24
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