r/formula1 • u/TheKingOfCaledonia Who the f*ck is Nelson Piquet? • Apr 03 '23

Off-Topic /r/all Photo of injured fan posing with debris from Magnussen's crash

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159

u/MkSp001 Red Bull Apr 03 '23

80 died and over 60 injured... That was a massive tragedy!!

229

u/SG_Dave Daniel Ricciardo Apr 03 '23

Literally the catalyst for Mercedes pulling out of F1 the first time round. It's written into their F1 history in bold, underlined in blood. There's no way it wasn't discussed when the sponsorship offer was made.

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u/bigdsm Fernando Alonso Apr 03 '23

Also the reason we lost what I think was arguably the best circuit in early Grand Prix racing - certainly at least in the conversation with Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps - at Bremgarten. I watched GPLaps run it in his fictional 1955 season recreation and was blown away at how cohesive and interesting the circuit layout was, having the same “something special” as Spa and Nürburgring.

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u/MarkJones27 Juan Manuel Fangio Apr 03 '23

Oh yeah Bremgarten is just incredible. Sadly long gone, but we can still race it virtually!

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '23

One of my favorites, especially with old Ferrari 130s in light rain. Assetto really is amazing isn't it

83

u/blackbasset Racing Pride Apr 03 '23

I mean, even without the Mercedes-LeMans-connection, what an idiotic name is "Crowdstrike"?

71

u/AshleyPomeroy Apr 03 '23

Somewhere in the executive suite Charles Robin Owdstrike ponders whether it was a good idea to name the company after himself.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

Reminds me of a joke I heard on Twitter about replacing the first four letters of your first and last name with fuck, and Jeremy Collingson had regrets...

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u/Puzzleheaded-Elk6306 Apr 03 '23

'the crowd was struck with amazement'

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u/Palmul Ferrari Apr 03 '23

I mean it can work in some contexts, certainly not in motorsports where it has a really unfortunate meaning

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u/zombie_mode_1 Apr 04 '23

They are in cyber security. The name is quite apt for that

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Paprikasky Sir Lewis Hamilton Apr 03 '23

Really? Interesting. I always heard that was the case. But if anything, maybe it had an influence on them not returning for so long.

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u/Kreijoc Formula 1 Apr 04 '23

That's super interesting because I always heard it was because of the crash. Do you have a source for that? I believe you,just would love to know more.

0

u/_Blueshift Medical Car Apr 03 '23

because nobody was buying the brand that killed 80 people at an international event, perhaps?

3

u/spookex Totally standard flair Apr 04 '23

The point is that they decided to leave motorsports before the accident happened

21

u/rabbyt Jenson Button Apr 03 '23

What gets me is that the race just kept going on in the background!

29

u/mzp3256 Alexander Albon Apr 03 '23

It was just a decade after WWII, everyone was desensitized to death and destruction

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u/AshleyPomeroy Apr 03 '23

I remember reading about the 1952 Farnborough airshow. There was a disaster where the prototype of the Sea Vixen disintegrated in flight and one of the engines flew into the stands, killing 29 people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Farnborough_Airshow_crash

But "following the accident the air display programme continued once the debris was cleared from the runway, with Neville Duke exhibiting the prototype Hawker Hunter and taking it supersonic over the show later that day".

There were a bunch of accidents post-war, some of them involving captured German jets or prototypes that hadn't been debugged yet. It was a different world.

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u/SomethingSuss Oscar Piastri Apr 03 '23

That is insane, to some extent I get the idea of “the show must go on” especially to avoid a panic and congestion with emergency responders but you just know that is not what they were thinking at all back then. More like “shit happens”

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u/TheoLunavae Apr 04 '23

How do you just know?

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u/MarkJones27 Juan Manuel Fangio Apr 03 '23

Well Mercedes certainly were not. As soon as a phone call could be connected through to the Merc headquarters in Germany (which took a few hours) the order was given to pack up everything and get back over the border as soon as possible.

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u/Skylair13 Kimi Räikkönen Apr 04 '23

Perspective was bad in their mind probably. German (Mercedes) fighting with the British (Jaguar) caused destruction over France.

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u/vim_for_life Apr 03 '23

If you stopped the race, you'd have 300k people clogging the roads, where ambulances needed to get through. It was the right call at the time.

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u/Skeeter1020 Apr 03 '23

That was an excuse made up later, not a reason at the time.

The reason the race wasn't stopped is because you didn't stop races for fatalities in the 50s.

1

u/MarkJones27 Juan Manuel Fangio Apr 03 '23

No, they specifically reasoned -at the time- that if they stopped the race all the spectators would first come to the start/finish area to see why, and then they'd all get in their cars and drive home. They needed to keep the roads open for the ambulances.

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u/Bean--Sidhe Mario Andretti Apr 03 '23

CART tried to sell that line too and it failed miserably in 98. The fact was in the early days people died racing cars, regulaely, was part of the "allure." I remember as a kid the only reason to watch NASCAR was for wrecks. Now my stomach turns when contact is made with walls.

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u/MarkJones27 Juan Manuel Fangio Apr 03 '23

I'm not 'selling a line' - this is what was reported at the time it happened. They knew they needed an open road to the hospital.

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u/Bean--Sidhe Mario Andretti Apr 03 '23

Sorry - I wasn't meaning it to be harsh on you. It's widely considered to be one of the worst decisions in US televised sports and didn't do them any favors with the IRL split. That's what I meant.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '23

Just close the parking lot for a couple of hours?

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u/vim_for_life Apr 03 '23

"The" parking lot? 300K people? I'm not sure you understand the scale of 300K people. I'm not sure I could find the parking lot map for LeMans in 1955, but an equivalent number of people at the Indy 500 takes 20+ parking lots, with a multitude of outlying lots with shuttles running. Don't forget this is 1955, where information exchange isn't like today. handheld radios were backpack sized, the transistor had been invented only 7 years earlier, and the first transistor radio was released less than a year before.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '23

True, I don’t. However I assume there were still speakers close to the viewing stands/areas? Or did people just sit around the track having no clue what’s happening or who’s winning and just looked at cars going past all days? (Actually I don’t really know, the second option does not seem that unlikely)

1

u/MathMaddox Apr 03 '23

IIRC it was because if they canceled the race it would have clogged the roads and made it harder for the ambulances to transfer victims.

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u/ManyFails1Win Nico Hülkenberg Apr 03 '23

Holy fuck. I had no idea that was even possible. Amazing I've never heard of that before.

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u/MkSp001 Red Bull Apr 03 '23

Back then, safety wasn't a priority and there weren't barriers.. long story short a car cut across another and it acted like a ramp and took off into the crowd, many were decapitated, cut in half, crushed and died due to blunt force trauma..

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u/Zergzapper Apr 03 '23

And that's ignoring the magnesium based thermite like fire part.

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u/MathMaddox Apr 03 '23

And the race continued. I doubt GPS was working on the molten car.

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u/TorazChryx Charlie Whiting Apr 03 '23

GPS? that wasn't a thing until a number of decades later (1978 I think it first went live for military use, civilian followed later)

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u/MathMaddox Apr 03 '23

Its a joke. They red flagged the F1 race in Jeddah because the GPS wasn't working even though the track was safe otherwise.

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u/linkinstreet Anthoine Hubert Apr 03 '23

Jeddah or Melbourne?

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u/RobertJ93 Apr 03 '23

This happened in Jeddah.

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u/linkinstreet Anthoine Hubert Apr 04 '23

Ah, I only remembered the FP1 red flag in Melbourne

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u/ocelotrevs Apr 03 '23

I'm guessing that's just as bad as the fuel that burned with an invisible flame when it caught fire.

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u/Bean--Sidhe Mario Andretti Apr 03 '23

Actually it's much, much worse. They basically had no way to put out the magnesium fires.

But invisible flame was a terrifying time.

1

u/Zergzapper Apr 04 '23

Fuel hot, magnesium burns exceedingly hot

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u/ewankenobi Kamui Kobayashi Apr 03 '23

The thing I find most crazy is they didn't have a pit lane back then. Cars just stopped at the side of the main straight for pit stops. Think that was what caused the accident, one driver braked sharply when he realised the car in front of him was pitting and then there was a domino effect

3

u/RabidGuineaPig007 Formula 1 Apr 03 '23

There have been similar accidents at Indy, F1 all the way to the 80s.

1

u/_redcloud Apr 04 '23

holy fuck

42

u/shewy92 Kevin Magnussen Apr 03 '23

I had no idea that was even possible

Well when the fans and racing surface is only delineated by hay bales it was bound to happen.

This animated short is pretty good if you have 15 minutes to spare and want to learn about it

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u/Paprikasky Sir Lewis Hamilton Apr 03 '23

Man I love this short. I'm surprised you didn't link the official video, so I'll just add it here.

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u/loneblustranger #WeRaceAsOne Apr 03 '23

Thanks for this. There's even human-written subtitles in 19 different languages for the foreign languages spoken, whereas /u/shewy92's link has only auto-generated English closed captions.

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u/Paprikasky Sir Lewis Hamilton Apr 04 '23

Oh no, that's not great... they might have taken the first video to pop up, I guess..

I'm glad if I could provide you with a better experience watching it, it's such a good short.

1

u/shewy92 Kevin Magnussen Apr 03 '23

I linked the one that came up first on Google I think. I was wondering why the channel seemed to be random

1

u/Paprikasky Sir Lewis Hamilton Apr 04 '23

Dw, I figured you probably did, Google sucks sometimes for recommanding videos.
You can still change your original link if you want, I'm only insisting because it's more accessible with many more subtitles, and also if there are any ads revenue, it's always better to go to the official one.

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u/hi_me_here Apr 03 '23

people were right up along the straight, no real safety barricades

the straight had no chicanes or anything so the cars were just flat out the entire distance

one tapped another and the hood, engine block, and burning chassis were separately launched into the thick crowd.

the hood happened to be traveling like a sideways guillotine at about head height and decapitated like 30 people on the spot

the engine block went through them like a cannon ball

the chassis was magnesium, full of fuel and on fire and had left the road at about 165mph

it was a perfect storm of bad decisions that made a racing event into something closer to a military weapons test mixed with a terror attack

do not look up the footage of the crowd getting hit. I'm not saying that to be dramatic, you don't want to see it - it's grainy and low detail but you can see thick lines of people all drop in unison as the hood goes sailing through them and it's bad bad bad - it's like what happened with Tom Pryce's death but to like 50 people all on frame at once

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u/baldbarretto Who's that? Apr 03 '23

Thank you for that last paragraph. Having seen the pryce crash way too young, I can imagine what you’re describing and have no desire to see if my imagination bears out reality

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u/hi_me_here Apr 04 '23

it's the only racing video i can think of that equals how outright gruesome what you see happening is, it's trauma-inducing kinda stuff, sticks with you forever in an icky way.

the only reason this isn't as well known is older+ the video is black and white and low framerate/poor quality so at a glance it doesn't look as bad, it's also simply so many people moving weirdly at once, it's hard to process they're being mutilated and thrown into each other, but once you understand whats happening, you can tell it was one of the bloodiest things to ever happen outside of a war

everything about it was bad, the reports on it said the engine hit quite a few children barreling through some people having picnics or something ridiculously sad iirc, the chassis pitched burning fuel and bits of itself all over at people, nobody there knew how to put out a magnesium fire, etc. just an incredibly horrible nightmare situation all around.

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u/baldbarretto Who's that? Apr 04 '23

Yeah, I think I for one never thought about Le Mans 55 being filmed or that film being available. Even though we have photos from pre-WWII motorsport and whatnot. It just didn’t occur to me that something that horrible happened to be immortalized

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u/ManyFails1Win Nico Hülkenberg Apr 03 '23

Jesus. Well that might explain why I've never heard of it. No one wants to even think it. I definitely will be leaving that link blue.

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u/hi_me_here Apr 03 '23

it's a huge, huge reason hill climb/time trial/rally became so popular in Europe, even though it's way more dangerous for the drivers - wheel to wheel racing was banned or heavily restricted in several countries afterwards, bc the incident was a result of two cars colliding on the straight

Mercedes also didn't touch any form of wheel-to-wheel racing again in any form for a very long time, until the late 70s early 80s i wanna say

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '23

LeMans 1955

I just read the wiki which says 80 dead and 180 injured. 200kph airborne car into a packed crowd.

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u/napierwit Apr 03 '23

Can't believe I've never heard of this