“An amazing piece of footage of Mike Hawthorn doing a lap of Le Mans in 1956 in a D Type Jaguar. It’s incredible to see the bikes and traffic out on the track, and an almost total lack of safety, bearing in mind the previous year a Mercedes flew off the track on pit straight and killed 84 people, seriously injuring a further 120. The accident was inadvertently caused by Hawthorn as he braked to go into the pits, his Dunlop disc brakes were awesome, and other cars braking hard to avoid running into the back of his Jaguar lost control resulting in a Mercedes hitting a sloped earth bank, launching into the air and disintegrating.

Incredibly the race continued, although Mercedes withdrew it’s remaining cars, and Hawthorn went on to win.”

[1955 Le Mans Crash – Video] <— 1,153,278 [1955 Le Mans – Write Up]