June 11, 1955, the La Sarthe circuit signs the blackest day in its history.
Juan Manuel Fangio and Mike Hawthorn dispute the lead of the race. A few hours have passed since the start when Hawthorn, who has just lapped Lance Macklin’s Austin, notices that his mechanics are signaling him to stop in the pits.
Hawthorn, traveling at maximum speed, hits the brakes with all his might to make his stop. In those days, the pits and the straight were not physically separated, so try to maneuver at the last moment. Macklin, who is not expecting the maneuver, avoids Hawthorn’s Jaguar as best he can.
But to his left, Pierre Levegh (also doubled) arrives launched. Fangio follows behind, both with a Mercedes. The first of them collides violently with Macklin’s Austin with the misfortune that British car becomes a take-off ramp that throws him against the audience of the crowded main stand.
Pierre Levegh and 83 spectators die, although the race continues.
That day, however, was a point in the history of Le Mans.
The 1955 accident began constant improvements in the safety of the circuit and the race itself. Although Le Mans has been a race in constant evolution and other accidents have forced safety criteria to be modernized, something changed that year.
Because, until then, Le Mans was a wild race.
3,200 kilometers alone
Le Mans is a fascinating competition. It is one of the few strongholds of motorsports where the elite of world motorsports compete with amateur drivers.
Right now, a person with enough money can set up a team and participate in the competition but it is necessary to have the necessary licenses in force. The FIA divides drivers based on their driving experience and milestones achieved. Depending on the category in which the team is entered, federative requirements are different.
It’s what’s left of those gentleman drivers as james deanrich people who were fond of motorsports who participated in official competitions, setting up their own team to face the squads supported by the manufacturers themselves. A formula that has survived over time but whose participants have been reduced to the point of exception.
Those gentleman drivers They were by no means a rarity in the first half of the 20th century, so no one was surprised to see Eddie Hall on board a 4¼ Bentley. What was surprising is that no one took over from Hall. And until after the 1955 accident, at Le Mans it was not mandatory to change drivers and until well into the 80s it was not mandatory to have three drivers who, in addition, were revealed to have a maximum and minimum number of hours competed.
They count in MotorSport Magazine that Eddie Hall was born into a wealthy family with a textile business in his hands. He was born in 1900 and before he reached his thirties he was already participating in official motorsport competitions. In fact, his passion for speed led him to participate in the Olympic Games in bobsleighthe sport invented by the Swiss in which four members of the same team launch themselves in a sled through an ice circuit.
Fueled by a hunger for speed, Hall contacted Rolls-Royce to participate with one of its sports cars in the Mille Miglia, a historic Italian race that was practiced in open traffic. At that time, Rolls-Royce manufactured Bentley cars (the company had already won Le Mans before being purchased), the latter focused more on competition and the former on great trips.
Bentley maintained competitive fame under the umbrella of Rolls-Royce and Eddie Hall ended up buying one of them to participate in the Italian race and it was the one that he would later use in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1950. It was a Bentley 4¼ and by then, that unit was already 16 years old and in the report of MotorSport Magazine They wonder if this sports car was not the oldest to complete the endurance test.
With it he stood on the finish line of the La Sarthe Circuit, Eddie Hall would take the start since the car was his and, basically, he had put up the money to get there. Waiting for him in the pits was Tom Clarke, an Aston Martin driver who had been assigned as a teammate because at that time the teams had only two drivers.
But although Clarke appears in the official race statisticsEverything indicates that he did not get into the car at any time. The reason was simple, Eddie Hall didn’t like sharing his cars and, after all, that was his car. In fact, they say that Hall’s own wife had to console her increasingly depressed companion when she became convinced that he was not going to travel a single meter that day aboard that Bentley 4¼.
How did Eddie Hall do it? In Road & Track They only understand that the feat was possible by using drugs. In those years, Amphetamines were frequently used in all types of sports and it seems the most likely recipe for understanding how a man could stay awake and have enough reflexes to drive all night… and get his Bentley to the finish line in eighth place after covering more than 3,000 kilometers.
The use of all types of drugs was known in the competition world. In Motorsport.comStirling Moss confessed to having used amphetamines, benzedrine or dexedrine. Coffee, alcohol and drugs was a more than usual cocktail for those who squeezed the most out of their bodies.
A year later, Eddie Hall again participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans aboard a Ferrari but this time he had to abandon mid-competition. No one has repeated the feat and no one will do it again since since 1985 the teams must have three drivers and none of them can drive more than four hours in a row in blocks of six hours, nor can they accumulate more than 14 hours throughout the entire competition day.
Photo | Bentley and 24 Hours of Le Mans
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