FLIP, FLOP AND FLY! The Story of the Mercedes CLR Le Mans Cars (1999)
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- Опубліковано 26 кві 2022
- Mercedes killed GT1, so turned their attention to a new category the ACO allowed for Le Mans in 1999 called GTLMP, which was basically for modified GT1s to do their thing at Le Mans.
So Mercedes turnedd up and in a bizarre string of accidents started taking off at the humps on the Circuit De La Sarthe that resulted in one car ending up on the other side of the barrier and in the trees.
So what happened? Let's find out.
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Maaaaan my face is starting to look slimmer. Whatever this workout is it’s working.
I recommend trying carnivore.
*Insert my usual praise for DDPY here*
also you're in fact looking better every other video
I didn’t want to say anything but Alok started it. If you turn carnivore your hair will probably get thicker.
Are you sure Aidan? Should have gone to Specsavers mate!
@@aloklokhande I keep the hair knowing it winds people up that I’m keeping it.
Mark Webber, The Stig's favourite Airline Pilot
Webber Air: World #1 at Backflips
Some say…. 😂
…his favorite airline pilot is mark webber. All we know is he’s called The Stig
@@shanestanton8 Clarkson added "mine too actually" before All we know is he called The Stig
@@PanzerFalcon2232 hahahahaha. Yes. Could be soon: Emma Verde's World #1 at Frontflips.
One of the craziest facts about this whole Mercedes Le Mans stories was mentioned in Webber’s book. The mechanics didn’t believe Webber flipped it the first time, because the data didn’t correlate with it and they thought it was impossible. Well didn’t they get a shock to see the CLR upside down again in the warm-up!
I was waiting for Aidan to mention this and that now the mechanics had egg on there face
@@ericbishoff4812 I haven’t read Webber’s book.
@@AidanMillward its a good read/ listen if you have audible
not to mention that the team ignored him for the rest of the weekend and after the flip in the race he quit the team.
@@SuperG3X man, I hope he didn't stop racing.
After his success in flipping race cars for mercedes at le mans, Mark Webber would later go on to use these skills to do yet another backflip in a formula 1 car during his time with redbull.
how the hell is he still alive...
You can thank the Mercedes CLR for why the LMP1 cars now have such short overhangs and also the vents above the wheels, the CLR accident was the root cause of why the cars now look the way they do!
The funny part is that for the time, the Merc had pretty long front overhangs compared to everything else, especially most privateer LMP900s and LP675s, which would have very long rear overhangs and slightly short front overhangs because drag and using the rear wing to work the rear diffuser, and that the 2004 LMP ruleset saw front overhangs generally lengthen and rear overhangs shorten from what was typical (before then, some weird set of regulations defined the overhangs relative to max overall length and wheelbases. Note that the CLR is extremely long compared to contemporaries. Like 2020 F1 car long).
Only once the diesels came along did LMP1s start shortening the front overhangs significantly from what they were allowed, (which was really just packaging-driven for them because of just how massive the Peugeot and Audi V12s were), up until manufactuers decided that an extra 100mm of wheelbase would work better than another 100 mm of front overhang
TS020 was the most influential car in that race. That's the design people followed.
The disaster that became Mercedes' Le Mans project still hurts my heart deeply because it meant Pedro Lamy lost the chance to become the first Portuguese ever to win Le Mans in the top category. 😢
Same here, mate.
The thing I remember most about this is the official Le Mans VHS video review, which is how I first got into this race. They were following Dumbreck in the Mercedes when it took off and I remember the commentator saying "Oh my God, oh my God, the Mercedes has taken off!" That was my first Le Mans memory, so no wonder it stuck with me.
This one :)
:
ua-cam.com/video/e21ZjwZGjiQ/v-deo.html
I can remember the (live) Radio Le Mans commentary at the time, cool as like, simply said: "And its happened"
Hey Aiden, a couple of similar accidents have happened since even with prototypes.
2000 at Petit Le Mans: Bill Auberlen backflipped a BMW V12 LMR (yep, they still raced that thing in the ALMS in 2000)
2018 at Spa (WEC): Matevos Isaakyan backflipped at the top of Raidillon in an SMP BR1 LMP1 and landed just in time to hit the far right corner of the tire stacks lining the pit exit area.
There have been some other instances of open and closed LMP cars taking off after starting to spin at high speed. Examples include:
2001 at Lausitzring's DEKRA Test Oval: Michele Alboreto died after he suffered a left rear puncture in an Audi R8 LMP during a test and flew over the barriers
2008 at Monza (LMS): Stéphane Ortelli drove a Courage-ORECA LMP1 when he spun as he began to brake for turn 1, taking off while sideways and somersaulting through the first chicane where he barely missed an Audi R10
2008 at Le Mans (Test): Marc Gené took off in a Peugeot 908 HDi FAP after starting to spin in the Porsche curves, crashing into the fence heavily
I don't quite agree with the general description of the LMGTP class. It was - simply put - an LMP1 with a closed roof, as they did not have to be related to road cars anymore at all, unlike the prior late GT1 where you needed 1 road car for homologation and where Mercedes had dominated the 1998 FIA GT season in the CLK LM. The last generation of DTM/SuperGT are also silhouettes (only the roof's shape had to follow the road car's), but overall they were far less extreme than an LMP1 and thus a lot slower.
Another part of the reason the Mercs took off was the length of the overhangs at the front and rear. They were very big, i.e. for quite a long car it had a fairly short wheelbase, as you said the air pressure built up under the car but due to the overhang length that effectively allowed the air pressure to act as a lever to flip the car over, this is compounded by the very large rear wing sticking away out on the end of the rear overhand. There was also some aerodynamic instability inherent to the cars design that made it pitch sensitive, the CLK-GTR was the same, if you look at videos of them the nose bounces around under braking (looks a bit like the porpoising in current F1). So following in a cars slipstream you had a loss of front downforce, a massive amount of rear downforce and an aero issue that allowed pressure to build up under the floor at the front, take off time.
I read the story about the trees being cleared 2 weeks before previously but I'm not convinced. It was a clip with Alan McNish and Peter Dumbreck revisiting the crash site a few years ago and McNish said "those trees were there in 98", well I watched some onboards from 98 and it all looks the same as 99. Not that that matters I guess, the car landed on a stump of a tree that was there at one point and the tree stump penetrated the cockpit through the floor where the "passengers seat" would be, if the car was right hand drive or landed a couple of feet differently then Dumbreck would likely have been killed.
What is more interesting is how Mercedes handled it. They essentially refused to believe Webber about the first crash, as you mention it wasn't caught on camera so there was no proof, they thought he binned it and was making up some story to cover a mistake, he says as much in his autobiography. When it happened again they panicked, consulted Adrian Newey to come up with a quick fix, and installed the little dive planes on the nose of the car that you can see in the race, to increase front downforce. The drivers were then all asked and given the option whether to race or not, which being racing drivers they all agreed, and were told to race but "not follow too closely" over crests in the track. Dumbreck said in years after he had no idea what that meant, how are you meant to race someone if you have to stay behind them? You'll see in race footage that over the Mulsanne hump the Mercedes cars generally take a different line to avoid directly following the car in front. On that last run down to Indianapolis though Dumbreck didn't heed that warning, he was racing and closely following Boutsen's Toyota and it took off. The other Mercedes was following a few seconds behind (possibly Frank Lagorce driving at the time but I can't remember) and he drove straight in the pits and parked it, Mercedes officially withdrew anyway obviously but he didn't even need told, he saw the whole thing and parked it.
The whole thing is fascinating, it is such a beautiful car and engine note is incredible, then there was the mystique about what happened to the other car, the rumour was for years that Mercedes destroyed it such was their embarrassment, but it turned up around 10 years later at a track day and there is a video of Bernd Schneider sitting in it at an event for his retirement a few years ago, its current whereabouts are unknown, it is believed to be in the hands of a private collector.
I remember watching this race live and thinking when the second car flipped someone is definitely getting fired
has any other manufacturer experienced more disasters at le mans than mercedes? the two best known incidents at le mans were both mercs, im talking about the 1955 disaster and the clr flips. it feels weird to even compare these incidents because of how bad 1955 was but theyre two of the best known accidents in motorsport history along with the bobbys allisons huge taladega crash in the 1980s, which resulted in restrictor plates being added to the cars.
If you exclude a k/d ratio, then I'd say Nissan has been rather disappointing.
Lots of folks want to give it to Elvis, but Big Joe Turner is really the one at the roots of Rock & Roll. He by the end of his career he was singing with a trap set, electric guitar and a bass - Nobody else that I'm aware of had a career that went from big bands to Rock & Roll bands and somehow fused it all together without missing a beat. He doesn't get enough credit for this, glad to see his record on your video!
This has gotta be my all time favourite car ever so sleek and slippery
The 1999 Le Mans in general is one of my favorites in terms of car looks. They all look very distinct, and yet all beautiful in their own way (except BMW, I never liked open-cockpit prototypes personally).
Unfortunately LMGTP only really lasted for one year before open-cockpit LMP900/LMP1s took over. Was too expensive, apparently.
@@Vitosi4ek1 Loved the looks of those 95-99 Le Mans GT1 & LMGTP cars too. I consider them to be some of the most elegant racing cars ever to exist, along with the Group C ones. And same as you, I've always 'disapproved' of the open-cockpit prototypes over their poor aesthetics.
Le Mans 2000 felt wrong to me, with all these roadsters. The Audi and Panoz from the previous year had lost their roof too. I stopped being interested in le Mans afterwards.
I think you meant Sleek and flippery*
The only thing missing from this (hopefully i didnt miss it) is that one and only one sole CLR survives to this day and it rarely comes out of hiding.
There is and only ever was one road car, originally in Japan, now probably in Europe. The other 3 are competition cars, at least one has been retained by the factory
@@bernardwarr4187 they never made a road version of the CLR, you probably confused it with the CLK LM which did have a road version
Mercedes Gives You Wings
Love this channel, good video! I loved the CLR as a kid. I'm a Road Atlanta local and was there where the 911 GT1 did the backflip. Was crazy seeing that as a kid, happy the driver was ok.
That sun on the diagram at 7:51 and onwards though...
nice video Aidan ...I remember watching the race live on the tele when that incident occurred ...quite shocking!
These videos are fantastic, great work!
No one:
The Mercedes CLK Le Mans: "YEET!"
Porschephile & Mercedes nut here--also the daughter of a German racing fan who grew up along with racing in the post war years. (He got to see Fangio at the 'Ring as a kid.) When the CLR did its tricks at LeMans, it was a much, *much* bigger deal than the 911 GT1 or Bill Auberlen's flip in the BMW. (Interestingly enough, both of which happened during Petit LeMans.)
The CLR (and M-B) got utterly shredded by the racing community for several reasons.
First, the 911 GT1 & and BMW flips were one-offs. Yes, all the cars in this group were aerodynamically unstable to a degree they shouldn't have been, but only the CLR was a frequent flyer, going airborne 3 times in one event.
Second, if you compare the footage of the 911 & BMW to the CLR race incident, the CLR was much more violent. The clip of the BMW isn't very clear, but both it and the 911 took off fairly gently & never gained that much height. Heck, the 911 looks like it's doing a fantastic impression of a 747. The CLR, by comparison, took off like a fighter jet in a hurry. Soon as all 4 wheels are off the ground, the thing goes straight to vertical and then flips *multiple times.
But the biggest reason of all was, quite simply, the name on the car and the location. It's one thing for a car to go airborne during LeMans.
It is entirely another for a **Mercedes-Benz** to flying at LeMans.
In 1999, there were a lot more people alive who had been alive in 1955 as well, my Dad included.
It was even worse how M-B downplayed the issue during practice. If anyone should have been overly cautious with a potential flying car at LeMans, it was Mercedes, and instead they did the exact opposite. The racing world tore them a new one for their handling of the whole debacle, and honestly, it was well deserved. My Dad had many a worthy rant about the whole mess, and the main thing he kept coming back to was that, given 1955, how could the company be that utterly f*****g *stupid.
Fantastic video mate. Thank you.
Note that it was the 911 GT1 Evo 1998 (the long, squished looking one that won Le Mans) that flipped at Road Atlanta, not the 911 GT1 pictured here
If I Had a Nickel for every time Mark Webber did a back flip in a race car, I'd have two nickels.
Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?
Three if you count Valencia.
Valencia counts.
You would have 2 more nickels if you counted the Porsches GT1 from 1998
Thanks been waiting for this one
woooo im early, love your content Aidan ‼️‼️
"I must go now, my planet needs me" - Best description ever
DT as the Teletubbies sun was a touch of class 👍😆. I love the videos Aiden!
This channel is a gem for motorsport fans
I think another big reason the CLR's pitch sensitivity didn't show up until it was too late was because Mercedes did a lot of the high speed testing at California Speedway in Fontana, then just two years old with a still very, very smooth surface (and of course no humps or crests, being a modern superspeedway oval). Even if you ignore the blowover issue I would have thought the engineers would have wanted to run somewhere that better replicated the imperfections of the far lumpier public road tarmac at Le Mans in order to dial in damper settings, toe and the like...
Great video, and I never knew an ALMS program (even a partial one) was planned.
thanks for the lesson. I've seen the pic and video about a hundred times and I always thought it was webber behind the wheel in that particular instance.
Nice timing with Carfection releasing their supercut of the McLaren F1, 911 GT1, and CLK-GTR coverage today!
A similar thing happened at Lime Rock Park in the late 80s or early 90s in an IMSA GT race. A number of GTP cars were "lifting off" going over the hill where there are now a couple of chicanes. There's a video out there of a Porsche 962 doing a wheelie there.
And, as we all know, that wasn't the last time Mark Webber would do a backlip in a car.
LMP2 was probably gotten rid of in the aftermath of Enjolras' fatal crash in 1997 at Le Mans, which caused a rule change banning single-piece rear bodywork (a French driver in a French-owned and French-powered car).
I remember it being on the intro to 'They think it's all over!' too - it was accompanied by Murray Walker saying 'And look at that!' or something similar which I'm sure wasn't a quote from the actual incident.
Thank you for this Aidan.
The Merc in 99 was completely Mad. Not the refined car you might expect from Merc... The Engine sounded raw and awesome; The car looked a real handful round the corners - it was all over the shop in the bends, but once on the straights, the driver would plant the throttle, and the thing would just blast off into the distance (bouncing at it went).
And it would porpoise! You might think the new F1 Cars porpoise, but they are *nothing* compared to that 99' Merc.
awesome video
Well, there was that accident at Spa in 2018 when that LMP1 WEC car driven by Matevos Isaakyan did a backflip at Raidillon...
The Ti22 flipped at Mont Tremblant (as I recall) decades ago. I actually met a guy who was building a recreation of it in his Idaho living room.
My dad and I used to love The Think It's All Over, it's a shame that show ended, we watched that instead of what he called "Question of Tennis"! We loved them taking the mickey out of each other endlessly, especially Gary with his crisps and David for being slow and Steve for being dull (which, to be fair, he did play on a tad! "They said I was so boring my nickname was 'Steve Davies'!")!
Hi Aidan I am a Brit living in Thailand I have been into motor racing for a long time I was at a Auto cross race meeting on my 8th Birthday when the news came over the speakers that Jim Clark had just been killed :-) UT is great for looking at F 1 races its one of the few sporting events that has had good coverage for a long time and the stuff on UT is well.......... how often do I watch Ayrton at Donnington Park hehehe and there are lots of People doing posts on the motor racing world and F1 and most of it is ,,,,well basiclly crap , Aidan in my opinion your posts and Peter Winsors are the only ones worth watching ,,,,,,,,,,,,, Aidan wanted to say Thankyou for the exellent well reserched (when someone has followed motor racing like I have badly reserched stuff with wrong dates and people and inaccurate accounts of events is, well I havnt got time for it ) but you know your subject and its is well reserched and presented , qudos to you I think your doing a good job :-)
I love the honesty Aidan. For sure if I had never seen this event I would be googling the shit out of it anyway right after watching your video, but a still picture? Of an event 20 years ago? Otherwise freely available on t’net? I never knew. I always hated those Ken Burns effect cop outs when I can just open another window and watch it, but now I get it. It’s bloody expensive, hilariously so!?!?
People in 2300:we have flying cars
Benz Airlines in 1999: ...
The flat floors were mandated in the rules so effectively the aco were responsible for this debacle no race car designer would miss the opportunity of utilising a bit of ground effect unless he was barred from doing so.
Peter Dumbreck was born in my hometown and I have seen him a couple of times in and around Fife haha.
Mercedes testing the DAS, 1999 season
thanks man!
I was flipping through channels when I came across the Le Mans coverage. About 10 seconds after I landed on the race coverage the Merc went flying.
the animation is exelent
Man, I feel like Christophe Bouchut is one of the most underrated drivers ever. 3-time FIA GT champion, 2-time ALMS champion in LMP2 and a guy who won 3 biggest 24h races (Le Mans, Daytona and Spa) on his debut.
Another rule mandate you failed to mention for the prototype cars is the rectangular cutout at the top of the front wheel arches which can only be covered by slotted panels.
Unlike the front dive-planes that used overbody airflow to keep the front down, these cutouts prevented underbody airflow from pushing the car up, as these gaps allowed the air to escape the underside of the car with a major reduction in lift generated.
If you've ever played a 2000's or later LMP in Gran Turismo, Forza, etc., Then you've probably seen these rectangular holes in the wheel arches or those slotted covers; this is why they're there.
8:35 The hump at the Nürburgring is called Quiddelbacher Höhe. Flugplatz is just after the first right hander after the crest. The name Flugplatz has nothing to do with the crest. In the 1920s there was an airfield (flugplatz in german) for gliders on the left side of the track.
Which begs the question: how far is it from where Rebel Tree lives?
Oh my fuck, just spotted the sun and nearly died. Thanks for the laugh, fam! Needed one today, apparently :)
This wasn't the first episode of flying. Denny Hulme aviated a Mclaren M8D and Brian Redman a Can-Am Lola, both in the 1970s. Denny was knocked unconscious and remembered nothing. Poor Brian Redman was nearly split in two.
A Nissan GTP went flying over the crest at Limerock and literally got stuck up in the trees. That's why there is now a chicane around that crest.
@@wingracer1614 Yes indeed.
Paul Hawkins became the charter member of the 'Can-Am Flying Club' at what was then known as St. Jovite (now Mont-Tremblant) in 1966. Hugh Dibley (an actual airline pilot) repeated the feat the following day.
What was the cause of Mark Donohue's crash at St. Jovite (?) when he was testing the 917/10? I also remember an IMSA 962 going off into the trees at turn 6 at Elkhart Lake or something like that in the mid 80s...part of the crash can been seen on an upload of the race here on youtube. One other I think purely aero-related flip mentioned in the video, that isn't actually talked about much is obviously the Porsche 911GT1 at Road Atlanta.
@@davemurphy9468 Paul Hawkins was a really fast driver who went at ten tenths everywhere. I was a fan. Oulton Park was my local circuit and I was 16 and had my first motorcycle in May 1969.
The TT for sportscars was very exciting with half a dozen T70s duking it out and a shower of rain causing pit-stops. I was spectating at Old Hall Corner when there was smoke in the distance and Paul Hawkins had crashed fatally at Island Bend. Fellow Aussi driver Frank Gardner who co-drove with Paul Hawkins said of him "He wasn't the sort of bloke who would die in bed!"
There were a number of cars that got airborne going over the hump at turn 10 on Road Atlanta going back to, at least, one of the original Can Am cars.
I was at the petite LeMans when the Porsche got airborne. We had just ridden our bicycles from that area on the straightaway down towards the paddock when the shit hit the fan.
I think the flips are the reason for the current cars having those BFH's (Big FOOKIN Holes) over the front wheels now.
The 1 single object that made me question otherwise stellar German engineering.
One small detail you missed:
After Webber's second flip, Mercedes scrambled to try and find a quick fix. Aside from telling drivers to avoid directly following cars when going over hill, they also added little strips of carbon fiber on front to try and further increase front downforce. This was all well and good, but the problem is that when air got underneath these little things they generated lift - Mercedes had unintentionally made the problem worse.
I remember seeing the Merc flip on live TV. I think Speedvision carried the race then? My jaw was on the floor.
"Mercedes aimed high but the car aimed somewhat higher..." i got to do a school project on this story and it was probably the most interesting school project i've ever had
I see someone has watched Chain Bears review on the situation.
@@anthonyschmidt-ellis6353 indeed I did but I love that quote so much...
I thought the flip flop fly referred to a Robot Wars entrant from series 3 😁
I remember watching Dumbreck's incident LIVE... in the US. (About the only "racing" carried on live tv here is NASCAR/WWF @ 180 MPH. Even that gets limited coverage now.).
The very first "blowover" was actually in a 1970 Can Am race at St Jovite Canada.
Adrian my guy, the GT-One was road legal as it was built to conform to GT1 which required a road going example. The R8R isn’t road legal as it was one of the first built to LMGTP, likewise the CLR is a different car to the CLK-GTR/LM and built to LMGTP too
Who’s Adrian?
RBC, the R8R was the open topped car that finished 3rd and 4th that year and taught Audi all the lessons they needed for the R8.
Oh the enbarrassment
@@pennantonvidya5040 Easy mistake to make, it was weird that Audi entered 2 completely different cars.
The GT-One was hardly your standard road going supercar, anyway, there was only ever 1 road going GT-One in 1998 when they first entered the car, at Le Mans it was entered in the GT1 class. Every car entered in this class required a road going version, but, only 1 was required so every team entering the class that year had road going versions but not all them them were actually used for the road. For 1999 when the GT1 class changed to reflect the more advacned machinery to GTP no road going variant was actually required, so whilst their was a going version of the 1998 Gt-One, there wasn't a road version of the 1999 version, which, although similar in terms of look was quicker than the 98 version by 6 seconds per lap.
One of the contributing factors that made the Merc particularly sensitive to front end shenanigains (and this all comes from ex-Kuzdu engineer Mike Fuller via his now un-updated Mulsanne's Corner website) comes down to the front diffuser design of the Mercedes versus other contermperaries.
The Mercedes had a straight transition to a ramp while the Toyota and BMW had curved surfaces. Now, it wasn't unusual for the Merc to have a hard edge transition (guess which is cheaper to manufacture), but the Merc had a particuarly-agressive ramp angle. Guess which one was more pitch-sensitive and prone to stalling.
The Porsche that Flipped at Road Altanta - wasn't that the 98 car rather then the 97 GT1 (pictured).
Cheers dude ")
Didn’t John Nielsen also take flight in 85-86 in the sauber? However i think that was from tire blow out (not the 88 withdrawal)
Peter Dumbreck didn't do accidents by halves, there were other truly colossal accidents, including one at Zandvoort in 2004.
i was watching that race, off and on..i had literally went for a piss, and came back...boom no merc, just replays of a flipping merc
"absolute goldmine of late nineties racing car memes" is one of the best descriptions of that car ever.I love it
Travis Pastrana: "I haven't done a backflip in a car"
Mark Webber: "if I had a nickel for every time I've backflipped a car I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice"
Oh you like road Atlanta well....Funny story i have a friend that lives down in those parts of Georgia.....One year about a decade ago i was house sitting for her and i had on the race and then walked out on her deck and i could hear the cars at full song just rippin around the track......it was pretty cool
Cristophe Bouchout, famous for winning the 1993 24 Hours of Le Mans and also stopping to grab a hammer before going to confront another driver about an on-track incident.
The timing is very apt what with this being the meta car (well the CLK GTR) for this weeks daily race C at Le Mans on GT7
They should award championship points to anyone landing it on the tires.
the porsche GT one also did a flip at a race in the USA
And saying that Webber will do the same thing 11 years later, with an F1 car
Flattening the humps on race tracks was sad ...make cars adapt to the track, not vice versa. Mosport shaved their infamous hump as ALMS in the aftermath of the flip at Road America I believe. IMSA and later ALMS were not going to let that hump remain. And a few guys had gone airborne over it on the end of the Andretti straight (which is really a gentle double curve over 5/8's of a mile long )
I found a Mercedes GT1 car in storage on a Mercedes Benz dealer lot building in Sarasota in late 1999 after Petit Le Mans. Very curious.
Fun fact, Mercedes were so desperate for a fix to the problem that they phoned Adrian Newey who was in Canada for the GP with McLaren that weekend, he was the one that suggested the dive planes.
Saddly that wasnt the last time a prototype back flipped, the BMW V12LMR that won Le Mans in 99 flipped at Petit Le Mans in 2000, Michele Alboreto was killed when his Audi R8 flipped at Lausitz in early 2001 due to slow puncture whilst coming off the banking. There have been quite a few others as well, usually because a car gets sideways at high speed and air gets under the car and lifts it up, thats why we have the shark fins now.
I still considered the Mercedes CLR as my childhood hero car of Le Mans because of that low hight slick design.
John Nielsen already did a back flip on the Mulsanne straight in 1985 in a Sauber-Mercedes
The car went 'I'ma head out' down the Mulsane
The front of the car was also extremely light, to minimize nose dive under heavy braking, this was also a factor.
What is your intro theme from?
They looked like they were made of paper when they flipped over. Like a small gust would blow them away. Aerodynamics eh!
The thing is though is that ALMS later merged with Grand-Am in 2014 under the United Sportscar Championship banner and later renamed IMSA.
You forgot that Peter Dumbreck had won both the Japanese F3 title and Macau Grand Prix the previous year.
From memory, it also has to do with some loophole engineering. The regulations at the time stated a minimum/maximum length and minimum/maximum wheelbase and the front splitter and rear diffuser couldn’t cross the axle respective axle lines. Most cars ran towards the upper end of the wheelbase limit for conventional stability but Merc decided to run and the smallest wheelbase at the longest length to give the biggest possible underfloor aero advantage. The problem with this is it made the car incredibly pitch sensitive, a small movement at the front wheel became a much larger movement on the nose.
And as Alex was saying, they ran the cars fairly neutral, but when combined with the pitch sensitivity, the hilly nature of La Sarthe, and following another car which reduces the downforce at the front more than the rear, it was just an inevitability. Just before the Merc went over the crest, it caught a bump (if you look at the video, he clips the inside curb), bringing the nose up pretty much the rear ride height, then the road fell away as it drove over the crest, exposing the underside to the moving air and presenting it as a big angled surface.
This lost all the underbody downforce but the rear wing was still making it, which pinned the rear to the road, so the only way to resolve the forces was for the nose to keep rising… and rising… and rising… until the angle was so great that the angle of the rear wing produced no downforce, which cause the car to take off. But because the front went up first and engine was in the rear, nothing stopped the front from lifting violently, and then it had the momentum to carry it all the way round.
If you watch similar “blow-over” crashes, you see the nose comes up to a point, stalls the rear aero, and kind of holds that angle until the car falls over,
The only differences between Webers crash’s and Dumbrecks was Webers happened on straight road, Dumbrecks happened at the kink on the run down to Indianapolis, causing his car to straight-line the corner, going over the barriers.
When you watch Dumbrecks crash back, you can see that he catches the curb on the inside and the car just goes straight as the front wheels lift off the ground long before the crest of the hill. When he leaves the ground, he’s about the middle of the turn and middle of the road, a long way off the apex. That could have happened anywhere on the track, it was unlucky enough to happen just before the track changed direction.
I think Driver61 did a really good explanation of the car design which lead to it, the other bits I put together from watching the videos and understanding the design.
👍💯
I only knew this as the car that rolled in the They Think It's All Over opening titles with Murray Walker's "AND LOOK AT THAT!" dubbed on it. GT being a blind spot of mine I wasn't sure if this was a screw up or freak accident or something else. Something something Merc '22.
TTIAL was absolutely hilarious.
I too thought it was Webber that ended up in the trees lol
...that's why we can't have straights without Speed Chicanes...and nice things...
I've seen it said Mosport was notorious for the same thing with CanAm cars, and even into the 80s at Lime Rock I've heard tales of GTP teams having the car get light. John Morton's crash put the chicane in which slowed things down as well for Lime Rock.
Also Dalmas's one was somehow more spectacular, am I imagining it that he stuck the landing?
Not quite, it landed right way up but tail end first.
Jackie Oliver flipped in the Shadow DN2 at Mt Tremblant in 1970
Mark Webber seems to be influenced on The Stig. 👍
I think the holes above the wheels were mandated in order to vent the upward pressure and stop take off
Fun Fact: the Le Mans 24h Track is actually next to an Airport right at the west of it.
This is “flipping crazy” 🤪
You forgot the most important thing:
Roberto.
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