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The 1955 Le Mans disaster changed motorsport
How the 1955 Le Mans Disaster Changed Motorsport Forever
For the second year running, Austin-Healey had withdrawn its team of near-standard production cars in protest over the proliferation of bogus “prototypes.” For many others, though, the enormous gap in vehicle capabilities was just another defining element of the classic race also known as La Ronde Infernale. Life mostly went on as usual outside the area that now resembled a warzone, and jaunty accordion music continued to play over the PA system as panicked spectators fled and gendarmes and volunteers entered the carnage, using advertising boards as stretchers. The scholarship of the intervening decades — including whole books on the 1955 Le Mans disaster by Mark Kahn and Chris Hilton — seems to agree that the driver who set the deadly chain of events in motion was Hawthorn.
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