THE SPECTATOR

DEADLY HISTORY LIVES IN THE MEMORY OF ONE LE MANS FAN.

ROBERT BULL, Bob to his friends, was sitting in the grandstand behind the pit area as the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans ran through its 35th lap. He was 17 and, like all spectators, separated from the action by only a low earthen berm. Mike Hawthorn was, at that moment, entering the pits behind the wheel of the leading Jaguar.

Relying on his D-type's powerful new disc brakes, Hawthorn stopped at the last possible moment. This caused the Austin-Healey 100S he had just lapped, driven by fellow Brit Lance Macklin, to move across the track, directly into the path of a much faster Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR being driven by 49-year-old Frenchman Pierre Levegh.

Traveling at around 125 mph, the Mercedes hit the back of Macklin's slope-tailed Healey and was launched over the berm. The magnesiumbodied SLR disintegrated and burst into flames, with various parts, including its straight-eight engine, tumbling through a tightly packed standing crowd for more than 300 feet.

It was the deadliest crash ever in motor racing, killing at least 83 spectators and injuring many more. The disaster's repercussions went far beyond the circuit, with several European countries banning all motorsport in its aftermath. Switzerland still bans most racing.

Bob Bull, an Englishman, is now 85 and one of the few eyewitnesses left. Or, as he explains with characteristically dry British wit, “I was 17 then, so old enough to be there but young enough to still be alive.”

The visit to Le Mans was Bull’s first trip abroad, an early 18th-birthday present for a racing-mad teenager, arranged as a surprise by his parents. “I came home from work one Friday, and my mum said I needed to have an early night, because I was going to Le Mans in the morning,” he says. “I didn’t believe her at first, but they had organized the whole thing without me realizing it.”