CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

  The race began on a dark, overcast afternoon. It looked like rain, and Benjafield drove cautiously in second place. The rain held off. Dusk came. Benjafield handed over to Davis, and tried to doze in the pits. With cars monotonously roaring by every few seconds, he gradually was lulled to sleep.

  Suddenly silence. Benjy sat bolt upright, all fatigue gone. Cars had ceased charging by. Five minutes passed. Ten.

  Out on the circuit a French car had skidded out of control, and slammed into an embankment, its stem pointing broadside into the road. Five cars piled into the French one, including all three Bentleys. Two of them were twisted heaps of wreckage that would never race again.

  The third was Benjy's car. Davis sweated, tugged, and cursed and finally yanked the car free. In it he wobbled round the circuit and pulled into the pits. As he explained to the frantic Benjy what had happened, mechanics set to work on the car.

  One entire side was torn to pieces, front wheel smashed, fender and running board crushed. Two of three headlights were shattered. Its battery was hanging by a thread. Its rear axle was bent and the steering damaged. The carefully adjusted mechanical brakes were out of kilter and now scarcely worked at all.

  By now it was raining and very dark. When a new wheel had been mounted, Benjy leaped back into the car and took off after the leaders, now many laps ahead. The Bentley's one remaining headlight peered forlornly through the storm. Benjy could scarcely see. The race had 18 more hours to run.

  The battered Bentley lasted all night, even gained slightly on the leader, a French Aries. The Bentley engine never missed a beat. The rain poured down, and the car seemed to be falling apart all around Benjy— once he had to stop on the circuit and fasten pieces on with baling wire.

  At dawn the Bentley was still running, though 40 miles behind the speeding Aries. It seemed to the crowd that each lap would be the dilapidated Bentley's last, but it hurried on and on, round and round.

  The dismal weather continued. Noon came, one o'clock. The Aries pulled into its pits for repairs. Before it started up again the gallant Bentley had cut its lead to 25 miles, and was now running in second place.

  There were only minutes left in the race when Benjy topped the rise beyond the Dunlop Bridge and spied the Aries parked beside the road, its driver working feverishly on its engine.

  The Bentley was ahead!

  As it came round on the next-to-last lap, the French crowd cheered itself hoarse for the only British car left in the race. Car? The Bentley, torn and crumpled, splattered with mud, was a rolling indomitable wreck. Benjy pulled into the pits and handed the car over to Sammy Davis. It was Sammy's right to drive the last lap, said Benjy, for Sammy had saved the car in the multiple collision more than 18 hours and so many, many miles before. It was the most chivalric gesture in the long history of Le Mans.

  A few minutes later, Sammy took the checkered flag. The Bentley, as shattered and exhausted as its drivers, had won the Twenty-Four Hours.

  The story is not quite over. A few days later, back in England, the Autocar, Britain's foremost motoring publication, threw a banquet for the Bentley team at London's swanky Savoy Hotel. When the meal was over everyone stood, raised their glasses, and drank a toast to the heroic old Bentley. It was a moving moment.

  Then, at a signal from the toastmaster, the Savoy's elegant footmen threw open the doors at one end of the hall. There stood the crumpled, mud-spattered Bentley. Benjy's car, in all its glory. Someone started its stubborn, unconquerable engine.

  There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

  There never was another moment like that for the British, though Bentleys won the next year, and the next, and the next. One year Bentleys even finished one, two, three, four. Then, after the war, British Jaguars took their turn winning at Le Mans. Jaguars won five times in seven years. They won so easily that when a Mercedes or Ferrari sneaked through ahead it was called an upset victory. By the start of the 1960s, nearly all top drivers in the race were British too. The British won so often they got smug and, some of them, insufferable. To win is very nice, but to win all the time is to remove from victory all of its emotion.

  Le Mans seems to suit the British temperament completely. Latin drivers like Eugenio Castellotti, Raymond Sommer, and Jean Behra were great favorites with the Le Mans crowd; they drove like the fiends of hell from the first minute of the race until such time as their cars exploded. They stage-managed the passing of other cars, overtaking directly in front of the grandstand whenever possible, whacking the side of their cars in great delight as they did so. All of them set lap records, zoomed into an "unassailable" lead after two hours of racing, then pulled into the dead-car park with the engine clanking its misery.

  The British ignored theatrics, based their race on stamina and the simple ability to endure until the opposition destroyed itself by overexertion. And the calm, unexcitable British won year after year, almost always with amateur or semi-amateur drivers. What else, besides Le Mans, was ever won by men like Ninian Sanderson, Ivor Bueb, Ron Flockhart, Roy Salvadori, Tony Rolt, Duncan Hamilton, Peter Walker, and Peter Whitehead? These men rank as minor figures on the motor-racing stage. Major drivers like Fangio, Ascari, Farina, Moss, Varzi, Chiron, Caracciola, and others never won.

  Only rarely was the race won by the fastest car. The fastest car in 1959 was the Hill-Gendebien Ferrari. It broke down after 19 hours when far in the lead, handing the race to the much slower (but British, naturally) Aston Martin of Salvadori-Shelby.

  The fastest cars in 1955 were the two Mercedes left after Levegh plowed into the grandstand. They were withdrawn shortly after, as a sign of mourning.

  The fastest car in 1952 was the colossal screaming, blue Talbot on which Levegh had squandered all his money and part of his soul. Levegh had an absolute need to win Le Mans; in 1952, at a fantastic cost in money, time and hope he came there with a perfect machine—plus the will to drive it 24 hours by himself. But--

  Pierre Levegh had raced at Le Mans for the first time in 1938. No one asked him his age that first year; he was a successful mechanic and car salesman, but unknown in the racing world. When men did ask his age a decade and half later, he was too old to want to reply.

  In 1938 he was nearing 40. The car broke down before his turn came as co-driver. However, he had driven the circuit many times in practice and believed himself very good. A relative had been a famous racing driver from 1898 to about 1905. Levegh had dreams of eclipsing this family hero.

  They were grandiose dreams for a man so old. But Levegh persevered. Married, he had no children. Like all Frenchmen, he had been taught to believe in glory. His life until that first Le Mans assignment had been insignificant. Now he saw a way to win glory at Le Mans, to set a record that would be remembered forever. Ironically, this is what he eventually succeeded in doing.

  He was a strong, phlegmatic little man. He had few friends. Acquaintances referred to him as "the Bishop," because he was so solemn. He believed himself strong enough to drive the entire 24 hours, and to win the race alone.

  War nearly obliterated the circuit outside Le Mans. The Germans converted it into a fighter base, and the British, possibly repelled by such sacrilegious perversion of their own happy hunting grounds, promptly plastered the place—and went on plastering it all through the war.

  The Twenty-Four Hours was not reorganized until 1949. And it was 1951 before Pierre Levegh talked somebody into giving him a ride. Sharing a factory Talbot with Rene Marchand, Levegh finished fourth.

  Now he felt he knew enough about the race and about himself to put his dream of glory in operation.

  He bought a Talbot from the factory, paying $10,000 for it, brought it to his garage and went to work on winning the 1952 Twenty-Four Hours.

  In the next six months, Levegh poured five thousand man hours and $5,000 into that Talbot. He designed and built a new, aluminum body that weighed only 36 1/2 pounds. He installed a second ignition system, in case the first failed; he enlarged the gas tank, upped compression, tinke
red with carburetors.

  Levegh was not investing his money, he was throwing it away. If he won all there was to win in prizes, he could get back only two-thirds of what he had spent.

  The opposition amounted merely to factory-sponsored Ferraris, Aston Martins, Jaguars, Lancias, and Mercedes-Benzes, said opposition to be driven by Fangio, Ascari, Moss, Villoresi, Lang, Behra, Rosier, and others. It was preposterous for Levegh to believe he could beat such men driving such machines.

  But he believed.

  The pitiless round began. Levegh raced across the track, leaped into his car, and charged up the road. He was in the middle of the pack, and there he stayed, driving carefully, as car after car broke down and was pushed away. This was what he had confidently expected. Those cars were less prepared than his own, ergo they would break down.

  Levegh went into the lead at three o'clock in the morning, when the engine of the last car ahead of him disintegrated. By then, Levegh had driven 11 consecutive hours and was deadly tired. But taking the lead gave him an emotional lift, and he carried on. He was in front. All he had to do now was stay there.

  Before dawn, fog moved over the circuit. Levegh led by four laps—32 miles--from two Mercedes, an Aston Martin, and a Ferrari. He threaded his way swiftly but carefully through the wispy dawn mist. This was the most dangerous hour.

  He survived it, his massive lead unimpaired, but it used up the last of his strength. When daylight came and he stopped for fuel, his face was gray. Mechanics, his waiting co-driver, all pleaded with him to cede the wheel. He sucked on an orange, hardly hearing them.

  All through the town of Le Mans the word spread. Levegh was going it alone. He led. He was holding back the German horde. There was symbolism there. There was glory in the making. Nearly en masse the city trooped out to the circuit to watch Levegh wrestle with his car, his fatigue, and his dream.

  The church bells rang, then were drowned out by the speeding Talbot. Noon came. Tens of thousands munched sandwiches beside the circuit, ignoring the restaurants, unwilling to miss the regular glimpses of the drama that was Levegh.

  Now he was so tired his head lolled to one side. He was assailed by stomach cramps so violent they doubled him up over the wheel. He nearly blacked out. But he kept on.

  When next he stopped for fuel, his complexion had turned to green. His eyes were glazed and he recognized no one. When the car was refueled he moved leadenly back to his seat and drove slowly away from the pits. No one tried to stop him. The crew watched him go in dispirited silence.

  Three hours to go.

  Two.

  His lap times got slower and slower, and sometimes he weaved like a drunken man.

  The crowd watched, breathless with excitement. Gould he do it, 24 hours alone, speeding round and round at 100 miles an hour where one mistake might mean death? Could he do it, unknown Pierre Levegh, a man 50 years old?

  The crowd was ready to make him a national hero if he could.

  One hour to go. 50 minutes.

  The faltering robot that was Pierre Levegh led one Mercedes by 25 miles, the other by 35. He could ease off now; the race was his.

  But he was too dazed to slow down. Tortured by cramps, unable to focus his eyes, hypnotized by the circuit he had lapped 300 times, he drove on and on until finally, in his colossal fatigue, he shifted down instead of up, and broke his engine.

  An official brought Levegh back to the pits. He was so exhausted he could scarcely breathe. Then he began vomiting. For nearly an hour he gagged and choked. When that passed, finally, his wife took him in her arms and he wept his bitter disappointment. Would there ever again be a car for him at Le Mans?

  Meanwhile, the two German Mercedes had swept across the finish line first and second. The 1952 Twenty-Four Hours was over.

  The crowd watched in angry silence. It felt cheated by Levegh. It had been ready to cheer itself hoarse for him. But he had not won. Instead, by his selfishness and stupidity, he had lost a certain victory for France, leaving the crowd to assist at still another triumph for the hated Germans.

  So the crowd's attitude, and that of all France, changed in a few moments. Levegh should have handed over to a co-driver. He had not. So he won no glory at all, only shame.

  The Automobile Club, resenting his failure as much as everyone else, altered the rules so that no driver in the future could drive more than 14 hours.

  But Levegh, his determination dulled but still there, came back to Le Mans the next year, and the next, and the next.

  In 1953 he finished fifteenth.

  In 1954 he crashed.

  In 1955 Mercedes gave him his final ride.

  The American John Fitch was to be his co-driver.

  "It is too narrow for these fast cars," Levegh said to Fitch at practice. "Each time I go by the pits it is with a feeling of unease, a feeling of being hemmed in."

  Another time Levegh told Fitch: "1 do not like sitting on the left in a racing car. It is difficult enough to see team signals with the pit straight and narrow as it is. A driver needs to feel comfortable. I do not feel comfortable in this car."

  The two men had dinner together the night before the race at the remote hotel 25 miles from Le Mans where Levegh and his wife were staying. They talked of their strategy--they would avoid the early sprint, holding back while others exhausted themselves. After a while Levegh's spirits seemed to pick up. At last he had a car under him again, a Mercedes. Perhaps this time he could do what he had so nearly done once before.

  Mme. Levegh escorted Fitch to the door. "Oh, Fitch," she said, "Pierre is so happy. So happy at this chance."

  But just after six p.m. on June 11, 1955, Mike Hawthorn's Jaguar swerved to enter the pits. Lance Macklin's Austin Healey went into a spin trying to avoid Hawthorn. Levegh's Mercedes, at 150 miles an hour, went up the back of Macklin's Austin-Healey as if up a ramp.

  For Levegh it was all over in an instant—and for most of 83 other people too. The Mercedes crashed down on the embankment and exploded, spraying pieces into the crowd like shrapnel. Then it burned.

  Aghast, Fitch tried to make out the number on the burning car. Was it Fangio, Kling, Levegh?

  When he turned he found himself facing Mme. Levegh.

  "It's Pierre, Fitch. I know it is. And he's dead."

  "Perhaps he was thrown clear. Perhaps—"

  "No. No."

  The German team withdrew from the race at two a.m. when far in the lead, upon instructions of the factory's board of directors, which had held an emergency meeting. This was to forestall headlines to the effect that "Germans March to Victory over French Dead." But Le Mans was filled with bitterness anyway. "What's so bad about eighty-three dead?" one man muttered. "The Germans killed a lot more the last time they were here."

  Levegh's funeral in Paris three days later was a grisly thing, the church jammed with sensation-seekers, journalists, and photographers, hundreds of kids begging autographs from famous drivers come to pay their last respects.

  When the funeral was over, Fitch met Mme. Levegh again. She had been weeping and her face was red. "Oh, Fitch," she said. "He was so happy. So happy at the chance."

  There was much talk that such a disaster would cause all racing to be abolished, and in fact it did result in the cancellation of the French, German, and other Grands Prix that year.

  But nothing lasting was altered beyond the fates of 83 people, and the Le Mans circuit itself. The next year the race was held on schedule, several million dollars having been spent to improve the safety features of the curves, barriers, and rules of the Twenty-Four Hours.

  As for the other men involved in the Levegh crash, Hawthorn had gone on to win the race, which ended in the rain the next afternoon with only a few thousand silent fans still looking on, many of them watching from the exact place where most of the dead had stood. Hawthorn was widely accused in the press of having caused the accident, but in the official inquiry he was exonerated, and he went on declaring his blamelessness until the day he, too, crashed t
o his death.

  No one ever tried to blame Macklin for anything. He was a contemporary of Moss, Collins, Hawthorn, and the rest of the young Englishmen, and his future in motor racing was as bright as theirs.

  Macklin said he would never forget the sight of Levegh's car, upside down, hurtling over him, or the sight of Levegh's body falling ever so slowly out of it.

  And then he retired from racing.

  Chapter 8.

  The Race For Champagne

  THE FRENCH GRAND Prix (Grand Prix de L’Automobile Club de France) boasts the normal ingredients of motor racing: color, noise, speed, danger. But to these it adds three others in disproportionate amounts: tradition, money, and champagne.

  Tradition: This is the oldest race in the world. The Automobile Club claims direct descent from the Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race of 1895, which it also organized, and which was won by a Panhard at the then hair-raising speed of 15 miles an hour. There were eight of these town-to-town races sponsored by the Automobile Club, including Paris-Berlin and Paris-Vienna. The eighth and last was the calamitous Paris-Madrid of 1903, which, leaving death in its wake, got only as far as Bordeaux before being stopped.

  Recoiling from such carnage, the club organized no further race until 1906. By then a circuit was ready at Le Mans, and it was decided to call the new race Le Grand Prix, the first motor race to go by this name, which did not come into general use elsewhere until after 1921.

  So in the years before World War I, there was only one Grand Prix. It was the most important race on the calendar, the one all drivers and manufacturers pointed for. It was run in various places—Amiens, Dieppe, Lyons--and at distances of from 477 to 956 miles. The Grand Prix races were rich in symbolism and in drama. For instance, in 1908 the organizers recoiled from a new horror, which had nothing to do (so it seemed at the time) with slaughter—the Teutonic hordes. German cars finished first, second, and third. French honor could not stand such a thing. The Grand Prix was again abandoned. One did not sponsor a race in order to provide triumphs for the even-then-hated Boche.