This part contains the onboard lap of the Mercedes CLR with Christophe Bouchut and Peter Dumbreck's massive accident. Highlights of the 1999 Le Mans 24 Hour race, which was billed as the Race of The Millenium.
Interestingly enough, the third CLR, driven by Bernd Schneider, Frank Lagorce and Pedro Lamy, didn't flip at all during the Le Mans activities. Schneider not only said the CLR was the best car he'd ever driven, but he blamed Dumbreck and Webber for the reason the cars gained a reputation of taking off. It seems a bit bizarre as (as mentioned already) Adrian Newey told them the car was so aerodynamically unstable (both too pitch sensitive and the aero balance was too far forward for the car) that they should have withdrawn from the race. The trim tabs were simply nowhere near enough to counter act the tendency for the front to lift at speed.
Mercedes knew there was a problem, you see the 2 little wings on each side of the front of the 5 & 6 cars they added for the race. As well as this the drivers were instructed not to follow people directly over the bumps, if you look at the Mercedes cars all through the race you will notice that a Mercedes never follows a car directly over the Mulsanne hump e.t.c, i presume Dumbreck thought he was far enough back from the Toyota to be safe keeping his line but alas.
Due to the pitch of the car, its Canards that were added and suspension that were tuned to negate this wouldnt have helped anyway with the tracks bumpy surface at some straights. They tried something but in the end didnt work out as their cars flipped 3 Times
para siempre en mi corazón, los buenos tiempos que no volverán. la mejor carrera de la historia de las 24 horas de le mans, la edición del año 1999. muy dificil que vuelva a haber una carrera mejor que esta. audi, bmw , mercedes, toyota ,nissan, porche, panoz , esta es una carrera inalcanzable, inigualable, única, irrepetible, épica. esta carrera fue mágica, nunca jamás habrá nada igual. le mans 1999 para siempre. RIP michele alboreto. audi.r8r.
The CLR got to much air under the car cause of that he took off. And helly yeah Le Mans in the 90 was great. I remember the times with the great Porsche 911 GT1 and Mercedes CLR. Damn i wish those times would come back.
I once while driving this track in an 06 renault f1 car playing rfactor lost my front wing and had this same thing happen to me cresting the same hill. Just a game but it shows that lack of front downforce and the right top speed makes this a fairly predictable outcome.
It wasn't the lack of front downforce. The car is pretty long and they had the rear wheels as far forward as they possibly could so that at speed it pushed the back end down and the rear wing had less drag. To do this they also ran a softer suspension than normal (hence the bobbing look) with the back end pushed down, the front end came up and with a flat undertray............
I know that part of the issue was the fact that the general shape of the CLR was more like a normal airplane wing. e.g. more surface area on the top of the car as opposed to the bottom. This and the fact Dumbreck was quite close to the rear of the GT-One Toyota perhaps took a bit of air off the front of the car on that 2nd kink leading to Indianapolis. Thoughts?
The two (2) chicanes were added to the 3.2-mile long Mulsanne Straight because the FIA would no longer sanction a race track that had a straightaway longer than two kilometers. Before they were added, the prototype GT-1 cars were blowing through there at 240-250 mph!Unfortunately,in the case of the Mercedes CLR's, the "blowovers" or flips were clearly caused by a design flaw.
I understand you and I kinda agree with you, but there were no GT1 cars before they added the two chicanes. They added these two chicanes in 1990 but the Group C cars still raced there until 1993. The GT1 cars first started racing in 1993, though the first year they raced in Le Mans was 1994 (just like the LMP1 and LMP2 cars).
These old GT1's/GTP's all took off behind another car LMP1/GTP. The nose needs air presure to stay on the ground, because the wing takes presure from above and the undertray on de front takes air from beneath. Basically, when the airpressure from the nose is altured because a car in front, they fly.
...well for mostly for the reason that the chicanes are there. High top speed is still important but it has limits obviously. If the chicanes weren't there I bet we would see cars going near 400 km/h. Easily. And that would be nuts... think about getting airborne like we have now seen several times this year... Ortelli in Monza, Walter-Cambpell in Monza, Pug & Gene in Le Mans testing...
The Officials should have banned this CLR's from entering after the first 2 previous flips, or atleast Mercedes should have showed some intelligence and pulled the cars out themselves but instead chose to put the drivers and spectators at risk. Idiots!
Yes but it is more prevalent on such a car as the CLR because it's also a closed top car, which means that the air pressure of the flow traveling over the top of the car was reduced even further than an open cockpit prototype. Couple that with the pressure differential inside the cockpit and the critical difference that rake angles make on such a vehicle, you have a side effect due to the design of the vehicle. In other words, a design flaw. It should have been considered during its conception
I'm not sure, but in addition to what you previously said, Dumbreck might have clipped the curb and gotten the right front corner of the Mercedes just slightly off the ground. And at those speeds, it doesn't take much.
Hum... Where were Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to examine this paranormal accident of a flying Mercedes ? I think it is a very interresting case for the X-Files ^^
@hereHehereHE It's the le mans 24 hours. Search it on Wikipedia lol. I think that the clk gtr raced in 1998, but wasn't as competitive as this particular one, the CLR. Confusing lol
One minute that CLR was ripping up the track and in the blink of an eye it's flying off of it. It's kind of funny to see the Porsches alongside cars like the Toyota GT-One or the BMW V12 LMR. They look almost tame next to them.
I've been wanting to hear the sound and the engine of the Mercedes CLR and it's a V8 that sounds really nice like the current Mercedes AMG GT3 race car
Certainly. They knew it was a design flaw. The Mercedes CLR suffered 2 blowovers in less than 24 hours. The one with Mark Webber was on the warmup lap. If I was team manager, I would absolutely withdraw.
no it was a design fault, the car was shaped too much like an aeroplane wing, a racing car needs to be like this to make it as aerodynamic as possible but too much so and it becomes nose-light at speed. there is a compromise to be made. in turbulent air following a car this problem is accentuated and combined with the natural nose going light over a crest it spells distster for a car like this because instead of "jumping" like e.g. a rally car does its wing shape basically makes it take off
According to the Hospital report Peter Dumbreck "was no more than bruised". If the car landed windscreen down, the results may have been very different. He landed whells down and probably saved his life.
this is a rip of the hightlights video, i have the video well i used to anyway, the footage is from eurosport, i dunno if this guy did the live commentery or if he is just commentating the highlights
Joachim „Smoking Jo“ Winkelhock is the younger brother of the deceased Manfred Winkelhock. Manfred‘s son, Markus Winkelhock is driving the Audi R8 LMS GT3 at various events around the globe.
Certainly Dumbreck getting into the dirty air of another car along with that tricky crest going through the 2nd dog-leg heading into Indianapolis didn't help much.But,I can't ignore the fact that the Mercedes CLR's had 3 blowovers in one weekend.Chris Webber had two; one during qualifying,the other during the Morning Warm-up. I can only conclude that the incidents were more than coincidental.Mercedes withdrew after Dumbreck joined "The Blowover Club". They weren't about to take any more chances.
I hate when all European tracks are becoming airfields with tarmac run off areas, so I dont like that kind of safety shit but did you forgot they already hit 400 km/h on the Mulsanne in 1987-89? Think how fast modern protos could go. That would be seriously nuts.
Amazing video.. I still can't believe all this really happened, but oo well, I still love that damn car lol.. I think that that Merc could've won that race easy if only it managed to stay on the ground. A lotta things were up against the CLR: the supposedly 'aerodynamic flaw,' the crests, the lack of downforce on the front end because of the Toyota.. Im glad the drivers were okay but i'm real disappointed at Mercedes for letting this same thing happen so many times (qualifying, warm-up, race) =/
Obviously the aerodynamic Chief designer's miscalculate the required downforces. Porsche did the same with their GT1 evolution model. Exact same problem where their car took off. Guess that's what happens when you push the safety limit for that little extra straightaway speed.
And poor Mark Webber had 2 of these flips in 2 days with his Mercedes, what a mess it was, Though I wished the Toyota did not get that punture in the last 45 min which I believ cost it the race
They put the chicanes on the Mulsanne Straight because the FIA mandated it. The. FIA would no longer sanction a road circuit with a straightaway longer than 2 kilometers. So, they cut Mulsanne Straight into 3 pieces to comply with this mandate.
The worst motor racing disaster took place at Le Mans took place in 1955.Pierre Levegh lost his life in an accident driving a Mercedes.Upon impact,the car disintegrated in flames sending the engine as well as other debris from the front-end of the car into the stands. 80 spectators also perished.
WOW...I didnt know !...good he didnt die...Man the slotcar version doesnt do this car any justice..this car was LOW and SLEEK...(too sleek no downforce) but the slotcar version sits high like a 911 or something
no race like Le Mans 1999, the mega career history for ever and ever the best race of all time, magic, and eternal. 24 h le mans 1999, this race will forever be in the first position of eternity.
@sysrq120 its not crap aero dynamics or too light. Its what happens when you are just at the perfect distance from the car in front where you get "dirty" air and not enough air hitting your car to produce the sufficient downforce at that speed
yep, as in other races, the clr really had big chances on winning. excellent car but sadly the front part is aerodynamically crap. could have been prevent by a different shaped lip easily.
the errors of design in that car are huge. However, that's typical of german products: they make unbelieveble mistakes, whole series of motors, cars, electrical systems etc need to be scraped with high losses of money, but then everybody repeats the proverbial comment that, in spite of that, they are technologically superior... lol lol lol
