Why the Mercedes CLRs kept taking off at Le Mans 1999 - Chain Bear explains 

1980: I bet there will be flying cars in the future 1999: flying cars

Mercedes: *sends a German craft flying in French territory* France: *sweats intensely*

Car has three suspension settings: 1. Highway 2. Sport 3. Aerial

*How others see Le Mans:* Race circuit *How Mercedes sees le mans:* International airport

Webber: Your car flips Mercedes: He is delusional, get him out of here

Imagine he landed it and kept on racing That would be hell of a moment

"Mercedes had aimed high but the car had aimed somewhat higher." When I heard that the coffee I was drinking shot out of both my mouth and my nose.

I like how it took 3 cars to flip through the air for Mercedes to realize there was something wrong with their design.

"For sure Mercedes had aimed high but the car had aimed somewhat higher" hahahaha :D

Vettel: I can spin my car Webber: I can flip mine

If I had a nickel for every time Mark Webber's car took off and flipped, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

"I ordered my new amg gtr with the backflip package pre-installed" is a joke that runs around the merc dealership I work at

Plot twist: Mercedes wanted to relive the glory days of Luftwaffe

*Webber flies 2 times Redbull: He is the chosen one!!

I imagine people in the race saying something like this"IS THAT A BIRD IS THAT A PLANE NO THAT'S A MERCEDES

Mercedes cars take flight: People: nah, they lost now Mercedes: wings come out from the side

"Redbull gives you wings" weber: thats bull-

Webber got his red bull credentials that day. Badum tss.

I love how chain bear explains everything in very precise technical terms while always maintaining it easy to understand for anyone.

Wadsworth Constant in effect Here starts the explanation 3:50

Guy flips car twice at 300kph Yeah thats probably fine, send the car out again Wtf were they thinking?? Those drivers were so lucky to survive

If it was a gymnastics competition, I would give 10/10 for the backflip.

He was trying to OVERtake the Toyota. Ok, I'm out

You'd be amazed at what can fly in the right conditions. I once saw an inflatable river raft with 8 people lift 6' above the water in a head wind, hover for a bit and then flip over dumping everyone out before landing again.

"Okay, 160 knots, V1." "What? Oh, shi-" "Rotate. V2." "AAAAAH WHAT THE FU-" "Positive rate, gear up."

Man, the Germans really like sending Mercedes engines airborne in Western Europe, huh?

The Porsche 911 GT1 also experienced a similar flip at Road Atlanta, so GT1 had well and truly gotten out of hand aerodynamically by then.

They can use the Jeep sticker. "If you can read this flip me over"

You can simulate this happening perfectly in Project CARS 2. If you have the front rebound forces very high, with a high rear downforce balance, the air can get uder the car and...well fill in the blank lol.

Im glad there now exists a video that clearly states it was the CLR that was flip happy, not the CLKGTR. Im sick of seeing blame pointed where it doesnt belong all the time. 😐

Me: Guys you know how paper flips when dropped? Mercedes: You mean car?

RU-vid: how many ads u want? Him: yes

red bull job interview: C. Horner: "So Mark, what do you do in your free time?" Webber: "Well, mostly flying."

A good pilot can fly anything that should fly. And with some difficulty-what shouldn't.

Very well narrated and put together. Thank you.

Me : I can do a bottle flip challenge 😁 Webber : old my beer

1925: "I bet there will be flying cars in the future!" 1999:

Expansion into non-F1 racing? Chainbear Cinematic Universe?

watched live back then, it was really a jaw dropping moment

1950: "i bet we will have flying cars in the future 1999: "well yes, but no"

Man it’s good thing this Mercedes didn’t kill anyone like back in the day

Some say there is still an airborne CLR to this day that is floating around in the atmosphere.

**Mercedes Car flips for the second time** The team : _"I'LL FKING DO IT AGAIN"_

10 ads in 10 minutes? Get the hell outta here.

Mercedes : making their cars fly at Le Mans since 1955.

Literally finished my university dissertation on this exact topic a few weeks ago. If people want more technical information then this paper provides an excellent overview: Dominy, R. G. and Ryan, A. and Sims-Williams, D. B. (2000) 'The aerodynamic stability of a Le Mans prototype race car under off-design pitch conditions.', SAE 2000 transactions : journal of passenger cars : mechanical systems., 109 (6). pp. 1454-1460.

People : "I hope he have flying cars in the future" Mercedes in 1999 : 9:25 _"Hold my bumpers"_

incredibly well done presentation, fascinating! thanks!

Webber had a thing for doing backflips in cars he did it in F1 aswell.

Mercedes and Le Mans together were "benchmark" for safety measures in motorsport. The famous 1955 disaster defined the whole destiny of motorsport and safety on tracks.

Two things: I knew a guy who used to run formula, Atlantic and IndyCar, he explained a lot about aerodynamics, and there were two aspects of this that people may find useful…. If they were running under body downforce, it behaves very similar to a magnet; great up close, not very great far away. And, the amount of pressure you generate is specifically dictated by the distance to the road surface. The closer the venturi tunnels are to the ground, the better it produces downforce. In this case, we see the effects of that full force: once the body got far enough away, it stopped production entirely and rapidly. This could be due to the pitch of the road and dirty air from the leading driver more so than the pitch in role of the chassis. I would doubt the suspension had enough pitch and roll in that spec - necessary to handle the weight of the downforce generated - to cause it to pitch and roll that violently. The second compounds over the first, which is that an order to generate under body, downforce, the bottom of the vehicle has to be completely flat with as few open pockets as possible. This means that there is no place for air to escape under the car once it gets there, and this is by design. Once the front end had enough air, moving underneath it, as you said, it became a lifting device instead by virtue of the fact there was no place for air to go, and it began to create an air cushion more rapidly.

Thanks! Not only a good analysis of these Mercedes, but a good lesson on aerodynamics in general.

“Like a ghost through a tennis racket” God damn that’s brilliant!

the 1999 CLR is like my music teacher, very pitch sensitive.

This wasn't the first time that a race car flew away during an endurance race. In 1953 John Fitch made quite similar attraction with his Briggs Cunningham C5-R at Reims. Umberto Maglioli followed him and couldn't believe when the Cunningham took off, flew above the trees and telegraph posts then smashed to its wheels near the track in the fields. Fortunately Fitch had just minor injuries. In WW2 he was a fighter pilot and I guess he was the only fighter pilot who took off with a race car (and crashed that).

Great subject title, that was a very memorable event. Thanks for the story.

This video is fake the Mercedes actually switched to creative mode

And this is why modern Prototypes have squares cut out above their wheels. To release the build up of pressure in a situation like these.

Dude, they had to have cars flying THREE times before they pulled them off. That is bananas, how is ONE CAR FLYING not too many cars flying?!?!?

Great video. Keep up the good work.

"2020 we will have flying cars" mercedes: makes their cars fly in 1999

I knew Webber had launched in a Mercedes at Le Mans, but didn't know that he did it TWICE in the same weekend lol. Imagine the onboard footage if they had lol

CLR goes like: „wheeeeee" Human: „Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Oh its a CLR"

There's a video of Mercedes Benz CLK GTR in your ads.

Who else was expecting footage

Webber is a pro at doing backflips with racecars

Thanks for the video great commentary and explanation of why that race car went airborne. 👍🙋

You, my friend, are incredibly good at explaining information. If only I had you as a teacher in school... 😤

One year at Petit Le Mans a Porsche GT1 flipped in the exact same way.

‘He was outta the race before the race even started’ Alonso: **Mclaren Honda memories intensifies**

Excellent engineering explanation! Thank you. Cheers!

Mercedes Benz always wants to be above competition

CLR: my people need me. *take off into the sky*

Ooooooh Chain Bear does non F1 videos, the expansion begins

Amazing video ; well explained! Thanks!!!

Hard to focus on the video when you have an ad popping up every 60 seconds. But, from what I could see it was a very informative video.

"We just witnessed am exciting 24 Hours Of Le Mans" We did?

Red Bull missed a prime marketing opportunity

This also happened with a CanAm car at Le Circuit in Mont Tremblant, Quebec back in the seventies, before I went there for racing school. Le Circuit has the largest altitude difference of any racetrack in North America -- 85 feet! -- with at least one decreasing-radius off-camber turn that I clearly remember. As we walked the track on the first day the instructor showed us where the car caught air on a short but steep hill in the middle of a turn and flew like a paper airplane right through the tree tops for about a hundred feet.

10 ads?

I have a clear memory of watching that race. During the race, the Merc was on a part of the track with no spectators, but there were cameras. It reached the top of a small hill, and just kept rising. It DID NOT flip. However, it brushed against some trees, which made it spin like a frisbee. After reaching a height of perhaps 20 or 25 feet, it drifted off the track and landed, still on its wheels. By the time the "rescue team" arrived, the driver was sitting on a large rock near the car, shaken but uninjured. Perhaps the most amazing thing I have ever seen, in many years of watching or attending motorsports. (Does anyone remember "Speed Week" in the Bahamas?)

Red Bull secretly gave Mark Webber wings 😂.

How many ads can you fit on a video?

Horrible design error, luckily nothing serious happened to anybody. It’s interesting how Mercedes managed to scroll the co-responsibility of the events to the track characteristics, one could call it influence. Very well explained, well done, thanks. Btw, very few appropriate comments here, for most this just seems to be funny, weird!

Nobody: Mercedes-Benz CLR: *YEET*

A mix of spa and monza is the BEST analogy for the circuit The perfect description

@Chain Bear This is quite good as far as it goes - and it goes a lot further than most on this subject. Pitch sensitivity is one part of the problem. Static aerodynamic stability is the other part. As far as what initiated the take off is concerned, everything that matters has been covered. The only caveat I have is that you said the lift at the front of the car overcomes the _downforce_ but in fact the change in pitch angle probably does that anyway. What happens then is that the lift generated by the front of the car becomes greater than its _mass._ What happens after that is the bit people miss. Pretty much all racing cars these days have a rearward weight bias. Even the front engine Nissan GTR that flipped at the Nurburgring with tragic results a couple of years ago was probably running a rearward weight bias. These days it's usually a function of all the heavy components being placed at the back. Rearward weight bias is generally desirable in vehicle dynamics... as long as the vehicle stays on the road. You quite rightly pointed out that once the car starts to lift, the centre of aerodynamic pressure shifts forward. That is a classic illustration of dynamic instability. However, since the aerodynamic centre of the car is already forward of the centre of gravity, the car is statically unstable as well. Were it not for that fact, I believe the car would simply come crashing back down onto the road. That may have just as catastrophic results as flipping but the point, of course, is that this shouldn't happen at all. Just to attempt to make this a bit clearer, when the CoG is forward of the aerodynamic centre, the vehicle is stable and should return to its original trajectory. That is called positive stability. When the CoG is aft of the aerodynamic centre, the vehicle is unstable and its trajectory is difficult to determine but it will be unlikely to return to its original trajectory. That is called instability. It's known in aerodynamic circles as divergence or flutter. This phenomenon has been tested in aircraft since 1914, long before they could travel as fast as a modern racing car. The trigger of the flip is well discussed but the static instability of the car is what causes it to tumble. To me this represents poor design.

This is a perfect case of young engineers refusing to learn from the proven approaches developed years earlier. The Mercedes Sauber C9 (may have been pre-C9) also took off and flew, because of very high speed, in the 1980's during testing. Mercedes then changed the C9 aerodynamics, to avoid flying, but began to overheat and blow tires, due to excessive down-force. Finally, Mercedes dialed in the C9, which then became the fastest car at LeMans, hitting slightly under 240mph (400kph) at the end of the Mulsanne Straight. Eventually LeMans installed a Chicane at the end of the Straight, to slow down the Mercedes. Had the CLR adopted the configuration of the C9, which was already very fast, they could have avoided all the taking off in flight problems. But..., they had to find out on their own. P.s., at least one C9 sits in the MB Museum in Stuttgardt.

The Delorean see's the mercedes and cry's in a corner .

The Toyota TS020 had already the wheel arch cut-outs in 1998. I wouldn't also say that the CLR was expected to "flatten" the competition. After '98 and Porsche's exit, the Toyota's were pretty much the car everyone had their money on. And rightfully so, if you compare the TS020 chassis to anything else in that time, the TS020 remains a timeless beauty and a remarkable piece of design.

Other title: chain bear tricks you into learning air physics and car physics

Well that's one way to soar above the competition.

I like how you just barely mention that Adrian Newey told them to withdraw. If one of the leading aerodynamic engineers of our time told you to withdraw, probably because he saw a problem, you should really listen.

So the Porsche GT1 flip at Road Atlanta would've been a combo of crest & slipstream? Fascinating

Not enough ads in the video, you should put 25 more.

so Mercedes accidentally built a half plane, half car

To add to this: The rectangular holes above the front wheels of prototypes , and louvers on gt cars, serve to keep air from packing into the front wheel arch creating lift. I am not sure on the date of implementation but they were added in the same spirit of safety targeted at limiting front end lift. Thanks for another great video.

Now for a follow up looking at how a similar effect caused the early Audi TTs to fly.

This guy manages to incorporate humour into this almost tragic event and make it not offensive

Congratulations Mercedes, this isn't a failure at all you merely are in the preliminary stages of developing a flying car that will utilize the driver to take off while driving. Keep up the good work.