Comment by Spartacist [he/him]@hexbear.net on Well There's Your Problem

can i get my post pinned

Edit: since my post wont get pinned can you send someone to pin me instead

tldr: British racing driver Mike Hawthorn, making a poor maneuver, moved in front of the faster 300 SLR of Pierre Levagh. The 300 SLR kinda ramped off of the British car, into a crowd, killing Levagh and 83 spectators, many cut in half by the bonnet hitting the at 120 mph

It was Macklin that moved infront of Levegh to avoid Hawthorn. The pit lane should have been separated, spectators shouldn’t have been so close (ofc that was pretty normal for the time) and the track should have been revamped as speeds were wayyyyyy too high compared to when it was designed. Oh and the magnesium body didn’t help

Oh and the magnesium body didn’t help

I… they made race cars out of the thing that burns so hot that you classify it as the special kind of fire you can’t use normal firefighting shit on.

Yeah because it was lightweight

I’m just surprised it was still the best option in 1955. Fibreglass had been around for some time and was already being used in similar applications. We had all of WW2 and ten years of the jet age developing high performance airframes. I was just expecting some sort of alloy or something instead of making it out of fire asbestos.

It clearly wasn’t the best option.

I don’t know, I haven’t gotten to the end of the podcast yet. Maybe it’s just a cool race and someone wins and they all enjoy a drink together at the end.

edit: ah shit it was a disaster and only one guy enjoyed a drink at the end.

they still use it for some car parts such as wheels

Do they flare up more intensely than whatever the rest of the body is made out of or is there some kind of thing to prevent the magnesium from burning as hot as it does?

it does, firefighters have had to adapt. Li-ion batteries are much worse though

Li-ion batteries are fun. One of my favourite wound repairs was a guy who modified his nicotine vape with high powered batteries and then stuck it in his back pocket. He was drunk and fell asleep, it activated and either cooked off or shorted or something, and it blew up against his ass and scrotum. Because it was lithium, it kept blowing up until either they got his pants off or it burned through his pants. Because it was a remote hospital on an island that covered a large area, we received the helicopter about six hours after the injury and I got to spend a good two hours removing tissue and picking shrapnel out of a partial/full-thickness burn across all the nope spots.

They did change the track. There’s now a chicane thing at the Mulsanne straight

I wonder if in the future they will cover racing accidents that don’t have such a high body count. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there

Well, it’ll probably be Group B accidents

Alice said on twitter that they plan on doing a Group B episode at some point.

I love group b so much. It shames me to admit I love cars

Those things were sick (pronounced S-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ck!) and the story is a good one.

I mean I would rather die having a lancia bounce off the embankment and plow into me than die from heart failure or something

Podcast recommendations, episode discussions, and struggle sessions about which shows need to be cancelled.

Rest In Power, Michael Brooks.

Well There's Your Problem | Episode 45: 1955 Le Mans Disaster(www.youtube.com)

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