Oft Off Topic
Oft Off Topic is a humorous podcast where two men with no memory or attention spans attempt to talk about all the nerdy and geeky things they love.
Marvel at how they fail to stay on topic in the most entertaining ways possible. If the subject is The Ewoks, they'll wind up talking about Tarzans nipples or Alan Thicke the robotic love machine. Talking about Mr. T and theyll somehow wind up connecting his success to the Umbrella Corporations T-Virus.
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Oft Off Topic
Le Mans 1955: Racings biggest tragedy is Nathans perverse joy
Today we have racings greatest tragedy, the legendary 1955 Le Mans wreck. Join us as I describe the grisly nature of this accident as Nathan practically has a joygasm over the carnage.
What kind of monster is Nate? Well you best tune in to find out!
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The 1955 Le Mans race disaster Nate. Do you know anything about this event or Le Mans racing in general?
Nate:I'm trying to think Le Mans race is that when they're driving through the city, like on Iron man 2? No, that is F1. Okay, no, I don't. I mean I know I've heard the words before. It's not like, oh, I've never heard that those words put together doing something. It's not. It's not that. I just don't know, almost I know, nixon, nothing about it, gotcha.
Shaun:That's kind of what I figured. Well, the Le Mans race is a 24-hour race that's held near the town of Le Mans, france, and the winner of this isn't who comes in first, second or third, but it's the car that travels the furthest number of miles. After 24 hours of racing, they do swap out drivers two drivers per car. So you know, at whatever intervals they decide they'll be like, pull over to the pit, new driver gets in and continues driving and it is, yeah, 24 hours of continuous racing.
Shaun:It actually does go through a little bit of towns and stuff. It kind of does in a way, I guess. I mean, it doesn't feel like something you'd want to be there standing in the crowd, waiting, standing around 24 hours for but.
Nate:I mean. I mean well, oh, for me racing's kind of boring anyway.
Shaun:I mean, NASCAR is whatever but NASCAR is probably the boringest of all the races. Well, I mean, they're just going around in a big oval. Very true, le Mans and F1s. You got like little hairpin turns, you got corners, you got sneaky little straightaways, and every course is a little bit different. I don't know, nascar is just turn left and if you don't turn left fast enough you wind up like Dale Earnhardt. Yeah, probably anger some people with that one, but anyways, I don't care. Le Mans 24 hours race Basically all the big car companies like Jaguar, mercedes, bmw. They'll enter their like cars and it's like hey, here's the fastest car that we have that our engineers could design. Now we're going to race it and it's considered one of the three big daddies of racing. It's the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500, and the Monaco Grand Prix. Those are considered the three big races that people want to compete in. I've definitely heard of the middle one, the Indianapolis 500, yep.
Nate:Yeah, the last one. I think I see it referenced on video games.
Shaun:Actually I was just about to say as a side note. Super Monaco on the Sega Genesis was a really fun racing game. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Nate:Now I know that track, throw me out there and I'll win, yeah exactly so this race.
Shaun:It started in 1923. It is the oldest active endurance racing event in the world. However, this year we'll be focusing on is 1955, a date that will live in infamy. This is one of the most anticipated racing years yet for the Le Mans. Three of the winningest teams ever Jaguar, ferrari and Mercedes were all debuting their new state-of-the-art racing cars for the world to see. They're like, hey, these are going to just be mind-blowingly fast and they were going to be by far the fastest cars on the track so far. By the way, track 8.38 miles and it kind of goes through like woods, little corners, it goes through little chunks of the town and stuff, so it's like a variety of areas you got to race through.
Nate:I have a question though. Yes, so this race is about how the miles travel, not to tell you the fastest correct, correct is about how the miles travel, not to sell you the fastest correct, correct. So are they saying that their cars can go that fast, like for a long, long time?
Shaun:or basically it's kind of a combination of things. That is impressive with these cars, it's not only how fast they can go, but the fact they have to be built reliable enough to basically be running at full throttle 24 hours straight. Okay, I got you?
Nate:yep, because I went straight to like marathon running, where it's like you don't you're, but then again it's like right after. I thought that, which is why I raised my objection, but before I actually got it out there in my head, it's like they're machines.
Shaun:They never get tired.
Nate:Yeah, it's like they're not dealing with like the human body is a little more complex.
Shaun:They're not dealing with like the human body is a little more complex than a bike, Yep, but also you got to deal with the drivers of the human that are in there. Eventually, you know, if you're racing off and on for 24 hours, you're going to get a little bit tired, I would imagine. Oh, dude, yeah. And also, you know, not only a lot of these cars also didn't finish because they would just break down halfway through the race. Because you know, I would absolutely expect.
Shaun:Yep, that's probably why Ford never did good in the race. Ba-da-ba-ba-da-ba, anyways. So, like I was saying, these are going to be by far the fastest cars on that track. So far, they were clocked at being able to do 170 miles per hour in the trials on this race. For comparison, the max speed for these cars when the track was built in 1923 was 60 miles per hour and, uh, even though they widened out the course a little bit in spots, this was pretty much the exact same course that was built, uh, back in 1923. So basically, we got cars that were are doing 170 miles an hour on a track that was designed for 60 miles an hour. In fact, the uh, amazing, yeah, right, in fact uh, mercedes driver go wrong?
Shaun:exactly, uh, right, in fact. Uh, mercedes driver, what could go wrong? Exactly, uh, in fact, even Mercedes driver Pierre Levee complained we need a signal system between drivers. Our cars are going way too fast for this course. Something bad is going to happen. A little bit of foreshadowing there.
Shaun:Three hours into the 24 hour race and records are being broken left and right as the fastest cars on the planet battle for supremacy and as we're getting towards the pit area. So you know, it's basically this long eight-mile race thing of it. And then there's a little area where it kind of like there's this pit area where everybody can like pull in and you know, swap drivers get their cars looked at and such and such. So as we're getting into this area, the Jaguar driver. He gets a signal from his pit crew to pull down into the pit area. Into the pit area, he hits the brakes and he goes to slow down to the pit area on the right-hand side of the track.
Shaun:Now, this Jaguar was equipped with some of the best brakes in the automotive industry and people had not seen a car break this fast in pretty much ever. So when the Jaguar decided he needed to brake in a hurry and slow way down in a hurry to get into the pits. The Austin Healey car behind him was not ready for how quick that dude started to stop. So, yeah, so the Austin Healy so picture this the Jaguar is like immediately hits his brakes and almost comes to a dead stop. He's going to the pits. There's an Austin Healy car that's right behind him and he's like oh no, I'm about to rear in this Jaguar. So he takes a hard left and tries to scoot around the Jaguar and try to, you know, safely, avoid him. And tried to, you know, safely avoid him. But because this Austin Healy is also doing 150 miles an hour at this time, he starts to lose control and instead of gracefully passing around the side of the Jaguar, he starts fishtailing Gracefully.
Shaun:Yeah, he winds up fishtailing out into the middle of the track and, as all this happens, the fastest car on the track that everybody expected to win comes roaring into play the Mercedes 300 SLR Beautiful car, by the way. He comes roaring into the picture doing 150 miles an hour.
Nate:He had an atomic engine. That was the secret. Unfortunately, no one lived.
Shaun:The nuclear blast wiped out everybody in a 10-mile radius, as the Mercedes all said. He's cruising along in 150. And Austin Healy shoots right in front of him and he has literally no time to react. Things are just going downhill. He has one chance to do one thing and all he does is he shoots up his hand to signal the driver behind him that it's about to go down and you need to get out of the way in a hurry.
Shaun:The driver behind him that got signaled was actually the other Mercedes driver. Go down and you need to get out of the way in a hurry. The driver behind him that got signaled was actually the other Mercedes driver. So nice little bit of teamwork there, I guess. However, this move would in fact save the life of the driver behind him, but the actual driver of the Mercedes the one who threw up his hand and was about to go into a wreck well, he didn't do so well. I should point out too, if you're thinking about the cars that they have in this race out to, if you're thinking about the cars that they have in this race, think speed racer so basically like open top cars, you know, all swoopy, kind of looks like a bar of soap.
Nate:Yes, yes, no safety features. That for correct the image, because I was thinking of like more of a. There's a little box, not box cars, but those cars they race off road and stuff gotcha.
Shaun:Yep, nope, these are like speed racer style cars, like completely open top, tiny little like six inch windshield, no seat belts, no safety things. Real man racing.
Nate:Should I assume the fate of the dude from RoboCop is very similar to the fate of this guy? Wait, which guy from RoboCop? The one? You got hit by a car. You got splattered and turned into like mush.
Shaun:Oh, this guy. No, this guy didn't actually like get swamped in a radioactive fluid and mutate. I assume you're talking about that guy yes, that guy.
Nate:Well, I'm not talking about the mutate, but I am talking about the hit by car and turned into goo Gotcha.
Shaun:Nope, nope. What happens is actually far more horrifying. So we got the Mercedes and he's about to rear-end this Austin-Healey and, because of the aerodynamic shape of these cars, the Austin-Healey actually acted as a ramp for the Mercedes. So instead of like a rear-end bonk, think of more like a rear-end and I'm going to just shoot off of him. Like you know, almost like a Dukes of Hazzard sort of thing, that's amazing. And I should also let you know this Horrible yes.
Nate:It's horrific. Off Top Topic does acknowledge the tragedy. However, it was also amazing.
Shaun:I should also let you know that this is one of the most popular live events in the world at the time, and there are massive crowds the entire length of the course, especially around this pit area that we're talking about. I mean, you can see a picture of it there just a wall of people as far as the eye can see, just like crowded up to the track as close as they can, because, again, there's like no safety regulations back then. They're just like you want to see the race. Get as close as you can, touch the cars as they drive by, if you dare, we don't care.
Shaun:Touch the car, graze your hand yeah, I'm assuming, literally there's like pictures of people like leaning over the track, like reaching out and being like hey, driver.
Nate:Dude, there's not a world that they did not do that often.
Shaun:Yeah, yeah. So, anywho, the Mercedes launches through the air off the back of that Austin Healey and he flies through the air, starts coming down and perfectly times it. So he hits the barricade on the side of the racetrack and his car probably begins to somersault end over end through that packed crowd of people at 120 miles an hour. The car almost immediately bursts into flames and starts shooting flaming car parts everywhere, including the engine, comes dismantled and rolls like a bowling ball through the crowd, cutting people in half, smashing them, spraying, you know burning oil and burning gas everywhere. The car itself, you know, flipping end over end, slamming into people, crushing them, flattening them out. Axle comes loose and spins around, killing people left and right.
Shaun:Best part, the hood comes loose, nate. The hood comes loose and goes flying through the air like a discus at 150 miles an hour, chopping off people's heads, literally. People got decapitated by a flying hood through the crowd. So not only that the flying hood going through the crowd is bad enough, but one thing that happened with this car is to make it the lightest car possible. They had a magnesium alloy frame because it is nice, light, strong. But also one problem is it melts very easily and tends to catch on fire. So now, all of a sudden, we have uh molten balls of magnesium frame flying through the air, hitting people, melting them uh yeah, I like shaking my head yeah, the axle popped off, uh, crushing a bunch of people.
Shaun:Uh, the drive. Well, actually I'll go to the next part.
Nate:So I was picturing the end of that. The driver gets out. He's like kind of waves his hands like I'm okay.
Shaun:Well, actually I can go into that right now. The driver well, he was basically thrown from the car because, you know, no seatbelts or anything and when this thing goes end over end, it just basically yeeted him right out the top of it, him right out the top of it, and he hit the ground. And you know, when you hit the ground at 150, you're basically dead instantly. So they say, even with the helmet on. His skull was crushed as soon as he hit that pavement With the helmet on.
Nate:His head was fine, his body was not.
Shaun:The best part was, though, his body went flying the opposite direction of the car, shooting across the track and landed in front of the pit crew that was about to work on him, including the replacement driver watching this all and his wife, who was waiting in the pit crew to say hi to him and, you know, wish him well on the race.
Nate:That is amazing.
Shaun:I mean, it's terrible, that's awful.
Nate:Oh my God, I just that is.
Shaun:I know it's like somebody just wrote this I don't know, but oh my God but, oh my god, that is I. Just here we are laughing at a woman who probably had to go through more therapy than anybody in the history.
Nate:There they're waiting to go, and also this buys us flop and his wife's like yep that was my exact thought too.
Shaun:She's like standing with flowers back. Oh my, I'll be here soon.
Nate:I love him so, oh god it was like the camera pans in her face, just look like okay, even better.
Shaun:I like to think of. The fact is like the replacement driver had been like eyeing that, hit the other driver's wife for a long time and this is like his time to make his move. Be like so widowed now. Huh like immediately. Yeah, he's just like she's like crying over the corpse. He's like taps around the show. Be like we should go out to dinner later and talk about this. I don't think that's actually what happened, but that would be yeah, kind of yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm guessing they're both pretty traumatized.
Nate:Yeah, this is off. Yes, I acknowledge this is terrible. This actually happened. It's awful, but still I'm sorry.
Shaun:In the meantime Will. This body is like laying there and people are being traumatized. To add to some fun of it. So we got the flaming car wreckage like in the middle of this crowd and people are just like running around dying and on fire and stuff. Our department shows up and they decide to put out the fire with water.
Shaun:But what they didn't know apparently, was either they didn't know this happened or they didn't know that it was a magnesium frame on the car. But apparently when you hit magnesium of magnesium fire with water, it explodes. So they show up to put out the water or put out the fire. Water hits that frame and the frame explodes a second time. Show water or put out the fire, water hits that frame and the frame explodes a second time. Showering people with molten magnesium Basically a giant fireball happened a second time In a matter of seconds. 82 people were killed and as many as 178 were maimed, though some say the number is much higher and also they say it wasn't injured. Maimed was the term they used and that sounds much worse than injured.
Shaun:Yeah yeah, injured's like oh he has some burns, mame's like yeah, mame's like my arm's gone.
Nate:Yeah, like this is some serious.
Shaun:So it was also so bad. Basically, they had priests going around giving last rites at people because there were so many people like laying there dying and bleeding out. Now, nate, if you would like some pictures of it, if you go into our little chat thing that we have, there should be like a little text channel called lamans and you can see some of the races, including like a picture of recreating how the car hit the barricade, went, flying over it and flipping down it. Giant piles of fire everywhere.
Shaun:Someone made a cartoon yeah, yeah, you can actually see, uh, footage of this happening too, and I can't tell if it's actual like footage or if it's like. You know, when they take pictures and they can recreate a video out of that. Back in the day it might have been one of those kind of things, but yeah, you can see it flying through the crowd. Not good times, not good times at all. But if there is one thing about this whole incident that true, that shows us that god truly does smile on us in our darkest times, nate's like the car wreck. It happened off of one side of the track. The dead body shot off the other side of the track. So that means the track is clear, the race can keep going. Nate, yep. The higher-ups said nope, track is clear, we're going to keep on racing. Everybody keep going, wow, so yep. And also too this is one thing that's easy to forget this track is eight miles, so this wreck only happened in one tiny spot. Lot of drivers who don't even know this is going on. There's people on the other side of the track watching who have no idea this is going on. So, yeah, just picture you're a racing car driver puttering around, everything's going normally, and you come around a corner and there's just fire everywhere and dead bodies. It's like you're like what do I do about this? Oh, you keep racing, son, track's clear, you keep doing it, go, go, go.
Shaun:Yeah, exactly, technically, the guy who won the race was a Mercedes driver that didn't die in the wreck and they got signaled and actually made it out alive. However, at the last minute of the race, mercedes decided it's probably going to be bad optics if we win this after everybody died. So they bowed out of the race at the last moment and Jaguar kind of the car that started the whole wreck. They basically gave them options, like you know, kind of bad optics on this. You can bow out if you want to, and they're like nope, we're here to win. And they finished the race.
Shaun:They technically won, which, um, you know, some people took that the wrong way and were pretty mad at jaguar. I don't think jaguar really cared, because they're jaguar. Uh, the race director would question about it. He came up with a series of statements to justify the reasons to keep the race going. Um, some of them were, some of them were actually pretty like reasonable. Like if they called off the race right then there everybody would have left at once, streets would have been jammed, emergency vehicles would have been stuck, they couldn't do what. Uh, nobody would have been able to get there, and you know that kind of makes sense yeah, look at that, that lens.
Nate:You know you kind of understand the. The question is were they thinking that, yeah, was that a happy happenstance?
Shaun:or yeah, he should have probably stopped talking there, because he kind of went on to do say other stuff, like quoting the line the show must go on and said that other races had had wrecks and kept going. And there it is, yep. And then he also pointed out that if the race didn't finish, the sponsors and other companies might sue for a breach of contract and that'd be a money loss for Le Mans. And finally, the last reason you throw is the old and anyway, I didn't even have the authority to cancel a race. The other dude had the authority and he was on vacation. It wasn't even my job to make this call. So, yeah, honestly, the dude should have shut up right after the. You know everybody would have jammed.
Nate:It would have been fine, yep with, just had we caught, had we canceled. It would actually cause more problems. We kept it going, so people stayed in like that's all, and then you move on. But no people front back then, didn't?
Shaun:there's like no, oh, it wasn't my fault yeah, picture, like some, you know, dude off to the side during that speech, like give him like the knock it off sign, like no, no, no, cut it out, stop talking. Frantically waving, you're making this worse. So yeah, in the end 80 to 84 people were dead Spectators, including the race driver Either by flying debris or from the fire or the explosion the fire department did, or so on and so forth. A further 120 to 178 were injured, although some people say the number is probably a lot higher and they kind of like tried to tone it down a little bit.
Shaun:You know Again, sponsors and stuff it remains the most catastrophic crash in motorsports history. A special mass was held in the morning at Le Mans Cathedral for the first funerals of the victims. Basically, they fall out from this there's a temporary ban on motorsports in the countries of France, spain, switzerland and West Germany and a few other nations until they say racetracks could be brought to a higher safety standard. I think most of them were back into racing in less than a year, so they probably didn't care that much.
Nate:Again, it was also fucking 1955. You know, in 1955, you can get away with you know, just it was a different time.
Shaun:Yeah, they didn't want to be blown up in a race. They shouldn't have gone to the race. That's their fault. Yeah, it's kind of like if you didn't want to get molested, you shouldn't have gone over to Uncle Slippy Fist's house. It's always the victim to be blamed back then. I'm not wrong. No, you weren't.
Shaun:As far as the blame, well, they rapidly tried to put the blame on anybody and everybody they could. At first they tried to blame the Jaguar driver for slowing down too fast, but that never really stuck because I mean, how can you really fault somebody for slowing down too fast? The racing body also tried to claim that magnesium frame explosion from the fire department tried to put out. Also tried to claim that magnesium frame explosion from the fire department tried to put it out. They initially tried to claim the fact that Mercedes had added explosive chemicals to their fuel to make the car go faster. So they're basically like nope, nope, that whole magnesium frame explosion that had nothing to do with us.
Shaun:But eventually, after a year of investigation, the fault was determined to be drumroll, please, the fault of no one, just an accident no one could have seen coming. Nope, not one person could have seen this comingroll, please. The fault of no one, just an accident. No one could have seen coming. Nope, not one person could have seen this coming. You know the track that had 150 mile an hour cars on it. There's design for 60 mile an hours.
Shaun:One thing that came outside of this so the guy who's waiting in the pits to replace the one driver who watched his buddy like turn as a flaming ball of flesh in front of him, yeah, he went on to invent, uh, what's known as the uh fitch barrels, I believe is what they're called, and those are the safety barrels you see, on the side of highways that are full of sand, so if somebody goes out of control and slams into them, it's just like a sand barricade that slows them down. He invented those. He became a champion for racing safety. After this whole thing, it's I. I could see how that'd be your uh takeaway from seeing that kind of wreck yeah, I just.
Nate:But the one thing I popped my head is like so you know what happened was he was standing there watching the tragedy in front of him and he goes those people like those cars are sorry, those cars are plowed with those people like they're bags of sand.
Shaun:Yeah, bags of sand that's probably exactly what it was. He watched it. The car like slow down after hit one really fat dude. He's like that, man's like a bag of sand.
Nate:He's like people are like, oh wow, this is really helping people around. I was like, yeah, just imagine a bunch of people standing side by side.
Shaun:We tried to do that with orphaned children at first, but it turns out the orphanages wouldn't let us just take as many kids as we wanted.
Nate:Here children stand here and be a barrier. The way they compensated for that was the bags of sand weigh as much as a child he's like these are for children.
Shaun:I like that. So the Austin Healey the car that was the impromptu ramp afterwards in 1969, it was actually bought at an auction for 155 pounds, or the equivalent of $3,000 in 2023 money that seems kind of like not much money for a piece of history, to be honest.
Nate:In December 2011, yeah, you could say, oh, it's bad, blah, blah, blah, but I mean it's still history.
Shaun:Yeah, I mean somewhere. I'm sure somebody has like.
Nate:Hitler's mustache saved in a jar somewhere.
Shaun:There's yeah, 100%, Someone out there has, yeah, somewhere there's just an upper lip with a mustache on it floating in a pickle jar. They never know what happened to his body. Yeah, so in December 2011, that car was auctioned again and was sold for 843,000 pounds, or close to a million bucks nowadays. Because of this, mercedes decided to bow out of Le Mans racing for 30 years, not returning until 1985. And then they raced again for another 14 years until they had a second spectacular wreck that killed a bunch of people and, oh no, sorry, it was a non-fatal crash in 1999.
Nate:Oh boo, I was like yeah, whatever you do, don't Jaguar in your race, yeah.
Shaun:There's ever a Mercedes car in a race. You need to be very careful of that because they might kill you. So there you go, nate. That's pretty much the long and the short of that race. Kind of a shorter episode, but yeah, I dig it. Yeah, we got to the point. A lot of people died. Not good times Don't crowd next to a racetrack, apparently. But yeah, man, especially man, especially with like that hood, flying off and decapitating people, could you imagine just standing there watching that happen?
Nate:it's like minding your own business.
Shaun:The car goes vaulting next to you and dude next to his head just flies off from a hood.
Nate:It reminded me of what was that? What movie was that? It was a like a boat movie. You remember that b2 ghost ship and I never. By the way, I've never seen the movie, but I've seen the. And part of the trailer was this wire goes and like snaps, it goes through a bunch of people. That's reminding me of this, just those tethering wires yeah, apparently those literally will go through somebody. Yeah, it's like I just mentioned this thing just flying through the air. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it.
Shaun:That's what I mean. It wouldn't have happened to me, because I don't like races Sucks to be them but that's what they get for being a race fan, right.
Nate:Well, I guess it's the unwritten thing. Like you're going to a place, because even now in NASCAR there is not a 0% chance whether NASCAR cars can like get a massive wreck thrown in the air and just you'll land on somebody.
Shaun:A lot of people in those crowds are actively hoping that happens and they get a seat. I mean they don't want the car to land on them, but I mean if it killed somebody else they'd be absolutely fine with that.
Nate:Be like I gotta see it I mean, I think there are, even as I have to appear from, you can probably look it up, I'm not gonna. Um, hasn't there been times where like wheels have come up, cars and like hit people in the stands? Yep, that has happened. Yeah, it's like I could have swore. I've seen like images of that.
Shaun:There's also a Simpson scene you might be thinking of two or somebody got crushed by a tire. That same way. Well, yeah, but that was also based off of a real sit. Yeah, yeah.
Nate:Simpsons did it.
