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Black Horror. The car was shattered by the impact: its flat motor hood ripped loose and scythed through spectators like a guillotine knife. The heavy engine followed, spewing parts. The first row of the crowd was cleanly decapitated. Twenty yards away, the chassis cut another swath. Gasoline took fire; then the Mercedes' magnesium-alloy body went up in a searing white flame. Levegh's headless corpse was burned to a crisp. A 400-sq. yd. stretch of gay and cheering people became a black, hysterical horror.
Skittering and screeching along the pit's wall, the Austin-Healey ran down a row of mechanics, but Driver Macklin escaped with his life. Nearly 50 yards back of the pits a young girl jumped and screamed as a flying foot hit her. Bits of bodies and pieces of machinery rained everywhere.
The roadside turned into a seething mass, the maimed trying to escape, the unhurt pressing forward to see more. It was five minutes before fire crews could get to Levegh's smoldering wreck, a good half hour before private cars, trucks and every ambulance in town started to work carting off casualties. Toll at week's end: 78 dead, 105 seriously injured.
Meanwhile, the Grand Prix ground on. Around 1 a.m. on orders from Stuttgart, Mercedes pulled out of the race. After a while, rain pelted down. The race and the crowd's vigil continued. But when Mike Hawthorn's Jaguar ripped past the finish line to win the 1955 Le Mans next afternoon, few people even bothered to cheer.
It was small consolation to learn that Hawthorn had clocked a record 2,564.28 miles at an average 106.84 m.p.h.