1999: Mercedes flips at Le Mans, leaving BMW to score big

Author

Simon Arron

You’ll see many a fierce battle through rose-tinted Ray-Bans, but 1999 was the real deal. Mercedes, Toyota, Nissan and BMW had recent Le Mans experience – and the scale of newcomer Audi’s investment was clear. It was an epic.

The focus switched swiftly from fight to flight, following a qualifying incident in which Mark Webber’s Mercedes CLR flipped – without outside assistance – on the approach to Indianapolis. The car was rebuilt, but the same thing happened again – this time on the Mulsanne – during Saturday morning’s warm-up. So… race or withdraw? In consideration, the team even took the measure of calling Adrian Newey, who was on F1 duty with McLaren in Canada. When asked directly months after the race whether he advised Mercedes to pull out, Newey refused to comment. Whatever, the management chose to press on, adding modifications including front winglets previously developed for a wet-weather set-up.

Mercedes and Toyota disputed the lead during the opening stages, with the quickest BMW maintaining contact and benefiting from better economy. About four hours in, though, Peter Dumbreck’s Mercedes became airborne close to Indianapolis, cleared the adjacent trees and landed in a clearing beyond.

“You want to chat about Le Mans?” says the Scot when we call. “I don’t imagine you want to discuss my three races with Spyker, do you? All I really remember from 1999 is seeing some sky and then waking up on a stretcher. The doctors wanted to keep me still, but I was trying to move my arms and legs, to check they were OK. There were obviously thoughts about pulling out after Mark’s mishaps. We’d done thousands of miles of high-speed testing without problem, so we were all confident about the late mods and I didn’t feel any trouble prior to the incident. It was clearly the wrong decision to race, but hindsight is a powerful tool and no driver was going to refuse to take part. If something’s going to happen, you always feel it won’t happen to you… but on this occasion it did.”

Mercedes immediately withdrew its third car, canned the CLR project and hasn’t since returned to Le Mans. Its departure and assorted Toyota problems left BMW in control, until a jammed throttle caused JJ Lehto to crash on Sunday morning. The sister car of Yannick Dalmas, Pierluigi Martini and Jo Winkelhock took the win instead.

Back to Dumbreck. Technically, his accident happened on a public road and, French law being what it is, the police insisted he be breathalysed… SA

1999: Mercedes flips at Le Mans, leaving BMW to score big

In 1999, Mercedes, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, and Audi competed in the Le Mans, and Mercedes faced difficulties after its car flipped twice, and BMW eventually won.

Simon Arron

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1999

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