Author: LUWerner

The 959 at the Paris Dakar Rally

A few days ago, the great John Ficarra, through VINwiki, released an AWESOME video about the Porsche 959 at the 1986 Paris-Dakar Rally. As always, John Ficarra’s ability to spin a delightful tale is just outstanding. If you have 15 minutes and have at least a minor interest in the 959, I urge you to watch it. Absolutely fantastic! 😎😎😎

“Racing’s Deadliest Day” – the 1955 Le Mans tragedy

The “Le Mans start” of the 1955 race.

I just found this article, though it was published not even two weeks ago. The Le Mans accident of 1955 has always been a subject of interest to me. Why? No, no morbid curiosity or something like that, far from it. With Le Mans being a great passion of mine, the tragedy always hits a chord within me. How something so fantastic could have been the stage for such pain and devastation? All the race stories of greatness and passion kind of pale when I think about the tragedy. That being so, I really can’t enumerate how many articles and videos I’ve seen about the 1955 race. Some truly good, yet mostly superficial or just utterly non-factual. However, today I stumbled upon this article by Darrell Hartman. His piece is one of the best I’ve ever seen – factual, well-written and just as important, objective. Unhappily, the majority of stories written about the tragedy try to deflect blame. To glaze over a few details. Hartman, however, exposes (the known) facts – and with facts you can arrive at your own conclusions. The accident happened because of a multitude of factors, however one small detail was the fulcrum to the ensuing disaster.

Nonetheless, whatever were the reasons for the accident, knowing what happened will not make it less of a tragedy. Yet, it will bring enlightenment. Therefore, knowing the facts is always a great thing. So let us be glad that motorsports have evolved enough that something like what happened in 1955 will NEVER happen again. And to ensure that it really never does, let us always be aware of the facts.