The 'E' Type Forum

Hi all check this outTHIS IS A CLASSIC AND WORTH KEEPING MIKE HAWTHORN:
1956 Le Mans track practice drive


1956 Le Mans track practice drive



Turn on your speakers and you can hear the sound of the Jag engine and hear Mike Hawthorn's commentary.

An amazing piece of footage of Mike Hawthorn doing a lap of Le Mans in 1956 in a D Type Jaguar. It's incredible to see the bikes and traffic out on the track, and an almost total lack of safety, bearing in mind the previous year a Mercedes flew off the track on pit straight and killed 84 people, seriously injuring a further 120. The accident was inadvertently caused by Hawthorn as he braked to go into the pits, his Dunlop disc brakes were awesome, and other cars braking hard to avoid running into the back of his Jaguar lost control resulting in a Mercedes hitting a sloped earth bank, launching into the air and disintegrating. Incredibly the race continued, although Mercedes withdrew its remaining cars, and Hawthorn went on to win.

Was this the first on-board camera?

Brilliant stuff - simply brilliant !

I love the comment early on, after the umpteenth bicycle wandering across the lanes - "typical French" ... Hawthorn totally unfased

Note also that quite a bit of the time, at goodness knows what speeds (you can see the inverted speedo), Mike is holding the spokes of the steering wheel, as opposed to the rim. Better grip I suppose, I often do the same. Albeit not at 150mph on Mulsanne....

Thanks for sharing!

Quite amazed by the sound quality, the lip microphone very nicely cut out most of the extraneous sounds to leave his voice with just enough background from the engine to appreciate the lovely sound of the D Type in action.

Fabulous piece of history. Hard to believe it's nearly 60years old. There are a couple of shots of Mile Hawthorns face during the video-but I don't see a second camera when you're looking through the forward facing camera. I take it that it's mounted out of sight.

Alan

Check again !

0:08 to 0:17 and you can see the corner-mounted camera above the front left wheel, bonnet fairing removed

The height of it matches the pictures at 03:23 where the view is just over the edge of the windscreen and straight into Mikes goggles.

Did you also spot the rear mounted camera visible from 0:45 to 0:48 and hey presto no front camera.

Hence they made two runs.

Sorry can't see much detail with the full glare of the Jamaican sun in my eyes. At least the straight six soundtrack drowned out the incessant Reggae music!

Cheers

Alan

If you enjoyed that (and who doesn't?) look up Win Percy 'Sideways in a D Type' on Youtube - 14 laps of Goodwood in the 2002 Sussex Trophy; it's Mike Hawthorne's 1955 car.
Brilliant :D It's not just modern F1 cars that are critical on tyres

HarryW wrote: it's Mike Hawthorne's 1955 car.

It's a fabulous car and may carry the registration 774 RW but it's certainly not Mike's car in any meaningful sense. As far as I know, not one atom of it circulated LevMans under Mike's control in 1955. The body is a Lynx repro, the engine and suspension are replacements and so are all the ancillaries. There's an outside chance the frame might be original depending who you believe.

Andrew Whyte gives the true history of Mike's car which was broken up some time in or after 1958 when it was last used for tyre testing, having already had multiple powertrain and suspension swaps.

It's the best we've got, probably, but it's a 'real' replica unlike many other Ds that are still circulating.

Another lesson in not believing what you read (unless it's in a book by Mr P. Crespin of course - when's the next one?). Incidentally the cause of the horrendous accident at Le Mans is debatable -but that's OT.