It was a horrific weekend which forced Mercedes to pull the plug on its sportscar programme and changed the design of Le Mans machinery forever.
Racing driver Peter Dumbreck was on a professional roll towards the turn of the century, joining Mercedesโ endurance racing team in 1999 hot off the back of an impressive Formula 3 season.
The Le Mans race weekend of that year was a turbulent one for Mercedes, who were racing their CLR supercars for the iconic staple of the motorsport calendar. Dumbreckโs teammate, Aussie Mark Webber, already had two bizarre incidents where his car flipped earlier in the race weekend, leaving tensions high in the Mercedes camp.
In light of Webberโs mishaps, come race day Mercedes engineers explicitly told Dumbreck not to follow other cars too closely, yet the Scotsman admitted to Drivetribe he had no idea how close was too close.
โIn the five laps or so that I did โ that I was catching the Toyota of Thierry Boutsen in front of me,โ he recalls. โI remember thinking โ Iโm actually pretty quick here, Iโm doing well. And I was running in third place and I was catching the Toyota, but I also had the words of the Mercedes team ringing in my ears saying: โDonโt get too close to any other cars!โ
โHow do I define too close? And if I canโt get close how do I pass him? How does this all work? And then before I know it Iโm flying through the air and thinking โ I guess that was too close then!โ
The sun was setting as the twice-around-the-clock endurance race descended into darkness on Saturday evening, when out of nowhere, Dumbreck spectacularly flew into the air and flipped several times before leaving the racetrack and ending up in the trees off to his left.
Unlike Webber who landed on the racetrack, many assumed Dumbreckโs journey into the forest would have been fatal. Surprisingly, he walked away relatively unscathed.
Dumbreck went on to continue racing in the GT circuit, making his debut in the Nรผrburgring 24 Hours in 2003, a race he still competes in to this day with Falken Motorsport.
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