Mercedes pulled out its two remaining cars after less than five hours of the endurance race when Peter Dumbreck was involved in a spectacular crash.

While in fifth place, the nose of Dumbreck's car suddenly flipped up. At about 300 kph (185 mph), the Mercedes CLR was thrown 30 meters into the air, somersaulting five times before crashing into trees to the left of the track.

The car was on its 75th lap, in the fifth hour of the race, between Mulsanne and Indianapolis corners.

Luckily for the 24-year-old Briton, driving at Le Mans for the first time, the car landed on its wheels and he escaped without injury.

Mercedes immediately withdrew its other CLR, driven by Bernd Schneider of Germany, Portugal's Pedro Lamy and Franck Lagorce, of France.

The crash came as a bitter blow to Mercedes, looking for its first Le Mans win since 1952, as it had two cars in the top six at that stage.

This a video clip of the crash:
http://cnnsi.com/motorsports/world/news/1999/06/13/lemans_bmw/lemans.html

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Adrian Eckenrod
MBCA, PCA, BMWCCA & SCCA* member
86 190 2.3-16
83 944 ITS Racer

There is another clip of the crash at http://iw.newsreal.com/mercflyingcircus.mpg

Enjoy...Lee

More data
 

Le Mans 1999 Mercedes Flip Crash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFN_Gp1eHN0
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Le Mans 99' Mercedes CLR-GT1 Crash Live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3rxq7U1mA
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99 - Le Mans - Peter Dumbreck's massive accident
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqGq9OnHLHs
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Peter Dumbreck crash
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Peter%20Dumbreck%20spectacular%20crash&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&rlz=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#emb=0&hl=en&q=Peter+Dumbreck+crash&view=3

They let the aerodynamistist go too early.

porsche also had a similar crash, i think same race.

man, if that happened where there were spectators standing it would have been bad.

The main culprit behind that crash was the Toyota GT-ONE in front of it that created a low pressure zone in front of the car at high speed which allowed the CLK GTR to lift it's nose. When the two cars made slightly different steering inputs over the crest, the air in between them immediately became a high pressure zone and it threw the front end of the Benz up in the air and, with the combination of the crest, flight ensued.