Following hours Hawthorn had overshot his pits and stopped. Getting out, he was immediately ordered by his team to get back in and do another lap to get away from the total confusion and danger. When the pit stopped during the next lap, he staggered out of the car thinking that he had caused the catastrophe.
Ivor Bueb and
Norman Dewis, both Le Mans debutants, had to step into their respective cars for their first driver stints. Team manager Alfred Neubauer had already reached the same conclusion, but did not have the authority to make such a decision. Despite expectations for the race to be
red-flagged and stopped entirely, race officials, led by race director
Charles Faroux, kept the race running. In the days after the disaster, several explanations were offered by Faroux for this course of action. They included: • that if the huge crowd of spectators had tried to leave
en masse, they would have choked the main roads around, severely impeding access for medical and emergency crews trying to save the injured; • that firms participating in the race could have sued the race organizers for huge sums of money; • that "the rough law of sport dictates that the race shall go on", with Faroux specifically pointing to the
1952 Farnborough Airshow crash as precedent for doing so; After an emergency meeting and vote of Mercedes-Benz company directors by telephone in
Stuttgart,
West Germany, Neubauer got the call approving his team's withdrawal just before midnight. Waiting until 1:45 am, when many spectators had left, he stepped onto the track and quietly called his cars into the pits, at the time running first and third. Their retirement was briefly announced over the public address system. The Mercedes trucks were packed up and gone by morning. Chief engineer
Rudolf Uhlenhaut had gone to the Jaguar pits to ask if the Jaguar team would respond in kind, out of respect for the crash victims. Jaguar team manager
"Lofty" England declined.
Conclusion of the race Hawthorn and the Jaguar team kept racing. With the Mercedes team withdrawn and the Ferraris all out of commission, Jaguar's main competition had gone. Hawthorn and Bueb won the race by a margin of five laps from
Aston Martin. The weather had closed in on Sunday morning, and there was no victory celebration. However, a press photograph showed Hawthorn smiling on the podium drinking from the victor's bottle of champagne. The French magazine ''L'Auto-Journal
published it with the sarcastic caption, "À votre santé, Monsieur Hawthorn!''" (In English, "To your health ('Cheers'), Mr. Hawthorn!")
After the race More than 80 spectators, plus Levegh, were killed, either by flying debris or from the fire, with a further 120 to 178 injured. Other observers estimated the toll to be higher. Most countries lifted their racing bans within a year after the disaster. France, as the host of Le Mans, lifted their complete ban on 14 September 1955. On that date, the Ministry of the Interior released new regulations for racing events and codified the approval process that future racing events would need to follow. In contrast, Switzerland's ban persisted for more than 60 years. This forced Swiss racing promoters to organize circuit events in foreign countries including France, Italy, and West Germany. In 2003, the
Federal Assembly of Switzerland started a discussion about whether this ban should be lifted. The discussion focused on traffic policy and environmental questions rather than on safety. On 10 June 2009, the
Ständerat (
upper house of the Swiss parliament) defeated a proposal to lift the ban for the second time. In 2015, the ban was relaxed for
electric vehicles only, such as cars involved in
Formula E electric racing. The ban was fully lifted in May 2022. The next round of the World Sportscar Championship at the
Nürburgring was cancelled, as was the non-championship
Carrera Panamericana. The rest of the
1955 World Sportscar Championship season was completed, with the remaining two races at the British
RAC Tourist Trophy and the Italian
Targa Florio, although they were not run until September and October, several months after the catastrophe. Mercedes-Benz won both of these events, and was able to secure the constructors championship for the season. Following the achievement, Mercedes withdrew from motorsport. The crash caused some drivers present, including Americans Fitch (after completing the season with Mercedes),
Phil Walters, The official government inquiry into the accident called officials, drivers, and team personnel to be questioned and give evidence. The wreckage was examined, tested and returned to Mercedes-Benz nearly twelve months after the catastrophe. Track safety technology and practices evolved slowly until F1 driver
Jackie Stewart organized a campaign to advocate for better safety measures ten years later. Stewart's campaign gained momentum after the deaths of
Lorenzo Bandini and
Jim Clark. American John Fitch became a major safety advocate and began active development of safer road cars and racing circuits. He invented traffic safety devices currently in use on highways, including the sand-and-air-filled
Fitch barrels. Macklin's Austin-Healey 100 was sold to several private buyers before appearing on the public auction block. In 1969, it was bought for
£155 (). In December 2011, the car, estimated to raise £800,000 before the auction, The car retained the original engine SPL 261-BN, It was then restored to its original condition. Mercedes-Benz withdrew from motorsports until 1985, although the withdrawal had already been decided before the race and had not been caused by the accident. After returning to
sports car racing in the mid-1980s, initially as an engine supplier, Mercedes went on to win the 1989 Le Mans race in partnership with
Sauber Motorsport. Mercedes went on to compete in the championship during the 1990s as a works team before withdrawing for a second and final time in 1999, following a series of spectacular but non-fatal crashes of the
Mercedes-Benz CLR. ==See also==