Mercedes CLR

The Mercades CLR GTR, a car we all know. In Le Mans 24 hours in 1999, it took off. Mark Webber was at the wheel when it flew, though he only suffered minor injuries.

‘That’s when I came up behind Frank Biela in his open-topped audi on the section between Mulsanne corner and Indianopolis at the southern end of the circuit, where you brake for the hairpin and then accelerate up to sixth on the way to the first kink. 

I was pretty close to him just after the apex when the front of my car started to feel light. Nothing unusual there: these are big cars, they punch a big hole in the air when you get close up behind someone else the car loses a bit of down-force here and there. I wasn’t unduly concerned at first. But i quickly realised,’ I can’t bring this back . . .  this thing going to go up.’

It happened so quickly it was like an airplane taking off. In fact that’s exactly what was happening: at this point i was probably doing close to 300 kilometres per hour and the car was taking off. I should point out that Fontana Bernd and i had been slip-streaming at 330 KPH and never had a problem, though of course it’s fine on a billiard-table track like that. I jumped on my brakes, but it was too late. I couldn’t see Frank’s car any more, I was going straight up. I could see the sky and then the ground and then the sky again, I could almost see the headlights clipping the trees-it was dusk, not really dark- and i was a passenger in this 1000-kilo racing car 10 metres in the air doing 300KPH.’

Mark Webber. Aussie Grit: My Formula one journey©