Mike Hawthorn in car footage

[TopCat]

THIS IS A CLASSIC AND WORTH KEEPING MIKE HAWTHORN:
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?

[Jeroen]

Remains an impressive and true classic even though the sound is weird sometimes.

Spa 1955 is also very nice

[polov8]

I don't know about track safety, that onboard mic looks pretty lethal!

Great footage!