The 24 Hours of Le Mans starts this weekend, and if you're "not young" like me, you remember when, in 1999, the race featured on 8 o´clock news everywhere, after this Mercedes CLR took off at over 320 km/h and did some loops that would make the Red Bull Air Race envious.
Miraculously, nobody was hurt, neither driver Christophe Bouchot nor any of the track staff near the racetrack.
(Emphasis on "miraculously", because this was the 3rd similar crash in two days: after this accident, which had some similar precursors also in other events, the aerodynamic rules were changed in this Sportscar class)
They say all publicity is "good publicity," but after this setback, Mercedes withdrew from the mythical race for some time, with the first "silver arrows" only returning to Le Mans in 2025, albeit in the "lower" GT3 class)