Sitting on my desk in my office is a model of one of the most dangerous cars in the history of sports car racing. It is a Mercedes 300SLR. On June 11, 1955, at the Le Mans race, a 300SLR driven by French driver Pierre Levegh was involved in an accident in which 82 people (including the driver) were killed. This tragedy sent a shock through the racing world, and the thinking about race car performance, design and safety was changed forever. Now, in racing, it is clearly possible to produce race cars that can go 250, or 300 or perhaps 350 mph and stop on a dime. Human beings, even with computer assists, can’t …
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