Pierre Levegh

Pierre Levegh was active during the 1930s and again following World War II. He recorded six World Championship starts in 1951 and 1952 and several Le Mans races between 1938 and 1955, with 1952’s event witnessing an ultimate endurance drive by him.

Born Pierre Eugene Alfred Bouillin, in Paris on the 22nd December 1905, he took the name ‘Pierre Levegh’ in memory of his uncle Alfred Velghe, who was one of France’s pioneering racers and a successful Mors cars racer and had used the name ‘Levegh’ (an anagram of his name). He had been a cycle racing star at the Stade Buffalo and Velodrome of the Seine and went on to win a number of hillclimbs and road races, including the 1898 St. Germain-Vernon-St. Germain, the 1899 and 1900 Bordeaux-Perigieux-Bordeaux and the 1900 Paris-Toulouse-Paris and La Turbie hillclimb. He also participated in the Gordon Bennett Cup car in 1900 and 1901 plus won the ‘Large Car’ class of the Paris-Toulouse-Paris race, held in 1900 as an unofficial Olympic sport and died in 1904, only aged 33, due to illness.

Pierre was a brilliant sportsman, a talented skater and also a world-class ice hockey and elite tennis player thought after watching the Le Mans 24 Hours as a spectator it became his ambition to compete in it. He started racing in his twenties with a Bugatti T57 in French national events and in May 1937’s Frontieres Grand Prix at Chimay, he started on the second row in fourth but though he eventually took second place, a pit stop gave the place to Legat and he finished third. In further drives that year he was fifth in the Coupe de Printemps at Monthlery and eighth in the 3 Hour Marseille.

In the following year he made his Le Mans debut, sharing a works Talbot Lago T150C with Jean Trevoux but the car had mechanical failure before he could start driving in the race. They were teamed again for the following month’s Spa 24 Hours though they retired due to an accident. In 1939, outings with a T150C saw third in the GP Luxembourg, fourth in the Grand Prix d’Anvers in Belgium and fifth in the GP de Comminges at St.Gaudin in France. He was sixth at the Coupe de Paris at Monthlery but retired on his return to Le Mans, alongside René Le Begue, in a Talbot Lago SS entered by Luigi Chinetti.

After the War he continued racing with a T150C and in September 1945 took part in the Bois de Boulogne race though did not finish. He continued with the car the following year and had four podium finishes. He retired in his first race, the Grand Prix de Nice in late April and was fifth in the following month’s Coupe de la Resistance at Bois de Boulogne. He then travelled to Belgium to take part in the sports car Grand Prix Automobile de Belgique (at the Bois de la Cambre public park in Brussels) and finished second to Eugene Chaboud though retired at the Grand Prix de Bourgogne at Dijon. At the end of July he entered the 24 Hours du Mans but this was not the actual 24 Hours event but a GP race at Nantes, consisting of a forty five lap street course, and finished second. He took another podium result at the Circuit des Trois Villes, whose race involved the three towns of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing and the circuit consisted of a blast up and down three dual carriageways, with hairpin bends at each end. During the race, Raymond Sommer had taken a strong lead though Pierre battled Eugene Chaboud’s Delahaye and eventually finished second to Sommer. Races at Bois de Bologne saw third in the Coupe du Salon and fifth in the Coupe de la Resistance and his last race that year came in October in a return to the Bois de Boulogne where he was third in the Coupe du Salon.

He competed as part of the Ecurie Gersac team in 1947, with several drives with a Delage D6.70 plus one outing with their Delage 3000. Henri Louveau was the squad’s technical director and its top driver and their their cars were also raced by Philippe Etancelin, Jean Achard and Maurice Trintignant. Pierre started with second in April at the Grand Prix de Pau (behind Nello Pagani’s Maserati 4CL) and at the end of the month was fourth in the Grand Prix du Roussillon at Perpignon. In May, he took part in the Grand Prix of Marseilles, over sixty nine laps of a 2.7 mile street course, and after starting eleventh drove a strong race and came home fourth behind teammate Henri Louveau. After travelling to Jersey, he was seventh with the team’s 3000 in the Jersey Road Race but despite only having their official presentation to the press at the beginning of April, Ecurie Gersac disbanded at the end of June. He retired a private Delahye 155 at the Grand Prix de Nimes in June and from July switched to a Maserati 4CL but did not finish in five outings with the Ecurie Naphthra Course car and his only finish was a seventh place at the GP de Alsace at Strasbourg. Sadly, in a crash while driving the Maserati in September’s Grand Prix de ACF at Lyon, three spectators were killed.

His first drive of 1948 came at the end of August with the Maserati 4CL at the Grand Prix de Albi, where he was eighth. The next event was a 12 Heures de Paris sports car race at Montlhery, co-driving a Delage D6-3L with the car’s owner Marc Versini, and after starting sixth they finished fourth. Switching to a Talbot T26C he was second with the Ecurie Napthra car at Montlhery’s Coupe du Salon (behind Louis Rosier’s winning T26C) and seventh at Garda but did not finish with a privately entered car at Monza.

He was a regular competitor in Grands Prix in 1949, which was the final year before the F1 World Championship was established. Unfortunately it proved a disappointing time with the T26C, with six retirements, and his only finishes were fifth at the Grand Prix de Paris at Montlhery, seventh at the Grand Prix du Roussillon at Perpignan and tenth at the Grand Prix de Suisse at Bremgarten. He was thirteenth at Silverstone’s International Trophy though his best result came in September at the Velka cena Ceskoslovenska, held in Brno in the Czech Republic. Held over twenty laps of an eleven mile street circuit, he was one of a number of GP drivers who made the trip to compete and finished fourth. In one outing in July with a Delage D6-3L he and Louis Gerard retired at the 24 Hour Spa race.

Continuing into 1950 with the T26C he contested a number of Grands Prix, with his first race at Pau in April. Fangio, Villoresi and Rosier were the class of the field, with every other driver having been lapped at least once, and Pierre was sixth, six laps behind race winner Fangio. He retired at the GP de Paris due to his engine failing after twenty eight laps and only three cars finished the race. His next outing came at Spa and after qualifying tenth, he drove a consistent race to come home seventh. July saw a retirement at Reims where, after qualifying ninth of the eighteen starters, his engine failed on lap thirty six of the sixty four scheduled laps. The following four races were non-championship events and he was fourth at Bari in Italy, behind Farina and Fangio’s Alfa Romeo 158s and Moss in the HWM. The second came at Albi though a high attrition rate meant only six cars finished the race but in a consistent drive from eleventh, looking after the car while still being fast, he took another fourth place result, this time behind Rosier, Froilan Gonzales and Trintignant. Into August, the two non-championship events came at Pescara and Silverstone. Pescara’s road course traversed Pescara and the surrounding towns and countryside and after starting seventh he was fifth after over three hours of racing then was fifth at BRDC International Trophy race. His final Formula One race was in September at Monza though it saw a high attrition rate, with Pierre amongst them and his run ended after twenty nine laps.

In 1951, and now forty five years old, Pierre competed in a number of F1 and non championship races with his own Talbot Lago T26C. Although the Le Mans 24 Hour race had resumed in 1949, he only returned in 1951 and, teamed with Rene Marchand (who was making his Le Mans debut) the pair took a creditable fourth place finish, behind a factory entered Jaguar and Aston Martin plus a private team entered Talbot. Contesting non-championship races he started with sixth at the Grand Prix de Paris at Monthlery and seventh at the Gran Premio di Bari but did not finish at Albi, Zandvoort and Pescara. He recorded three GP starts and was eighth at Spa and ninth at Nurburgring though retired after nine laps with a broken engine in his final drive at Monza. This would be his last year competing in F1 and he began to focus more on sports car racing.

1952 saw what could have been his career’s moment of glory (but which ended in heartbreak) at Le Mans but elsewhere it was a frustrating season with the T26GS, with retirements at Bari, the 12 Heures de Casablanca, Grand Prix de Monaco Sports, the Targa Florio and the Goodwood 9 Hours. In August he contested a Daily Mail Trophy European F2 race at Boreham but did not finish though in the following month won the Coupe d’Automne sports car race at Monthlery.

In the midst of these races came Le Mans in June but though Mercedes took a 1-2 victory, the outcome could have been so different after an incredible drive when Pierre raced for almost 23 hours. He was teamed again with Rene Marchand and though his privately owned Talbot was an ageing design it had been made more powerful by his own modifications to its 4.5 litre engine. However, the race would see a high attrition rate and of the 57 cars that started, only 17 were running at the finish a day later. At the start Ascari pulled away in the Ferrari while the three 300SLs were running to a predetermined, conservative, pace set by Neubaeur to preserve the cars. Ascari was out early when his clutch failed and of the seven Ferraris entered, only the Andre Simon/Lucien Vincent 340 America eventually finished, in fifth place. As for the Jaguars, the Stewart/Whitehead and Moss/Walker cars retired early with engine and head gasket problems then in the early evening the Hamilton/Rolt car was also out. Into the evening, the Behra/Manzon Gordini T15S had taken the lead but then the Kling/Klenk Mercedes was out with alternator failure. While all this had been going on, Pierre had been running with the 300SLs and when the Mercedes retired he had climbed to second place. At 3.30am Manzon pitted with a problem with the front brakes but despite the drivers willing to continue with rear brakes alone, Amedee Gordini made the decision to withdraw the car. This put Pierre ahead but with his partner ready and eager to get in the car, he faced a dilemma, as he had noticed a vibration and decided to press on alone as he felt that only he could take care of the car to reach the end. Into the morning, fog forced the Mercedes drivers to open the doors to see though Pierre continued on his way in his open car. Neubauer eventually instructed his drivers to increase the pace but despite driving all night Pierre still held a good lead. With two hours remaining it seemed Mercedes would be second and third but he was battling fatigue and had been sick in the cockpit. However, he still lapped faster than had the winning Jaguar C-type at the same point the year before plus held a comfortable two lap lead. In the pits, a frustrated Marchand had been pressing him to let get in the car, and even Pierre’s wife asked him to stop and rest, but he continued. At one point Marchand reportedly even tried to physically remove him but was pushed away and Talbot’s owner, Antonio Lago, had also had a brief conversation with him and asked him to at least reduce his race pace. Then, shortly before three o’clock the Talbot’s connecting rod broke and it stopped at Maison Blanche, about a mile from the pits. Driving without a working rev-counter, it is uncertain if the engine issues finally broke it or through sheer exhaustion he missed a gear-change and over-revved the engine. It still took almost 20 minutes for the 300SLs to take the lead with Hermann Lang and Fritz Riess winning ahead of Theo Helfrich and Helmut Niedermayr. Levegh returned to the pits and hugged Charles Faroux, one of the founders of the race, plus his wife, but medical assistance was required as he was exhausted and hardly able to stand. He then sportingly went to the Mercedes team to congratulate them and Neubauer promised that when Mercedes-Benz returned to Le Mans he would be one of their drivers. At the end of the year, Shell produced a thirty minute film about the race and paid special tribute to Pierre’s gallant drive.

In the following year’s 24 Hours he was part of the Talbot factory team and finished eighth alongside Charles Pozzi. After the efforts by drivers to drive almost single-handedly in previous years, and the safety issues involved due to exhaustion, the ACO had set limits of maximum driving spells of 80 consecutive laps and 18 hours in total for each driver. He retired from the GP Caen and the Coupes du Salon but took his second consecutive victory at Montlhery’s Coupe d’Automne, was fifth in the non championship Rouen GP and in December he and Philippe Etancelin were third at the Casablanca 12 Hours.

In 1954 he was back at Le Mans with his own T26GS though he and Lino Fayen retired after seven hours due to an accident and the pair did not finish in the 12 Hour Reims. In August he was eleventh in a GP sports car race at La Baule but though he was third in the qualifying heat of a Dutch International Meeting at Zandvoort he retired in the final. His two final outings came at Monthlery in September and October where he scored a third consecutive win in the Coupe d’Automne then fifth in the Coupe du Salon.

1955 started with sixth in a Coupe de Paris race at Monthlery though he switched to a Ferrari 625 for the following month’s Grand Prix de Albi and had another sixth place finish. Mercedes-Benz had returned to contest Le Mans and Neubauer had been true to his word and he teamed him with John Fitch in one of their 300SLRs. The car was capable of speeds well over 175mph and, prophetically, Pierre was overheard voicing concerns about the speeds and the fact that Le Mans had not been truly updated from the days when the cars were only doing a little over 100mph. The pair agreed to keep a regular pace for the first half of the race and to only attack on Sunday, when the competition was getting tired. During the opening 32 laps, Hawthorn and Fangio had traded places five times and broken the lap record several times between them but in the third hour of racing came the catastrophic crash that would be the deadliest accident in motorsport history. Running in sixth place with Fangio behind him, entering the Tribunes Straight he clipped the rear of Lance Macklin’s Austin-Healey, which had swerved to avoid Hawthorn’s pitting Jaguar. Right before the collision, Fangio saw Pierre raise his hand, either as a warning signal or a reflex action, and swerved in avoidance and he later credited him with saving his life. After hitting Macklin at nearly 140 mph the Mercedes vaulted it and landed on the earth bank, but the wreckage scythed through the tightly packed crowd. Pierre was flung out of the tumbling car and killed when his skull smashed into the track but his body lay on the track and a gendarme covered it with the remains of an advertising banner. Alfred Neubauer walked into the road in front of the pits and began directing traffic through the debris and their engineer Rudolph Uhlenhaut contacted the Board in Stuttgart. Race director Charles Faroux, who had embraced him after his solo drive in 1952, allowed the race to continue as he said that to stop the event would have created a traffic jam, making the rescue of the injured almost impossible. Although the official report indicated that Pierre and 80 spectators were killed and 178 others injured, the actual death toll is usually placed at either 80 or 84. By midnight Mercedes were first (by two laps from the Hawthorn/Bueb Jaguar) and third then just after 2am Uhlenhaut received the call from Stuttgart. Mercedes-Benz withdrew from the race (and by the end of the year from motor racing for the next 30 years) while Team Jaguar continued to win the race.

Pierre was later buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

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