S2K-Phil

Sadly, Simonsen died at Le Mans today. 10 minutes into the race he hit the barriers in his Aston Martin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23014877

One hour to repair the barrier then off they all went again, including the Aston Martin team. Not sure what I think about that.

RichUK

I have three guys working on the AMR crew at Le Mans this weekend.

The decision to carry on was made by his family at the circuit, AMR were happy to retire the remaining four cars immediately the decision was made, the intention is to now win the race in his memory.

Simonsen would have wanted them to carry on, that's what his family said.

Very sombre there at the moment.

markforrester99

From what i read after the crash he was talking and everything seemed fine??

I think he had died after the race had restarted. Has anyone got some good links to watch it on? Im watching from the official site and the coverage is rubbish to be honest, loads of talk about sponsors and shirt designers and not much coverage of the actual race.

chilled

I've seen the seconds leading up to the accident, it's a bit of an odd one.

Bad day for motorsport though, Wolf Silvester died in the VLN at the 'ring today too

keith2.2

Very sad :-(

Mark, I've been watching through the telegraph website:

[url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/motoringvideo/10133212/Watch-live-Le-Mans-2013.html[\url]

Dembo

Very sad, but I think it would have been ridiculous for the whole 5-car team to have pulled out. One of the other Astons crashed heavily too, and they're currently second.

Good not to see an Aldi 1,2,3 at the front.

It's all live in HD on my telly. What's the problem?

Nottm_S2

Very sad

earl's_f20c

Its a tragic loss of a talented racing driver, but as they say, motor-sport is dangerous. Shame Aston Martin didn't pull off the win for him, but it was very close for a while.

I watched about 4hrs last night then watched another 4hrs this morning, the Eurosport HD coverage was fantastic, great banter from the commentators.
Le Mans makes Formula 1 look like an afternoon tea-party; I love the fact that they are balls out every single lap for hrs on end, no "look after your tyres" or "use fuel saving mode beta 3".

It really is the hardcore of motor-sport. much respect to all involved, from marshalls to pit crews.

Must go next year I think, never been before.

martin j

Watched hours n hours of this over the weekend only to get distracted near the finish and miss it, what a wally. Very sad for there to be a fatality, the first in 20odd years but doesn't make it any less signifigant..

Dembo

It's the third year I've sat an watched it on Eurosport. Their coverage really is excellent (and all in HD this year), though the number of ad breaks is a little annoying. I wasn't going to stay up all night or anything, but I did have it on for hours sometimes whilst doing other things. I find it very addictive; you suddenly realise you've been watching for 2 hours.

That's what they say, but they don't have the engines turned up quite as much as they could. And with tyres lasting 4 or 5 stints - that's several hours, you've got to figure the tyres are a bit too hard and they could run softer tyres and go faster. If F1 adopted the same approach there'd be no pit stops.

As for the accident, somebody said something about him hitting a part of the barrier with a tree behind it. Not sure if that's true; I thought it was a concrete wall. From what was seen of the aftermath, the door had been ripped off and the roof was partly caved in - something that shouldn't happen to a car with a roll cage. So it was obviously an extreme accident. No doubt some questions will be asked about safety, not least because seemingly everytime there was an accident the safety car came out for 45 minutes whilst the barriers were repaired, which is pretty ludicrous (11 safety cars lasting over 6 hours I think it was in the end). At Monaco they have that high-tech foam stuff, which not only protects the drivers better, but can be easily replaced.