Following up on yesterday’s legend of the Mille Miglia train crossing post, and building upon last year’s post about the incident, I’ve recently stumbled upon more photos of Hans crashing his BRM at the end of one of the long straights at AVUS. The crash at the 1959 German Grand Prix is well known, but while searching for images for yesterday’s post I found these that I’ve not seen before. I didn’t know that the crash was captured at other angles. I’ve seen the photo of Hans crouched beneath the tumbling BRM many times, but these other angles give an even greater impression of how truly close—and how truly lucky—Hans was.
It is not these photos that are the great testament to his bravery, but that he ever got in a racing car again.
0 replies on “More on the Bravery of Hans Herrmann”
Great photos–the one I saw at the time did not make it clear what had happened. The left rear wheel has torn out of the rim–this is a failure that never should have happened. Was this car the BRP private entry (of which Moss owned a part and sometimes drove) rather than a works car? MJ
Checked the account in R&T–claims Hans ran out of brakes at 180 mph and hit a wall before flipping three times. also noted it was the BRP car which Moss had driven a few weeks previously at Aintree. MJ