The winning #15 BMW V12 LMRToyota was a top challenger throughout the race. This #3 Toyota GT-One was the lone finisher for Toyota, finishing second.When this #8 Audi R8R came home in third place, it marked the beginning of what was soon to become the era of Audi dominance at Le Mans.
1999 saw another increase in manufacturers involvement. Although Porsche did not send a team to contest in the prototype classes, Toyota retained their three updated GT-Ones, now moved to the LMGTP class due to the demise of GT1, while Mercedes-Benz debuted three new CLR LMGTPs. Nissan instead moved from GT1 to an open cockpit LMP, as did Panoz.
Newcomer Audi attempted to try their hand at both classes, with two open cockpit R8Rs and two closed cockpit R8Cs. BMW continued with their open cockpit LMPs, updating to the new V12 LMR. The works V12 LMR's were run by Schnitzer Motorsport, while two of the previous year's cars were privately entered.[1]
Mercedes CLR incidents
The event saw three major crashes involving the team of Mercedes-Benz CLRs during qualifying and the race itself. The CLR had a very short wheelbase and a large amount of overhang (the bodywork outside the wheelbase), resulting in high pitch sensitivity. The amount of overhang and its resulting pitch sensitivity was enough to cause aerodynamic and chassis design flaws with the car. The large amount of overhang allowed for amounts of air to build up underneath the nose of the car, and the amount of air that built up underneath the CLR thanks to the car's frontal pitch being high enough was enough to imbalance the frontal aerodynamics, giving this section more lift than downforce, which allowed the car to take off into the air, especially when following another car and at the tops of hills, when a car's front pitch is at its highest- such as on the run to Indianapolis and on the Mulsanne Straight.
Mark Webber's CLR #4 went airborne at Indianapolis during Thursday night qualifying. On Friday, the team was allowed to rebuild #4 on a new chassis, with tweaks to the rear suspension, in an attempt by Mercedes to cure the problem. Winglets were fitted to the front to increase downforce. All cars had qualified, but during the brief warm-up on Saturday morning, Webber again went airborne when tailing his teammates over the hump of the Mulsanne, landing on his roof and skidding to a stop in the Mulsanne corner.[2] This car was withdrawn from the race, but the two other CLRs continued on, again with emergency tweaks in yet another attempt to alleviate the instability.
A few hours into the race on lap 75, Peter Dumbreck's CLR #5 also went airborne at a crest just before the Indianapolis corner (a very bumpy section of the track), this time flying off the side of the track and landing in the trees. Dumbreck was unharmed in the incident.[3] This incident, unlike the previous two, was actually caught by TV cameras and thus broadcast worldwide. Mercedes-Benz immediately withdrew the remaining CLR #6 and dropped out of sportscar racing for the immediate future.
This was the second time Mercedes-Benz had dropped out of Le Mans and sportscar racing following an incident with one of their cars becoming airborne and leaving the track, the first being the 1955 Le Mans disaster.
Race
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