Complex sentence: Fitch was driving a 300 SLR at Le Mans that year, the time of the Le Mans 1955 disaster; during the initial confusion, his family in the United States were notified that it had been he who had crashed.
Split into simpler sentences: Fitch was driving a 300 SLR at Le Mans that year, the time of the Le Mans 1955 disaster. During the initial confusion, his family in the United States were notified that it had been he who had crashed.