1956 24 Hours of Le Mans

The 1956 24 Hours of Le Mans was the second round of the 1956 World Sportscar Championship, held on the Circuit de la Sarthe on 24th March 1956.
== Qualifying ==
Mercedes dominated qualifying, filling out the first two rows of the grid. Thaddeaus Brennan started from pole position.
== Race Summary ==
Peter Quinn took the lead of the race at the start and had a brief battle with Brennan on the Mulsanne Straight but maintained the lead. Further behind, there was a huge accident as Bernard Spencer and Nathan Meiri Sr. came together on the straight, sending Spencer's Ferrari into a flip. Both drivers were killed instantly in the crash.
On the second lap, Andreas Schulz outbraked himself at the end of the Mulsanne Straight and tapped the back of Quinn's car, sending Quinn into a spin. Al Hamad avoided being collected in the incident and moved into 2nd. 
Several laps later, Earl Davis hit an earth banking before the Maison Blance chicane and flipped his Ferrari, which then travelled upside-down for several hundred metres before coming to a stop and setting fire. Help could not reach Davis in time and he would be the third driver to lose his life this weekend. 
Al Hamad crashed at the first corner and was collected by Quinn, who was forced to repair his car for damage. Mercedes continued to control the race until debris gave both Brennan and Schulz slow punctures. With all three Mercedes cars in the pits, the lead Jaguar of Audley Pottinger took the lead but couldn't hold it for long due to the superior straight-line speed of the Mercedes. All three Mercedes cars passed Pottinger with just a few laps until the end of the race. Brennan came under attack from Schulz and was passed on the pit straight before coming under threat from Quinn in the final corners of the race but stayed in 2nd. Mercedes locked out the podium with a 1-2-3 finish.
Following the death of two of their drivers, Ferrari decided to withdraw from the rest of the 1956 World Sportscar Championship on safety grounds.
== Classification ==
Championship points are awarded for the first six places in each race in the order of 8-6-4-3-2-1 with the best 2 results per marque counted.
# 	Name 	Marque 	Points
1 	Andreas Schulz 	MERCEDES	8
2 	Thaddeaus Brennan 	MERCEDES	6
3 	Peter Quinn 	MERCEDES	
4 	Audley Pottinger 	JAGUAR 	4
5 	Peter Westland 	JAGUAR 	3
6 	William Parker 	JAGUAR 	
7 	Klaus Hartkopf 	FERRARI 	2
Ret	Arouf Bin Salman Al Hamad	MERCEDES	
Ret	Earl Davis 	FERRARI 	
Ret	Nathan Meiri 	JAGUAR 	
Ret	Bernard Spencer 	FERRARI 	
Category:Races