1986 - Le Mans - Mike Wilds and Jo Gartner accidents

Not long after 3am, it was time for trouble to visit itself on the Ecosse team. "The corner was absolutely fine every lap of my stint," said Mike Wilds, "and then on one the car just went straight off in the Porsche Curve! It was like hitting black ice! It just had to be oil. I hit the nose on the barrier and had just bounced off when I saw a car absolutely charging towards me - I gather it was Mass' Porsche - while I was radioing the pits. He did the same thing but followed the armco round, but there wasn't room to squeeze between it and me. I just pulled my legs up as far as I could and hoped for the best as he guillotined the nose off. I couldn't see to steer, but somehow I managed to scrape back to the pits for repairs."

Mass' car was destined to continue, but no sooner has this drama been enacted than another of an altogether more unpleasant nature occured on the exit to Tetre Rouge.

Jo Gartner's Kenwood-sponsored Kremer Porsche 962C had suddenly speared into the left-hand barrier just before the slight kink that follows the corner - "as if he'd just slammed on the brakes!" according to a following Eddie Cheever. The Porsche had climbed up on the pitifully inadequate two-tier metal and then flipped upside down across the track to hit the opposite guardrail and caught fire.

Poor Jo had no chance and immediately the BMW pace cars were deployed and that horrible scenario of a hushed race track and a thousand questions was once more played out at La Sarthe.

In the pits the seriousness of the accident communicated itself long before the official announcement that Gartner had succumbed, and that news was greeted with stunned silence. Everthing and one was suddenly subdued, the pits and paddock a sea of tight-etched faces. For many the real race was over and in a moment the night seemed to have become much, much colder. The usual eerieness that settles over Le Mans when the pace cars are out and the race cars have become muted, brought an unhappy cloud of depression.

A week later, doctors at Le Mans confirmed last Monday that the Austrian driver, Jo Gartner died instantly from a broken neck, when crashing the Kremer Porsche 962C on the Mulsanne Straight. The Kenwood sponsored car veered sharply to the left before Hunaudieres, at a speed approaching 200mph, and left four tyre marks on the road indicating that whatever caused the crash, it wasn't tyre failure.

The car felled a concrete telegraph pole, and pieces of wreckage ripped boughs from nearby trees. The Porsche ended up on the outside of the double-row armco barrier, lending support to the demands for triple layer fecning along the entire 3.5 miles straight, and slightly hurt a marshal who refused hospital treatment.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• 1986
• Le
• Mans
• Mike
• Wilds
• Jo
• Gartner
• accident
• crash

[MotorsportUK2009]

R.I.P see you in racing heaven

[Zoomer30]

No accident is complete without some stupid staement from Eddie "All I do is wreck people" Cheever.

[Quadrant14]

Poor Mike was racing a Group C 2 at Spa when Stfan Belloff was killed also, and before I think poor Whinklehock {spelling} gee Whildsie your still here today thank God

Chriso

OZ

[cerbaiolo]

r.i.p. jo,great driver.

[vince065us]

Gartner had a promising sportscar career.He'd co-won at Sebering in March,'86.R.I.P,Jo.

[Wildsie]

I hit some oil going down the Porsche Curves and spun, poor Jochen tried to miss me but collected the front of my Ecosse. I think the oil was from poor Joe's Porsche. RIP my friend, Mike Wilds