I saw a 1950's or 60's recording of a lap of LeMans and the dude was weaving his race car around bicycles and regular ol' traffic. So courses from that era are less race tracks and more "some country roads we decided to rope off during the race". Reading this history of this particular track it seems like one of the cars erupted in flame because they used a lot of magnesium in the cars. Very light but very flammable. John Surtees refused to drive the hot Honda due to how unsafe it was. The man who ended up driving it, Jo Schlesser, perished two laps in. You'll have to pardon me for not treating this era of racing with the kind of romanticism often heaped upon it.
