The flying Scotsman

2, The Kirkcaldy man's car rises 30 feet into the air, flying end over end . . .

3, His Mercedes then pivots in the air while it heads off the French racing track . . .

4, And into the trees, where the car crashes down backwards on to its wheels.

Dumbreck stumbled from the shattered wreckage of the silver racing car as marshals fought their way through undergrowth to find the dazed driver, who had only five laps earlier started his debut for the top Stuttgart-based team. Last night Dumbreck and his girlfriend, Claire Gollicker, were flown by private jet to Paris and then back to England, where he is recuperating with a bruised skull, knees, and elbows.

Gollicker, a public relations manager with General Motors' Europe, said: ''Peter has bad headaches, is groggy, and not surprisingly a bit spaced out. He has the symptoms of a boxer who has lost a bruising fight. He is coming to terms with the whole thing and his treatment from the team doctor includes acupuncture.''

The accident, which left a trail of debris resembling an air crash, put senior Mercedes personnel under pressure to justify why they did not withdraw the team prior to the race following two virtually identical incidents. Both involved Australian Mark Webber, the first during Thursday's qualifying session and the second just hours before the weekend's race started - and within yards of where Dumbreck cartwheeled backwards into the trees.

After top-level meetings involving Jurgen Hubbert, head of Mercedes cars, and motorsport director Norbert Haug, the surviving two cars took their place on the grid and the six drivers prepared to race through the night. The six-litre V8 Mercedes CLRs had been altered by fitting extra small wings to stabilise their high-speed aerodynamics.

For the opening four and three-quarter hours of the race, the modifications appeared to work, although the cars looked decidedly unstable as they kept pace with rival BMWs and Toyotas. That proved to be the case when Dumbreck's Le Mans' debut was wrecked so spectacularly and in the trees.

Ms Gollicker had seen the destroyed car from a helicopter as she took a flight above the track but initially did not realise Dumbreck was the driver involved.

His parents, Margaret and Jim, were called to the track's medical centre from their motor home. Once they had seen their dazed and bruised son, Mrs Dumbreck said: ''The doctor believes that simply it is a miracle he is alive, given the magnitude of the accident. I have no doubt about that.''

Mrs Dumbreck revealed that she had prayed for her son on the eve of the 24-hour classic endurance race and believed, although he might crash, Dumbreck would not be hurt. Her sense of foreboding was based on the two earlier practice crashes that had left Webber ''shattered'' according to a team insider.

For Mercedes executives, watching on TV monitors in the opulent corporate hospitality unit, the sense of relief that Dumbreck had escaped relatively unharmed was deepened by the fact that the crash did not repeat the horror of a 1955 disaster at Le Mans. That year, a Mercedes ploughed into a packed crowd, killing more than 80 spectators and its driver, Pierre Levegh.

Team spokesman Wolfgang Schattling said: ''In the end, we were lucky with an unlucky situation. The important thing is that Peter is unharmed. We were convinced the altered cars were okay and the drivers confirmed this.

''They wanted to compete with the new configuration, which added 25% downforce to the car. It was not an easy decision. Unfortunately, Peter's car did not stand up to those expectations.''

Schattling claimed that the Mercedes had run without ''the slightest problem'' during 25,000 miles of pre-race testing, mainly on a simulated Le Mans

track at Fontana, California. Because more than half of Le Mans' 8.25-mile track is run on public roads, pre-event testing is not possible, but drivers consider the French course to be a major driving challenge because of its bumpy, undulating nature.

Immediately following Dumbreck's accident, the remaining Mercedes, driven by Frenchman Franck Lagorce, was called into the pits and withdrawn as the shutters in the team's garage came down.

Ms Gollicker yesterday gave a graphic account of the accident after speaking to Dumbreck.

She said: ''He remembers closing on the Toyota of Thierry Boutsen (who also later crashed out) and thinking he should not get into his slipstream because of turbulence. The next thing he saw was the sky and the trees.

''He took his hands off the wheel and put them across his chest, assuming the crash position.

''Peter then blacked out and only remembers getting into the ambulance, but he apparently clambered out the car himself, although he cannot remember that.

''He does recall being breathalised on the way to the medical centre. His next race is in Japan on July 4 and, unless the doctors say otherwise, he plans to be there.''

Earlier, his mother, Margaret, when asked if he would race again said: ''Of course. He will go back to Japan and win that championship. He is a racing driver.''

Dumbreck, who raced for Jackie Stewart in British Formula 3, won last year's Japanese No.3 series and is currently fourth in the Formula Nippon championship, which is considered as a stepping stone for Formula 1.

The driver's family run a mushroom farming business in Fife and helped finance the early stages of his career.

Shortly before the endurance race started on Saturday, Dumbreck responded to being questioned on whether or not he was anxious about racing cars involved in two major crashes by saying: ''What do you do?

''You drive the car because you are a racing driver and that is your job. It is up to Mercedes if they want to withdraw the team.''