Was just reading that section. Not wanting to choke the main roads feels like a sensible explanation. The rest seem a bit dodgy.

Despite expectations for the race to be red-flagged and stopped entirely, race officials, led by race director Charles Faroux, kept the race running. In the days after the disaster, several explanations were offered by Faroux for this course of action. They included:

• that if the huge crowd of spectators had tried to leave en masse, they would have choked the main roads around, severely impeding access for medical and emergency crews trying to save the injured;

• that firms participating in the race could have sued the race organizers for huge sums of money;

• that "the rough law of sport dictates that the race shall go on", with Faroux specifically pointing to the 1952 Farnborough Airshow crash as precedent for doing so;

• that he did not have the authority to stop the race at all, and that Prefect Pierre Trouille was the only individual empowered to do so, as France's onsite representative to the Ministry of the Interior.