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The 2021 F1 Season.

Spa is a genuine old school circuit (bus stop removal aside) and sadly that means incidents will occur unless it is massively sanitised. I have driven it in my SL55 and it's proper scary even in something as slow as that, but it's exciting at the same time. It's hard to say whether changing it to make it safer would improve it from a racing point of view and I guess this is the dilemma. We want the exciting circuits, but we also want safer circuits. Every year when the F1 circus visits Bahrain I hear people complain about the big run offs, but if it makes it safer then surely they are a good thing. It seems we want to have our cake and eat it.
 
From my childhood memory… wasn’t Spa the circuit at the pivotal moment in F1 safety history? Drivers were saying that racing at a circuit as big and fast as Spa with large sections having no barriers was ridiculous.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
From my childhood memory… wasn’t Spa the circuit at the pivotal moment in F1 safety history? Drivers were saying that racing at a circuit as big and fast as Spa with large sections having no barriers was ridiculous.
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In 1966 Stewart spun off on a soaked Spa track (the original 8.7 mile layout), hit a telegraph pole, then a shed and was trapped and injured in his mangled car. There were no marshalls and it fell to Graham Hill to extricate him from the vehicle which had a ruptured fuel tank and was spewing fuel all over Jackie. Hill only noticed the wreckage of Jackie's car when he himself spun off and he realised he could not continue. He was joined by Bob Bondurant who also spun off and came to help Hill. It took 25 minutes before Hill and Bondurant got Stewart out and it was only with the aid of a spectator's toolkit allowing access to a spanner to undo the steering wheel. Stewart was then taken to the 'medical centre' in an 'ambulance' where he was left on canvas stretcher in a dirty corridor. Eventually he was taken by a proper ambulance to the hospital in Liege, but unbelievably the ambulance got lost and took ages to find the hospital. Farcical situation frankly, but fortunately Stewart made a full recovery.

However, Stewart realised how lucky he had been and how it could have been very different. From that day on he started to push for safety measures and simple things like more marshalls (requests initially met by disinterest from the F1 organisers, but acquiesced to slowly over time) as well as taping a spanner in his cockpit should he or anyone else ever need to remove his steering wheel in an emergency. Today I have seen some harsh words directed towards Stewart over his sometimes very frank comments about modern F1 and Hamilton in particular, but F1 and its fans owe him a huge debt of gratitude as without his campaigning many more drivers would likely have perished. Max Mosley often cited him as the single most influential figure in starting a move towards safer racing, something that, whether you admire Max or not, he took up the mantle for. I was lucky enough to meet Stewart in the mid-2000s and spent an hour or two listening to him talk about all aspects of racing... he's hugely engaging and I think it's fair to say he's lived a little. :D
 
As much as I admire Stewart’s driving and push for safety, I do struggle with the knowledge that he passed a burning, suffocating, trapped Roger Williamson on his way to winning the 1973 Dutch GP. Doesn’t sit well with me at all. Different days, I know, but David Purley stopped and did his best.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
As much as I admire Stewart’s driving and push for safety, I do struggle with the knowledge that he passed a burning, suffocating, trapped Roger Williamson on his way to winning the 1973 Dutch GP. Doesn’t sit well with me at all. Different days, I know, but David Purley stopped and did his best.
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Well before I was interested in F1.

When I started to be interested, F1 was a lot safer due to the work that many, and especially Stewart had done.
 
IanW said:
Well before I was interested in F1.

When I started to be interested, F1 was a lot safer due to the work that many, and especially Stewart had done.
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The 1969 drivers’ revolt is my very earliest memory of F1, although I think I can remember my parents talking about Jim Clark’s death. I can remember thinking to myself as a five year old that if the drivers were scared of Spa, nobody was making them race on it. Weirdly, some people still think that way!
 
Tony Lockhart said:
The 1969 drivers’ revolt is my very earliest memory of F1, although I think I can remember my parents talking about Jim Clark’s death. I can remember thinking to myself as a five year old that if the drivers were scared of Spa, nobody was making them race on it. Weirdly, some people still think that way!
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I remember well that day. Clark and Hill were initially supposed to share a Ford P68 at the BOAC 500 at Brand's Hatch, but, because of some contractual arrangement, both had instead to drive at a F2 race at Hockenheim. The Lotus wasn't competitive and Clark didn't expect to do well. But it was a shock to us all when the news came through that he'd been killed. It was also a shock to the drivers - the general feeling was, "If it could happen to Jimmy, it could happen to any of us".

Just in case anyone hasn't seen it, this is a must-watch:

 
I and my wife were at Brands Hatch because I wanted to see Jim Clark in the Ford P68 I initially I was gutted that Clark wasn’t there. Colin Chapman had to honour a contract with F2 schedule which was at Hockenhiem. I couldn’t believe when the news came over Tannoy I can remember that day as if it was yesterday. To me Jim Clark was on another planet, I spoke to Bob Dance once at the 25th anniversary of his death at the Jim Clark museum and I also spoke to Mike Costin both extremely nice gents.

Regards,

Martin
 
I think my earliest memory of F1 was the six wheel Elf Tyrell. Which obviously I thought was the coolest thing ever as I was 7 years old. Then mostly the car with the iconic black and gold John Player Special livery.

Petrol and fags! Such a good influence for a young lad.
 
I will also insist that as a driver Paddock Hill Bend is much more interesting and challenging than Eau Rouge / Raidillon. Not as dramatic or dangerous but just so many subtleties to it.
 
I have driven the old old Spa, at normal speeds. Thinking that they thundered along there at 200 mph towards the Masta 'kink', with barriers here and there, but certainly not every where...

At the 1995 GP we where seated at Eau Rouge, can't recommend it, they just swish by, very little to see. Swede Kenny Bräck went of in the F3000 race, I wouldn't have even caught it if I hadn't kept my eyes just at him.
 
tones said:
I remember well that day. Clark and Hill were initially supposed to share a Ford P68 at the BOAC 500 at Brand's Hatch, but, because of some contractual arrangement, both had instead to drive at a F2 race at Hockenheim. The Lotus wasn't competitive and Clark didn't expect to do well. But it was a shock to us all when the news came through that he'd been killed. It was also a shock to the drivers - the general feeling was, "If it could happen to Jimmy, it could happen to any of us".

Just in case anyone hasn't seen it, this is a must-watch:

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Thanks for posting the link. I had purposely not watched the program in the past, but decided I should do so. I am glad that I did and glad that I did not work in F1 then. I am sure the mindset now is very different, but I still do not think I could have worked in a sport with so many deaths.
 
IanW said:
Thanks for posting the link. I had purposely not watched the program in the past, but decided I should do so. I am glad that I did and glad that I did not work in F1 then. I am sure the mindset now is very different, but I still do not think I could have worked in a sport with so many deaths.
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We thankfully didn't get to see the horrific pictures of Lorenzo Bandini in the car at Monaco that you see in that film, but we all saw the accident and the fire that followed - and the race continued (the accident occurred on lap 82 of 100). Bandini was clearly tiring and becoming more ragged (that Ferrari was a heavy beast) in a futile attempt to catch leader and eventual winner Denny Hulme in the Repco-Brabham - if my memory serves me correctly, Hulme was almost casual, going round some of the corners with one hand on the wheel. Future Monacos were shortened to 80 laps.

This what we saw at the time, at 1:04:36 here -
Note the burning straw bales.

Also note the oversteer cornering with opposite lock!
 
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