Motorsport is dangerous

Although nobody is drawing any parallels right now, the ongoing discussion about the halo driver protection system and F1’s dwindling popularity have something in common.

F1 owes a lot to Ayrton Senna. He was certainly no saint when he was alive, but after his death he has become one. The dreadful, freak accident at Imola in 1994 was worldwide news. It was the equivalent of Lionel Messi falling to his knees and dying of a heart attack on the football pitch. Ayrton was given a state funeral and Brazil came to a standstill. The world took note that F1 was indeed a dangerous sport if it could claim it’s very brightest, most talented star. The fact that it was a freak accident will have passed most people by.

There have been two major films about F1 in the last few years – Rush, was about the 1976 duel between James Hunt and Niki Lauda and included Niki’s almost fatal accident at the Nurburgring. The other was Senna about Ayrton’s career. Both films relied heavily on the fact that death was never far away and ultimately claimed Ayrton’s life. That was the hook.

You can’t imagine someone making a film about Hamilton vs Massa in 2008, or the Brawn team’s success of 2009, or Schumacher’s domination from 2000 onwards.

Senna was the last driver to die in an F1 race. Jules Bianchi may have sustained a fatal injury in the Japanese GP of 2014, but the cars weren’t racing, they were circulating under double waved yellows. It is not part of Charlie Whiting’s circuit safety plan to have cars lapping at speed when there are recovery vehicles they could hit. And that’s what happened. Again, it was an extraordinary incident, a freak accident.

So, in …

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