BBC documentary 'Grand Prix: The Killer Years'

[Don Capps]

Well, certainly not the documentary that I would have made, but then again I am not a journalist but rather a historian. It is easy to be rather critical of such a production, but it does contain more than a few grains of truth which makes it worthwhile.

A pretty stupid sport if you think about it rationally....

[BDunnell]

The racing community has a wonderful tendency to rationalize things, so beware of the bull**** lines are so often trotted out such as that people were used to death due to the war and other such rationalizations, ad nauseam, that keep appearing.

But, leaving racing aside, is it not true that people were psychologically more used to death in that period as a result of the war, and that since then we have become less inured to it?

[steveaki13]

No, we can't. There will be fatalities again, I'm quite sure. The risk can never, ever, be eliminated completely. Sadly, to express this view causes some to feel that one wishes to see injuries or deaths, which is absolutely not the case.

Unfortunatley I agree. If F1 continues for years then Im afraid we will almost certainly see another fatal crash at some point. As many have pointed out recent crashes we have had could have easily led to fatalities. We have seen F1 saftey at its best, but one day an accident will come along, a bit like Senna's. (An accident where you thought he should be okay, and yet some slight positioning or bit a debris caused a fatality where others have survived).

It'll be a sad day, but as in other forms of motorsport it will always be on the cards.

[BDunnell]

It'll be a sad day, but as in other forms of motorsport it will always be on the cards.

Well, as in other activities in life, it will always be on the cards.

[markabilly]

Lest it be overlooked, keep in mind that there many who were very vocal regarding the deaths and injuries that occurred in automobile racing. Although the loudest protests were over the deaths and injuries to spectators, justifiably so, that each season resulted in the deaths of more than a few drivers did not go with comment. To a very large extent, the problem lay within the racing community itself -- the organizing clubs and promoters along with the various sanctioning bodies were very the blame for the hesitancy in embracing the sort of safety measures that John Fitch (who was campaigning for circuit and road safety in the US for years), Jackie Stewart, Jo Bonnier, and others (Emerson Fittipaldi, for instance) were advocating.

The racing community has a wonderful tendency to rationalize things, so beware of the bull**** lines are so often trotted out such as that people were used to death due to the war and other such rationalizations, ad nauseam, that keep appearing. It was cheaper to have the "inconvenience" of a few driver deaths than spend the money to make things safer, as in genuinely safer. The level of denial and the ability to rationalize the irrational within the racing community and its fans is almost breath-taking in its scope.



....

Still hear it today. He died (or got hurt) doing what he loved. The Massa accident, those words were frequently heard about what happened

When I went road racing on my old motorbike, at the same time these deaths were happenning, it was at the old Green valley raceway. I wore a helmet (or a half-helmet to be exact)
tennis shoes, blue jeans and a t-shirt. Wore leather gloves because I though it looked cool. Fell a number of times but never landed where I would leave some skin on the pavement like a number of guys did. Though having witnessed it, I continued to race. Finally someone broke their jaw, and another died from chest injuries, so they started requiring better helmets and leather jackets. However, blue jeans were still ok.

So it was upsetting to hear about the deaths of my heros and scary to see the accidents of my fellow racers, yet I continued to race, mostly because when you are young (15 to 30 years of age), you know inside that you are immortal, if you got the "right stuff".

So what really made the difference was when sponsors got upset about the guys they were spending money on were getting killed, the driver boycotts that cancelled races, before safety really meant something. But leave it to the racers??

haha, as to that. The one point of the show (atleast on the excerpts I saw on utube) was never properly made: despite all his out spoken, legitimate concerns about the safety, Jackie Stewart continued to appear at the races (except those that were cancelled) and drove fast enough to win, repeatedly.