Quote Originally Posted by journeyman racer View Post
It may require another thread to discuss in detail. But in all the conversations I've had over the years. There's a grey line about "accidents" , which I've attempted to make black & white. For no reason other than my own interest in motorsport.
I think the grey line turns black when stupid accidents become a pattern, like, say, this year with Pastor Maldonado, or even Grosjean a couple of years ago.

An isolated dumb accident is just the kind of thing that happens to almost everyone. I mean, even Jackie Stewart missed part of the 68 season (which probably cost him the championship) when he broke his wrist in a simple spin in an F2 car. It was just a dumb accident, but it did not become a pattern.

Also remember that Mika Hakkinen was forced to sit out a race because he had too many dumb accidents. From there he turned it around, but he got off to a rough start.

But I think there's a distinct difference between a lapse in concentration, getting caught up in the heat of battle and making a misjudgement, making an innocent mistake which looks clumsy and blatant carelessness and negligence.
If you remove all the danger people will be careless. F1 is still not a safe sport, but it's a whole world different from 1971. Latre, Senna's death was such a shock because we were all lulled into a false sense of security, and now I think Bianchi's accident will wake people up a bit. Hopefully we will see less carelessness. After all, absolutely nothing happened at the Russian GP.