Formula One is dangerous. Formula One has always been dangerous and in the early days, ‘dangerous’ doesn’t really describe the levels of peril drivers often found themselves in. In the first 20 years of the series there were 14 deaths just at normal F1 events with a further 16 at non-championship races and during the Indy 500. Safety improvements during this time were token at best, it was 2 years before helmets were made mandatory and 13 years before warning flags were even standardised. Something had to change.
In 1966 motorsport received the catalyst it needed to push for safer racing and it nearly came from a driver paying the ultimate price paid by so many before. During a race at the old 14 kilometer layout of Spa-Francorchamps, Sir Jackie Stewart suffered a huge crash after aquaplaning at 266kmh (165mph), his car struck a telephone pole, a shed and came to rest in a farmers outbuilding. His steering column broke and pinned his leg to the chassis, trapping him inside the now banana shaped cockpit which was filling with fuel, like a bathtub, from the punctured tank. There were no marshals to help, no equipment, nothing. After separately crashing off due to the rain at the same place, Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant managed to free Stewart from his car only by way of borrowing tools from the boot of a spectators car to remove the steering wheel and then carried him into a nearby barn where he lay on the flat bed in the back of a pick up truck. Hill advised Jackie to remove his clothing as he was drenched in fuel only for some nuns to enter some minutes later and put them back on him. After finding an old ambulance Hill returned and stripped Stewart again after which he ambulance ferried him to what was laughably called the medical centre for the track. Stewart later recalled during interview, “There were no doctors, I was left on a stretcher, on the floor, surrounded by cigarette ends. It was filthy.” After yet more time Stewart was loaded into another ambulance which set off for Liege Hospital, with wife Helen on board, and promptly got lost. Jackie didn’t receive proper medical care until a private jet was arranged to fly him back to the UK.
This is a famous incident as a result of the campaigning done by Stewart in the years afterward – and I’m sure you’ve all heard of Jackie racing with a spanner taped to his steering wheel, just in case – but if you’re learning of this for the first time I can well imagine you sitting there wondering how a racing car can hit a shed or farm building. Before 1970 the long track had no alterations from it’s normal daily use as public roads which meant, quoting Jackie, “if you went off the road, you didn’t know what you were going to hit”. This shambles of a situation led to Sir Jackie Stewart starting his long fight to improve safety in motor racing.
Sadly, change came very slowly despite his efforts and of the other 15 drivers who started the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix alongside Jackie, 5 of them would die during the next 5 years. Lorenzo Bandini, Jim Clark, Mike Spence, Jochen Rindt and Jo Siffert.
Change however, did come. In 1972, as a direct result of Stewart’s efforts, Circuit Zandvoort in the Netherlands, renowned as incredibly dangerous due to a large number of fatal accidents in preceding years, remained off the Formula One calendar as massive safety upgrades were carried out. The entire track was now encompassed by barriers with a three meter verge between track and armco, there were marshal points spaced evenly around the circuit, fire extinguishers at these posts and a race control tower able to oversee the track and monitor situations with greater efficiency. Zandvoort was now comfortably the safest racing facility in the world. Or so one might think.
When implementing safety protocols and equipment, the operation and management of them must also be accounted for. The primary issues which would later bring Zandvoort again into the spotlight about safety were those of availability and reliability.
During the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix, Roger Williamson in only his second F1 race crashed heavily coming out of the Tunnel Oost corner due to a suspected tyre failure, his car slid for 275m (300 yds) across the track and came to rest upside down and despite being uninjured by the crash itself, Williamson was trapped inside the cockpit of the car which was now burning after sparks ignited the fuel leaking from severed lines. Another March driver, David Purley, witnessed the accident, stopped his car immediately and ran to assist but the race continued. Communication between marshals and race control was unreliable and the race continued with only local yellow flags as race control were unaware of a driver trapped within the now raging fire. As a result of this and, possibly, because the car of Purley was abandoned on the left of the track whilst Williamsons’ was on the right, no other drivers were aware of the predicament either and none stopped to help, all believing that Purley was simply attempting to save his own car, their attention presumably being drawn right by the fire. As David Purley valiantly tried to turn the car over he received no help from marshals either. The marshals, whilst now positioned at strategic points around the circuit, were not provided with any fire resistant clothing and as such were physically incapable of providing the needed manpower to right the car, their ability to act was unreliable. They could give the much needed fire fighting assistance though, right? Sadly, wrong. There was not an extinguisher at every marshal post, every other one at best, meaning one had to be brought from a much greater distance, costing valuable time, and it was only one. Referring again to the important elements which make up safety management, firefighting equipment was unavailable. On top of this marshals and drivers were not given adequate instruction in the operation of the equipment leading to more vital moments being squandered due to their performance with the equipment being unreliable once it eventually arrived.
Despite the herculean efforts of Purley, who was awarded the George Medal for gallantry, Roger Williamson succumbed to the fire. Everything put in place to increase safety for drivers came to naught thanks to oversight and false confidence. On a side note, I urge you NOT to look up video of the accident if you’ve never borne witness to it, it’s one of the most tragic and harrowing pieces of footage in the entire history of motorsport.
This is why I talk so often and so vehemently about safety management, you can’t just put measures in place without consciously evaluating how they’re going to be used and how the systems integrate when under pressure. Why have fire extinguishers if people don’t know how to use them? What use is a communication system that is prone to failure? This is the illusion of safety, as so perfectly highlighted by Tyler Durden in Fight Club when referencing an aircraft emergency exit door procedure at 30,000 feet (yes, I know this is a largely facetious line as the procedure is in case of an emergency ground or water landing but the way it’s expressed in the movie fits.) Always detailed thought and planning should be given to safety procedures and equipment, when you look at the horrific death of Roger Williamson the simple addition of fireproof gloves he would have been saved, hell even oven gloves would have been enough for the tiny amount of time it would have taken to right the car.
Many lessons have been learned not just in motorsport but all across our lives over the years because of incidents such as this but as with everything in safety, there is always room for improvement provided that we keep our awareness, evaluation and observation levels high.
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Jonty's Corner 