A few thoughts on the death of Henry Surtees, the motor sport, safety, and our behavior as a spectator
The texts are so that you do not want to write. It is two clock in the morning, I can not sleep because I fight with a middle ear inflammation around me, and because the images of today, much more now, yesterday, Formula 2 race still going through my head. It is not the first dead body I experience in motor sports. I have noticed since my youth, but a few. Mark Höttinger, Rolf Stommelen, Manfred Winkelhock, Stefan Bellof, Ayrton Senna, Greg Moore, Dale Earnhard. Only at times to name the best known. But since a few years, it's not so bad with the dead. It used to be a season a couple of pages in every newspaper was free to vacate the death reports, today we read the very most, that a driver has died from the 50s or 60s in old age from natural causes.
After the death of Senna and of Earnhard, after several serious accidents in which many athletes did their lives or were seriously injured, it has improved security. In the meantime we have become accustomed to the driver after an accident peel torn from their carbon tanks, shake briefly, and require the replacement car. We laugh about "small departures" as would be delighted if it, like yesterday, in the WTCC goes around, or in the NASCAR someone slips along the wall, because that maintains us. And because this conversation is part of motor sport. The accident, which apparently is still in the air, because the driver's rowing at the frontiers of physics along is part of the motor sports, such as the knock on the boxes. And we know that a boxer gets up after the rain again and we also assume that one a few seconds after an accident looks like someone angrily throws his steering wheel out of the car.
Motorsport is dangerous, that's a truism, because life is dangerous. Each sport has its dangers. Whether I climb up a mountain, with a sailboat on the sea or go jump with a parachute from the plane. But these are things I do for my own pleasure. There are no cameras, no spectators and no journalists who write about it or make their photos.
In motor racing it is different. Sure, the drivers do it mostly because they want fame, glory and money. But they do it, because we watch because we pay money for it. That's perfectly fine. But maybe something is out of balance: we expect too much. And also, because accidents like the 2007 are assumed by Kubica in Canada or by McDowell, 2008 in Texas always minor. We were shocked, we have then, when we heard that the driver was ok, thought: "Wow, that was a departure times." You have to be honest, we like this stimulus. On TV.
Anyone who has experienced an accident at a race track, who knows how differently so there is an accident. As it sounds, if tire squeak, you can see the driver frantically rowing on the steering wheel when the noise is muffled by a mark, if glass is broken or carbon fiber is destroyed. You can see the speed, you can almost feel it and the stomach cramping together. "But he has been lucky," they say, even if the driver staggers out of his car just slightly dented. On television one sees and hears none of this. You only see you not feel it. And perhaps that's one reason why you dismiss accidents with a slight shrug. Why is blunted, leaving a mostly cold injuries.
Yesterday's accident was an unbelievable chain of unfortunate circumstances. If you look at the record, who can see how Surtees is still trying to hit a hook to avoid the debris. And as the direction of travel of the hook of his car just change the tire lands right on his helmet. The accident is also so tragic, because he made a seemingly unbreakable chain of coincidences was that you would like to grab nearly helpless on the word "destiny".
Mark Höttinger died on 13 April 1980 in Hockenheim. Derek Warwick had taken off, a wheel had come loose and it met the Austrians on the head. Almost 30 years later we are once again experiencing such an accident. All the improvements in security have brought little in this case, because the head is a driver in a single-seater continue unprotected. Of course we can and must discuss whether and to what will now be changed. If the circuit of Brands Hatch still relevant? If you know before the difficult position of Westfield Bend install a chicane? If you have young inexperienced drivers at all on this route? Should we only drive on routes such as Istanbul, where three square mile safety zone around every bend? Perhaps you also have to think about it, if you do not, such as dirt track racing in the U.S. customary to install a shield over the driver, can bounce off of the parts or even just one tire. This may at first seem ridiculous, but in the '50s some riders mocked those colleagues who suddenly docked a seat belt.
I do not answer the questions. There will be an investigation, it is probably the steel cables that are supposed to keep the tires on the car, trying to strengthen. Maybe you think really about a kind of cage for the driver, or has other ideas. All I know is that I race in the near future again see with different eyes. Stirling Moss is now in MS-total.com quoted the following sentence:
"The most important race is always the one that I contest today. Today I may be killed today, I can win or lose. But now the World Cup is more important than winning races. I like it not, that's not racing anymore. "
Perhaps we should anchor themselves in the memory of that sentence, and once again realize that every race is dangerous and can end with an accident like yesterday. And as a spectator and fan should see more clearly the dangers of the sport again. There is just no total security in the modern motor sport, even if we have given the number of lightly running accidents in recent years, always happy to believe Sun
PS: No analysis of the race weekend this week. It seems to me inappropriate about "exciting" race report. Is a DTM race report from me tomorrow when p1mag.de .
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