It brings up an interesting thing to consider, in my opinion anyway xpensive.xpensive wrote:It was the beginning of a new age, though very few understood it at the time.
Nigel Roebuck after the 1981 British GP, which Watson won in John's MP4-1;
"Imagine the McLaren chassis with Ferrari's engine."
The 1982 Ferrari 126, which killed Gilles and ended Pironi's F1 career, was still an Aluminium-tub.
I would posit that the most important part of the equation as it pertains to safety in F1 --even motorsports in general-- is car design. The thing that always stood out to me in the case of many fatal F1 accidents was how the front end, or the chassis itself could not hold up to the impact with the object was the car hit.
The three most important advances was in my opinion the carbon fiber monocoque (1981) fuel tank advances, and self-sealing fuel couplings (1974).
On the track side, having adequate barrier protection from whatever lay beyond the race circuit, and tire barriers. The tarmac runoff that has become more frequent, was nothing more than overkill as usually happens.
Before someone runs in and says that Gitanes is a real heartless bastard, what I would say is so long as the risks are known beforehand to the drivers, that is all that matters. I believe in informed risk. Taking up the mantle that Mosley took up in claiming the drivers needed to be protected from themselves was the exact sort of nannying that took away a lot of the thrill from racing over the years. We went from viewing drivers as being akin to the knights of Arthurian legend, who donned their helmets and went into battle in their cars, to seeing them as an extension of glorified celebrity culture. There are no heroes left in F1 because they do not do anything heroic any longer. They can't because the sport changed in such a way that all of the things that made drivers heroic, from the danger, to the summoning of skill to provide a gallant charge to the front in overmatched machinery.
Take Monaco 2013, you had nothing more than a train circling for 70 laps. There's nothing that will ever allow us to see a replay of Gilles Villeneuve wrestling the abysmally-handling 126CK around Monaco to stay within striking distance of Alan Jones...and then when Jones suffered a fuel flow problem, he still had to fight to get past and overtook on the inside in front of the pitwall before St. Devote. The roar of the Monaco crowd when they saw Gilles in the lead is something you will never see in today's F1.
I have to laugh because everyone wants an exciting F1, but unfortunately part of the way you get an exciting F1 is to have spectre of death flitting about while guys are on the absolute limit. It adds to the appreciation of what these guys out on track are doing.
Do you think it's any mistake as to why all the F1 documentaries of the past few years have focused on the more gruesome years of F1? It's more compelling TV. Watching guys circling around a super safe track in the middle of the desert with no real risk involved is not compelling TV. You cannot get everything without sacrificing something.
Sorry for the slight divergence from the technical aspect xpensive.
