Of safety and sacrifice
IT took the demise of one of the world’s greatest racing drivers to forever change the face of safety in Formula One. After Ayrton Senna was laid to rest it was clear that something drastic had to be done to prevent more fatalities.
With Max Mosley and Professor Sid Watkins (a neurosurgeon) taking the lead, the cars were given a much-needed overhaul.
The most obvious change was to raise the sides of cockpits to better protect the driver’s head from obstacles and debris in the event of a crash. Other innovations included collapsible steering columns, the compulsory wearing of head and neck support devices, and far more stringent crash test evaluations — especially of the driver’s all-important carbon-fibre “survival cell”.
Much attention was also paid to the race circuits themselves. Runoff zones were extended and the number of high G-force corners reduced.
The combination of all these and many other factors had an almost immediate effect on driver safety.
Since the ill-fated San Marino Grand Prix of 1994, there have been no other deaths in Formula One, despite some fairly horrific highspeed accidents — such as those involving the Pole Robert Kubica (Montreal, 2007) and British driver Martin Brundle (Melbourne, 1996).
This is an incredible feat in a sport that claimed 36 lives between 1953 and 1994 — and one that will always be intrinsically linked to Senna. He died so that a whole new generation of young racing drivers could live. LS — Thomas Falkiner