F1 and tragedy: Inside the devastating reality of one of the world’s most dangerous sports
Pinned on the barriers of every motor race in the UK, whether it be a national touring event or Formula One grand prix, is a caution to both the drivers in the cars and the fans in the grandstands.
Warning: Motorsport can be dangerous.
Since the turn of the century, advancements in driver safety have been monumental, particularly at the top tier of single-seater motorsport. Between 1995 and 2015, F1 experienced no fatalities, following 45 years where 32 drivers lost their lives.
But huge crashes and devastating incidents still occur. The gargantuan risk of racing at 200mph is omnipresent – and should not be overlooked.
As F1 marks 10 years since Jules Bianchi’s fatal accident at the Japanese Grand Prix, we speak to figures across the motorsport community to try and understand the full range of emotions – of shock, reflection and grief – when such tragedy occurs.
How do different groups respond to the death of a driver? What complex emotions do such incidents evoke? And how do these change over time?
Dissecting the reaction of those in F1, and feeder series F2, we take a look at four different fatal accidents and the various responses of those across the paddock.
Max Chilton remembers the moment vividly. Racing in the United States at Iowa Speedway in the 2015 Indy Lights season, the British driver had just earned his first victory, beating his teammate Ed Jones in the process.
Two days earlier, his former teammate at Marussia Racing, Bianchi, had passed away following nine months in a coma. It was F1’s first fatality since Ayrton Senna, 21 years earlier.
“I swear Jules was looking down at me,” Chilton says, reflecting a decade on from a tumultuously emotional time in his life.
“I started on pole and then my teammate got past. I was f****** angry but I had to work for the overtake and pulled it out of the bag. To this day, I feel like Jules was the welly up the back.
“I devoted the win to Jules and he pushed me on. It shocked me that he wasn’t coming back.”
The concept of ‘teammate’ is perhaps the biggest paradox within motorsport. In most sports, a teammate is primarily someone to work alongside in harmony towards a common goal. Internal competition? That comes secondary.
But in F1, particularly for a plucky outfit like Marussia destined for the back of the grid, it is ultimately what you are judged on. How do you square up to the driver on the opposite side of the garage?
Chilton, hailing from Reigate in Surrey, first shared a team with French hotshot Bianchi at the age of 12. The duo shared a podium together when racing for karting outfit Maranello in Rome and competed against each other in Formula 3 and Formula Renault.
“Jules was the greatest young driver of that time,” Chilton tells The Independent, in a profound discussion about his career. “Formula 1 is all about beating your teammate. When I did beat him, I knew I nailed it.
“But he beat me a lot more times than I beat him.”
The statistics actually say otherwise; the pair were virtually neck-and-neck over 34 races. But Chilton and Bianchi had, in the under-resourced, over-stretched Marussia, the slowest car on the grid alongside fellow backmarkers Caterham. That debut 2013 campaign bore no points. It was only Bianchi’s sumptuous drive from 21st to ninth in the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix that saw the team pick up their first top-10 finish.
By October and the Japanese Grand Prix, work was already underway behind the scenes for Bianchi to drive for Ferrari; if not in 2015, then a few years down the line. Until tragedy struck.