Are We That Different?
Over the Christmas season I got some time to read The Limit by Michael Cannell, which tells the story of Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips over the 1950s into the 1961 season when the two drivers were Ferrari teammates and rivals for the World Drivers' Championship.
Though sold as telling the story of "life and death on the 1961 grand prix circuit," the 1961 season is a small portion of the story, which is fine, because the story of how Hill and von Trips got to that season paints a clearer picture of who these men were and also a clearer picture of motorsports during that time period.
Their careers sprout up during motorsports' most dangerous era, earmarked with the 1955 Le Mans disaster and continuing through the 1960s with funerals occurring at a regular rate and fatal accidents occurring from Formula One to Formula Two, IndyCar to sports cars and every series in-between.
In 2020, the era of Hill, von Trips and death is held in high regard as the gold standard. It was the era of Jim Clark, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees and Bobby Unser. It was the era of the roadster to rear-engine car, turbine innovations, wing sprouting and increased speed.
When put up against that era it is done to diminish motorsports in the 21st century. The lack of danger, the lack of consequence, the lack of innovation, the lack of career diversity, what we have today is automatically viewed as lesser, today's drivers as lesser to the those who raced nearly 60 years ago.
We get the old line "back when men were men."
However, The Limit paints a different image of how the time period was perceived.
Hill was traumatized seeing the horrors of motorsports. At the 1954 Buenos Aires 1000km, Hill made an effort to remove Eric Forrest-Greene from a burning Aston Martin. Forrest-Greene would die the following day from his injuries. Already suffering from heart flutters, Hill developed an ulcer early in the 1954 season and led him to step away from racing for most of the year. He would be back in 1955 and made his Ferrari debut at Le Mans later that year.
After the infamous 1955 Le Mans accident that claimed 84 lives, Mike Hawthorn was distraught about the accident. Phil Walters stepped away from racing after Le Mans despite having won at Sebring earlier that year and having an offer to drive for Ferrari in Formula One.
Spaniard Alonso de Portago had finished second sharing a car with Peter Collins in the 1956 British Grand Prix. Portago had also contested the Carrera Panamericana, a race that was known for its lethalness to not only drivers but spectators. He was also an Olympian bobsledder and had finished third in the two-man competition at the 1957 world championships. Despite these exploits, he had no desire to run the Mille Miglia. As he put it, "there are too many places where a car can go off the road and kill a dozen people."
Once signed for Ferrari, Portago had to run the Mille Miglia and his words would tragically come true, as he lost his life spinning off the road, severing his body in half and killing nine spectators as well.
After the accident, the public pushed back on the race. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, wrote after Portago's accident:
The massacre which occurred this week confirms the responsibility of those who don't prevent other meant from exposing themselves to an atrocious death... There is an insistent demand that these racing exhibitions be prohibited because they are not necessary to the progress of the machine... All racing, which is a race to death, must be abolished.Juan Manuel Fangio stated after the race, "I shall never run in the Mille Miglia in the future because it a race that is really too dangerous. I have tired it five times, and I have always seen that risk is too great."
Under public demand to abolish the Mille Miglia and the Italian government did so after the 1957 race.
Luigi Musso died after an accident in the 1958 French Grand Prix. L'Osservatore Romano published an editorial declaring racing "a ruthless idol that demands increasingly heavy sacrifices of blood."
Peter Collins would be killed less than a month later at the German Grand Prix. Prominent German commentator Horst Peets argued in an article for Die Welt that automotive improvements through racing could no longer justify the deaths:
A number of motor sports – mostly men who are in offices, or men who represent a particular sphere of this industry – make it sound like horsepower and cylinder pressure go together with death on the racetrack the way a collar-button fastens to the collar. They take this kind of death as a function: someone must be ready to die in order for us to live a little bit better...After von Trips' fatal accident in the 1961 Italian Grand Prix, which also took the life of 14 spectators, Pope John XXIII published a statement saying, "It would be criminal to allow absurd performances of death like this to repeat themselves."
Reading about the past and then looking at the present, a time when people are still debating the safety measures in motorsports, whether or not it is necessary for IndyCar to race on ovals and drivers express disinterest in racing an IndyCar because of ovals, it doesn't sound all that different.
There was always a limit, even for heralded legends Fangio. In the 1950s, it was events like the Carrera Panamericana and the Mille Miglia. Portago expressed nerves over the Mille Miglia. It is no different then what we see now from drivers and IndyCars on ovals. Jimmie Johnson and Lewis Hamilton are not going for it.
Spectators feel the same way. There is a contingent who no longer see the appeal of IndyCar at places like Pocono, Texas and so on but will allow the Indianapolis 500 because it has survived for over a century. It is hypocritical and understandable all at once.
The one difference is many of these accidents that were condemned included spectator fatalities and that is something that has greatly decreased to the point they have almost disappeared, especially in major motorsports series. When innocent lives are taken in a form of collateral damage and are in constant danger the level of displeasure and criticism is understood. As for deaths of competitors, it is still split.
Motorsports will always be dangerous and there is always a chance of fatality for all those competing. There will always be people who not accept people doing something that can get them killed. That is fine. It is understandable that people are not ok with other people dying. That isn't some 21st century, Millennial creation. It has always been there the only difference is what death is left occurs in a form of motorsport that was once tame in comparison to what existed in the so-called golden-era.
Yes, there was death in IndyCar, Formula One and sports cars and so on but individual driver fatalities paled in comparison when multiple people were killed at once. One driver dying was easier to swallow than when a half-dozen people, most of which were not even competing, were killed.
Take away the Le Mans tragedy, the Carrera Panamericana and Mille Milega, add fuel cells, HANS devices, SAFER barriers, catchfencing and better built race cars and we are left with what we have today: A motorsports landscape where we have very few fatalities, very few serious injuries, hardly ever any incidents involving fans and what is left gets just as much attention as the horrid occurrences from almost six decades ago.
The goalposts have narrowed. There are no longer city-to-city races with high-end sports cars doing 150 MPH on residential roads with the only thing separating a Ferrari from a pack of school children being a hay bale. Without those types of incidents, other incidents that kill spectators and with a decrease in driver fatalities across the board, an accident that claims the life of one person or an accident that significantly injuries one person gets a greater level of scrutiny than it would have 60 years ago.
Those incidents just happen to frequently involve IndyCar on an oval. Although, we still have the Isle of Man TT but that seems to live on its own little island and is free from this kind of attention.
Are we that different?
No.
The golden-era was not a tougher time. People had just a strong disdain for the blood sport nature of motorsports as we have today. The heroes, who many claim no one can touch because of their fearlessness and desire to jump into anything, expressed fear and openly said what races were crazy and not worth participating in. Those drivers were just as shaken by what was happening around them as the people who spoke out against what was occurring.
Today's drivers are not weaklings. The writers are not being any more melodramatic than they were back then. The sanctioning bodies are not incompetent. The mind set is not really changing. It was always there. It is always going to be there. There will always be a crowd against activities that can take the lives of others the same way there will always be a crowd who can accept that men and women put themselves in danger doing such a thing as race automobiles and motorcycles.
What is different is motorsports is safer than it has ever been and that is a good thing. Though it is called the golden-era nobody is clamoring for it to return. Even the most brutish and stubborn of today's flock do not have the stomach for it.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about the Dakar Rally but did you know...
Maximilian Günther won the Santiago ePrix, his first career victory and he is the youngest winner in Formula E history at 22 years and 200 days old.
Eli Tomac won the Supercross race from Anaheim.
Kyle Larson won the Chili Bowl.
Liam Lawson took the first and third Toyota Racing Series races from Highlands Motorsports Park. Yuki Tsunoda won the second race of the weekend.
Coming Up This Weekend
The 24 Hours of Daytona
Rally Monte-Carlo
Supercross will be in Glendale, Arizona.
Toyota Racing Series heads to Teretonga Park.
