Jackie Stewart F1 legends question (aka is F1 too safe)

[strad]

Do you know there's a few rock climbing enthusiasts that claim that a rope pulley system for climbing takes away the "character" of climbing mountains?

It does...another emasculated activity.

[CBeck113]

Interesting discussion, but I have the feeling that the perspective has been lost a bit, so I'll toss this in:
If we want (near) perfect safety for the drivers, then they should not drive in Monte Carlo, Valencia, New Jersey or Singapour. Safest would be Tilke-tracks only. And those races tend to be sooooo exciting.

The thrill in racing is the risk, or is anyone here a fanatic syncronized swimming fan? We wait to see the drivers make mistakes, and the results of those mistakes, otherwise we can use robots instead of drivers and see the results of the engineers.
SeijaKessen has poorly stated a simple point: these drivers are being paid millions (ok, some are paying millions) to take a very well calculated risk, but it is a risk. They are aware of what they are doing and the possible results of their actions. They also realize that the technology which allows them to reach 350km/h can also fail and put them at risk. Physics and nature have determined that a human body cannot exceed a certain level of acceleration, be it positive or negative. They exceed this natural limit every time they drive.

"Wow, this track is really safe, I can relax while watching this race!" has said no racing fan EVER.

Now, instead of hacking around on a bad choice of words, let's get back to the actual topic. I believe the cars are safe enough, but they must keep up with technology, and the tracks are getting boring, aka too "safe". I want to think that what teh drivers are doing is absolutely crazy life-threatening, even if it isn't. Racing has to make me believe that, while protecting its employees and fans.

[WhiteBlue]

Do you know there's a few rock climbing enthusiasts that claim that a rope pulley system for climbing takes away the "character" of climbing mountains?

It does...another emasculated activity.

You also get the free climbing variety of sport types who do completely away with ropes. There are horses for courses as they say. It all depends of your taste and your moral criteria. Moral varies from one culture to the next. In one historical culture it was extremely rude to refuse to have sex with your host's 15 year old daughter when you were the invited guest in his tent. In most contemporary houses it would be a criminal activity. So morals change with the change of perspective.

Some of us have a bit of an archaic feel to their moral at least from my perspective. They got used to see drivers being killed in F1 every second month of the season when they grew up. So they think it was sad but their experience told them that it was also accepted in a world where millions of people had been killed in the most bloody war of human history only ten or twenty years ago. The societies were used to violent death as long as it did not invade their homes. And F1 did not do this in the fifties and sixties on a wider scale. It was a sport then and not so much a global entertainment business as it is today.

Those things changed in the seventies and eighties when TV picked up and people got confronted at their kitchen or dinner table or in their bed with the most horrific accident scenes. So the business of F1 was forced to do something about it and they mostly did with success.

I grew up in that period when it was unquestioned that something had to be done about all those dead heroes. So my instinctive feeling continues to reject acceptance of death for entertainment purposes.

[Kiril Varbanov]

These are two separate topics, IMHO - the death and the entertainment. All sensible things must be done to prevent people from dying, while keeping the sport, well, still sport. If that involves larger safety areas, I'm in for.

On the other hand, if you barely escape death in a car crash, just as I did, you start to think about safety seriously.

[Sombrero]

A question much older than F-1 itself : Is the Game worth the candle ? By Barney Oldfield, August.. 1911 !

http://books.google.ca/books?id=9t0DAAA ... cs&f=false