I used to have this idea that the drivers of that era had to be driving with some willful ignorance of the danger. Hearing Jackie talk about not eating a big breakfast before races because "the doctors don't like working on you when you've got a full stomach" - I found that chilling. I can understand the driver that thinks if the car gets away he's done for, but it's something else to think of a driver contemplating and preparing for an accident so bad that a surgeon's going to have to put him back together again. Say what you want about Jackie, but he knew exactly what he was getting into and yet... Gloves on, visor down... quick.
It must’ve been almost do or die for him anyway tho considering how he was treated by his peers in his childhood until racing because he was told he was an idiot and would probably never amount to anything, forget rapping about your teachers saying you’re not shit and the fact you’ve brought a white Merc to fat guy in a booth, try gambling your life for 5-6 seasons of racing with equally mad people as you
I think the way they saw it was closer to war then what racings like today they just accepted that if they mess up bad enough theyll be severely hurt or killed but to everyone involved they just accepted thats the way that it is
@@Boxscot49 And when the memories of the world wars started getting further back in the past (starting in the mid 1960s), less people remembered the horror of war and weren’t as willing to tolerate all the safety hazards in motorsport. As the younger generations grew older and more numerous, more people pushed for greater safety measures since unlike their parents or grandparents they weren’t used to mass death due to war or disease
Bob Bondurant just recently passed away, about a month ago. He was famous, of course, for his famous driving academy. Not too many drivers from that period survived long enough to die of old age. Bondurant came close to losing his life in a serious crash at Watkins Glen at the same spot where JD McDuffie was killed in a NASCAR race, but he managed to recover and continue his racing career.
My great uncle raced in Formula 3 in the late 1960s/1970 and even raced against a young Niki Lauda and Dr. Helmut Marko in Interserie (Thruxton 1970). My great aunt didn't want him racing anymore soon after he started due to how dangerous it was and he quit. He had raced in all sorts of BARC races earlier in the decade. Even at that time there were serious concerns over safety
I remember Stewart talking about that accident, especially the bit about Graham Hill, who always had that Victorian melodrama criminal's moustache (he was apparently an incredibly sweet guy, as well as brave, but his sense of humour was renowned for being rather wicked, so I am positive he grew that tache so he could twirl it), and this young man, naked in a hayloft and the shocked nuns turning up. The way he told that part in particular was fricking hilarious, because could just see Hill playing up to the scene 😆. I've always found it hard to take to Stewart in some ways - it's hard to put my finger on why, exactly - but I've always 100% admired his driving skill and his compassion for his fellow drivers and their families, pouring his heart and soul into making the racing as safe as possible. For that latter reason alone, he deserves even greater recognition than he already has, because I am damned certain that due directly to his "nagging", many more drivers got to retire than they otherwise would. Hell, even if it was "just" one driver's life, he should be recognised more for his achievement. Without him, it would have taken until Senna's death for any number of improvements to be made, and that could well have been far sooner than it tragically was, and I dread to think how many "anonymous" drivers would have died in the interim. We might not be as far down the line when it comes to safety devices now had he not started then. So I'll always tip my hat to him for that.
Just a small trivia item correction for you, regarding the bit about "Phil Hill's McLaren used as a camera car" being one of the few cars coming around to start the second lap. Phil Hill, of course, had retired from racing by 1966, and was not competing in the race. He was, on the other hand, being employed by the film production for the movie Grand Prix, being filmed during the 1966 F1 season, which was filming quite a lot of footage of the real races to include in the film. He actually had a (small) speaking role in the movie, as a barely mentioned fictional driver character. But aside from that, he played an important part in the production as the driver of a camera car, which was actually on track with the real field at times. That car was actually a heavily modified Ford GT-40, which had been stripped of bodywork to enable the mounting of a fairly elaborate bunch of framework fabricated and attached to the car to provide camera mounts for the big bulky Panavision 70mm film cameras used. There was a bit about that in some documentary on the making of the movie I saw (if memory serves, it might have been on a bonus disc of the DVD release of the movie). Phil Hill was on track when the 1966 Belgian GP got going, in the GT-40 camera car, and he told a story (in that same documentary?) about the experience of driving into effectively a wall of water on that infamous lap. A weird twist was that, while he was, understandably, directed to not get mixed up among the field (which would obviously annoy people), when they all drove into the rain, as some drivers understandably backed way off (probably much more because of visibility than grip), he decided that he was comfortable going faster than that, and he just went past. I believe he passed Dan Gurney, possibly others, and you know what's extra interesting there? The front facing camera shot showing this is IN THE ACTUAL MOVIE! By the way, as a side note about that movie. I, being an old fart now, actually went and saw Grand Prix just after its release in a theater equipped to show the full extra wide screen format, along with a state of the art for the time sound system, and I can tell you, as a young boy experiencing this with what was a fairly recently developed interest in auto racing including this mysterious European Grand Prix racing (I'm an American who first got interested in all this starting with the Indy 500), it was SPECTACULAR. It's too bad the word "awesome" has been a little devalued by overuse, because that is exactly what it was, jaw dropping stuff. (For context, this was in a time when, at least here in the US, the only television coverage we could see at the time, 1967, consisted of the races being shot on 16mm film and then edited down to a highlight reel of maybe 20 to 30 minutes and voiceover commentary added.)
Seen photos of Phil Hill in the camera car GT40, but was under the impression that he was in an old Lotus 25 with a mounted film camera for the opening laps of the Belgian GP (maybe the same as the Monaco GP)
American checking in: There has been no finer ambassador for motorsport than Jackie Stewart, ever. A possibly apocryphal story I heard was that he came to Ascot Speedway in California to call a dirt track event for ABC’s Wide World Of Sports and somebody asked him if he wanted to take a few laps in one of the cars. He demurred, saying ‘I forgot to bring a helmet and suit” , and somebody offered him said helmet and suit. His reply: ‘I forgot my balls as well’.
It was not just a dirt track event, it was CRA Sprint Cars, and I've heard stories that whenever he was in the area he made it a point to go to Ascot and watch the sprinters
@@mikewhitcomb6558 He loves it all to be sure. And track owner JC Agajinian was a towering figure in American Motorsport who’s family is still involved.
Yes, this was captured at least in part, in the film Grand Prix, the behind the scenes documentary on it explained about it, it's on the DVD release which I have, somewhere. Fascinating stuff how the movie crew were there and caught what was happening. In those days the movie crew went to the actual races and often stayed behind a few days and royally screwed up the schedule of the weekend. Also you can't mention Belgium and floods without 2021's June floods too EDIT: Yes, Phil Hill was used as a camera car, but there was at least one other as well. That film was not shy about the consequences of going off in '66-'67. If you've not seen the movie. Watch it, it is a fantastic look at the way F1 was back then. And it had a lot of the top stars in it, and the behind the scenes part is, if I recall right. The director wanted to illustrate how wet it was. So there's this shot of a stopwatch with water splashed on it. Then it cuts to, IIRC, actual race footage? I may be getting that and Le Mans mixed up but I'm 99% certain there was actual footage of how wet it was in the film EDIT #2: And, by the way. If you can find a copy of Four Wheel Drift online, it was a book that came with Grand Prix Legends and it pretty much gets across how terrifying Spa was in those days. I've heard it said cars pushed/got to/past 200 mph in '66 and '67 and definitely in 69-70 as well. 185 is still bloody terrifying, but...200 is mind blowing really. Wasn't the Masta straight downhill a little as well at points?
For a detailed and horrific look at this topic I highly recommend the BBC documentary Grand Prix: The Killer Years. The arrogance and indifference back then was astonishing. F1 killed at least one driver every year until 1976 when Niki Lauda finally beat the odds and barely survived being burned to a crisp.
Yes, I have seen this on TV in the USA, some sports channel had this documentary on it. F1 did but even worse was they said in that documentary was that worse was in F2 where it was averaging each season out to be a death per race if doing the average math during a 5 year period from 1967 to 1972.
Great video. Not enough can really be said about what Jackie Stewart has done for the sport in terms of safety. The era in which he began racing was losing several drivers a year to accidents. The children of drivers at the time were asking each other when their father was going to die, like it was a normal scheduled thing. A great quote from Jackie is that he never drove a lap of the Nurburgring more than he had to.
Just a bit of a heads up - if anyone wants to know what happens after this thing with Jackie Stewart I thoroughly recommend "life in the fast lane" by Prof Sid Watkins. I'm sure many know of this book alreyad but if you've missed it, it is a MUST read.
Just FYI, for any series other than F!, La Source still is the end of the lap at Spa, not the beginning. Sir Jackie is one of those I include in my personal list of people who have made it easy to be a motorsports fan ( along with others Like Sid Watkins, Terry Trammell & Steve Olvey, and Bob Hubbard & Jim Downing). My Dad was a racing fan way back-- starting around Fangio's time-- and I can't imagine what is was like to follow the sport when competitors died fairly often. (unfortunately, he passed away many years ago now, so I can't ask him.)
I don’t know how a lot more drivers don’t die in that era. Jackie Stuart also made a video called driving with Jackie Stuart. It was basically telling you how to rip around the country side & not attract attention. Thanks for sharing 👍🏻👍🏻🙃🙃
F1s old tombstone policy at work. Someone has to die from it before they bring in Saftey to stop it. Still happening to these days. The Halo only happened because of Bianchi( still questions of if it would have save him)
It's (almost) always like that -- unless something tragic or at least very, very serious happens, nothing changes. And if those changes require money, the odds for them to happen go down even more.
I remember an hour long doc on BBC called something like ,F1 the deadly years. Jackie Stewart had a spanner taped to his steering wheel because he couldnt get out without first removing the steering wheel😬 And burning to death in your car was horribly common. Something like 3 to 4 drivers died per season.
I think that F1 Safetybis Sir Jackie's greatest legacy. At the same time, when I look at the TT, I feel something has been lost. I don't want to see people die for entertainment, yet the shadow of Death does give 'something' - you watch a TT race, you know that on average on that weekend - someone is going to die. They go there willingly and partly because it is dangerous - like climbing Everest. Whether it's bravery or stupidity, there is something transformative about watching someone face down Death, give him the middle finger, pile on more throttle and let the fates decide the outcome. As I write this, I feel that for essentially a day job (f1) then this level of risk is unacceptable, but for something one-off and voluntary...
While Stewart was a fierce competitor he thought and acted in the best interest of the sport and drivers and not just for himself. I can't help but think we could use more gentlemen like Stewart in the sport today.
Jackie may not be the best driver to ever win an F1 Championship, but it is likely the most important. With out him it's likely we'd have seen a lot more dead drivers. Not just in F1 but in all of motor sport and the real world. Racing Safety Improvements trickle out to every place there is cars.
One of Scotland's national treasures and one of the few Scots who we can actually be proud of. Plus of course the only man qualified and with big enough balls to call out Senna's driving, shall we say, "tactics".
I remember playing a modded version of F1 challenge which had classic cars including 1960 era of Monaco and they must’ve had death wishes exiting the tunnel section due to the right left flick of a chicane that I don’t even wanna call it a chicane trying to shave off as much time as possible. Thank god motor racing takes safety first nowadays
David Hobbs used to relay and old Jack Brabham line, complete with accent, every time the weather looked bad in Belgium: “Rain at Spah? Pahk it!” At a 24 hour race at Spa in 1973, Jochen Mass’ was climbing into the car for his stint and his co-driver told him to look out for body parts at the Masta kink. Only instead of pieces of fiberglass or sheet metal, it was pieces of a marshal who had been hit by a car. Three drivers ended up dying in that one race.
FYI, Clark was running the Lotus 43 with the BRM H-16 lump at Watkins Glen in 1966. Only race that engine ever won, although Stewart managed to finish second at Spa in 1967.
Think from that time on, every works BRM raced with a spanner taped tother steering column. Only from stories like this do we realise how dangerous racing was in the 60s. I do remember that race, I realised then what a great talent Jochen Rindt was.
@@TheShockninja I’ve seen parts of that movie. Is there a Jim Clark cameo in it? It was made right after he accomplished something no driver will ever duplicate- F1 and Indianapolis 500 Champion, in the same year
@@shanestanton8 There are lots of cameos in it. Graham Hill even has a (very short) speaking part. There's one scene where there's a discussion between drivers. Graham Hill says something, and then gets up and walks to the back of the room. As he goes past Jochen Rindt, Rindt trips him up. This wasn't in the script of course.
Had to fix that track again in mid 2010's when after one weekend with last race at that track for NASCSR's Bush that is now Nationwide a drivers pit crew a for a different driver lost a leg there because of how small the walls were pit crew was allowed to be on the wall. Now how it happened was that a pissed off Kyle Bush was yet again doing something stupid drove off into the next driver's lane crushing a pit crew driver from another team because Kyle was pissed at how slow his pit time was at that race. The one pit crew person had to be rushed to the hospital while the race was red flagged during his take away by ambulance before the race resumed. The guy ended up losing a leg or part of a leg and was not able to work for the team the rest of that season but came back the next year to be in the garage crew for that team and was even the last minute Gas man for a longer oval race of at least 1.5 miles or more. NASCAR has since ban racing in top 3 divisions Cup, Nationwide, and Truck at race tracks like this with too small of pit areas behind the walls or with low walls like Mid-Ohio since these were at the time the only 3 racing series in NASCAR that do enough laps to have pit crews. Now with ARCA being bought by NSACAR, this is a different story.
I wonder if we today can really grasp the attitude of a generation who saw two world wars in as many decades. Your idea of what does and doesn't constitute "safety" has to be a bit twisted when you've seen something like that. The cool thing is, if you want to see how bad the rain at that year's Belgian GP was, all you have to do is watch the equivalent scene from Frankenheimer's movie, "Grand Prix". He filmed the race that year using helicopters and a GT40 camera car, so amazingly we don't just have footage of that race, we have it in technicolour. It's probably not a coincidence that was the last time he filmed an actual race, though. Also, just to nitpick: Clark's win at the Glen was achieved with the H16 engine, not the 2.0-litre. It was famously the only win the H16 ever managed, and in fact it wasn't even Clark's engine - he'd blown up his own in qualifying and had to start with the works team's spare engine, which wasn't expected to last a single lap. That race would make a good Story Time all on its own, come to think of it. ;)
Good old JYS, making this a sport we can enjoy. I can't imagine it would have been mainstream popular if it was still something with such a high death rate.
Difficult to imagine the sort of danger these men were living with. It affected their families as well. When you see your young son has an anxiety disorder and he asks his mother “when is daddy going to die?” That has to be a wake up call!
It would be like getting the opportunity to take a shuttle to space, knowing the risks. Cars had just started becoming that fast and I imagine the allure of that thrill would be impossible to pass up. And being one of the earliest creates legend, like we remember those who first walked on the moon.
One of things that Jackie says about the spa crash is that Hill had only just spun out. He hadn't hit anything or damaged his car in any way and could have continued if he wanted... but he didnt. Jackie was lucky that hill happened to spin right where Jackie was and saw he needed help. ua-cam.com/video/L3ojAl4rgWY/v-deo.html Note none if these cars are staged in these precarious positions.
I have heard on a Documentary on TV that in the 1960's at one point there was one death per race, especially in Formula 2 still into the 1970's and if not for Jackie Steward prompting the drivers to all boycott the most dangerous races there would not be this movement of safety by the organizations top head. I think Jackie Stewart was one of the first drivers to use a wing in the 1960's taking the idea from Indy cars racing division that had a guy racing with in 1967 an adjustable wing for Indy that later became a fixed for the season as mandated for safety for race after the wings went flying off. Now they are bolted on wings stuck in place for both Indy and F1. I know that in Indy cars Cart as it was at the time they did allow the option of wearing either a full helmet or an open helmet up to sometime in the 1980's but that it needed to be __ rated thus starting the trend for helmet crash ratings and in Formula racing the racers needed to have a full helmet starting sometime in the 1970's.
It wasn't quite that bad but it was still bad. If you look at the entries in the 1966 Belgian GP 7/19 died in racing crashes,(Rindt, Spence, Bandini, Bonnier, Siffert, Clark, Mclaren), Hulme did die in a racecar but of a heart attack. G Hill in a plane crash whilst Ginther, Brabham, Surtees, Ligier, P Hill, Gurney, Bondurant, Arundell and Wilson all lived long lives. Stewart is the only one alive it was about 50/50 in the late 60's wether you would get out alive If you look at the entries in Stewarts last GP only 3/28 died in crashes including sadly Cevert in qualifying Peterson and Revson are the other two. Indeed 14/28 are still alive to this day. the other 11 include two road crashes (Hailwood and Regazzoni two plane crashes (Hill and Pace) one did die in a racecar but of natural causes. 2 died young but not of racing reasons (Hunt and Beuttler) whilst 4 lived long lives but are now gone Lauda Amon Reutemann and Beltoise
Never forget that Jackie decided to retire from racing and had told his team boss but not his wife. He didn't want her counting down the races only for him to be killed so he kept it to himself and only told her after his last drive.
What is scary is that the 66 regulation already required all car to have an general eletric circuit-breaker operating automatically or at the disposal of the driver(Art. 296 e) of the appendix J). So they were openly driving a illegal car and no one cared about it.
Imagine a sport where the stars get killed weekly and the ptsd and the other health issues caused to the survivors of this crazy sport start an uproar by governing bodies and the general public. It's like playing russian roulette in the NFL.
I do wonder, if Stewart had died in that accident, how many more drivers would have lost their lives in the next decades because sir Jackie would not have been such an essential figure in F1 safety.
Should've been a rolling start both times in '94 but both parts of the race began from a standing start Belgium 1997 was the first race to begin under the SC
They didn't like to do the rolling start because that was "something Americans did." It would be interesting to see a standing start in an IndyCar race, or even a NASCAR race, on a road course. I don't think it could be done on an oval.
@@RRaquello Indycar could probably do standing starts but I don't think nascar could because their fields are so large that the cars would either be lining up 3-4 wide on the super speedways/road circuits or in the case of short tracks there's the potential for the front half of the field to "catch up" to the stragglers at the back within a lap or two which would cause utter chaos.
Wonder what the director of Grand Prix '66 John Frankenheimer must have thought, at least when he saw all those wrecked race-cars on that weekend, also if you minus Jean-Pierre Sarti crash near the end of the race (which I think was scripted)?.
Safety? Look at Klematski's picture of Fangio 'riding' the Maserati to victory at the 1957 German GP, shellac helmet, polo shirt and no harness. He was very lucky at Le Mans 1955.
Pyrelli keep bragging about how much water their tyres can handle and how they improved that number but as a result all the water that those tyres encounter is thrown up as spray and nowadays we are way more likely to see a race stopped because of spray rather than because of too much standing water so it’s probably better is pyrelli reduces how much water the tyres throw up
Mad how lax they were about safety. I suppose to start with these men had just come back from war so a bit of speed is nothing to them. As the cars got quicker you'd think they'd updatr the circuits. Le mans 1955 a driver and 83 spectators were killed they just carried on w the race.
@@graemeadamson7272 You said yourself you "Had to stop watching after a minute due to the ridiculous background music" so I was interested in knowing what your problem with it was. Its not that deep and I'm not sure what was the need for the snarky response.
Still don't understand why you need to know , but if it helps you - I find it extremely irritating . There is simply no need for the ridiculous background music . I will not be watching anymore of this content. Snarky ??
“Former US Vice President Mike Spence” are you taking the piss? I know your humor on that side of the pond is a bit more dry than in the US, but I don’t get it. Mike Pence was a Vice President and never a racing driver. Mike Spence was a racing driver who actually died testing in 1968.
I used to have this idea that the drivers of that era had to be driving with some willful ignorance of the danger. Hearing Jackie talk about not eating a big breakfast before races because "the doctors don't like working on you when you've got a full stomach" - I found that chilling. I can understand the driver that thinks if the car gets away he's done for, but it's something else to think of a driver contemplating and preparing for an accident so bad that a surgeon's going to have to put him back together again. Say what you want about Jackie, but he knew exactly what he was getting into and yet... Gloves on, visor down... quick.
Jackie was shouting about the risks while going head on into them. Balls of steel
It must’ve been almost do or die for him anyway tho considering how he was treated by his peers in his childhood until racing because he was told he was an idiot and would probably never amount to anything, forget rapping about your teachers saying you’re not shit and the fact you’ve brought a white Merc to fat guy in a booth, try gambling your life for 5-6 seasons of racing with equally mad people as you
I think the way they saw it was closer to war then what racings like today they just accepted that if they mess up bad enough theyll be severely hurt or killed but to everyone involved they just accepted thats the way that it is
@@Boxscot49 yeh man I can see that too as it was still fairly shortly after the war, still insane tho
@@Boxscot49 And when the memories of the world wars started getting further back in the past (starting in the mid 1960s), less people remembered the horror of war and weren’t as willing to tolerate all the safety hazards in motorsport. As the younger generations grew older and more numerous, more people pushed for greater safety measures since unlike their parents or grandparents they weren’t used to mass death due to war or disease
Bob Bondurant just recently passed away, about a month ago. He was famous, of course, for his famous driving academy. Not too many drivers from that period survived long enough to die of old age. Bondurant came close to losing his life in a serious crash at Watkins Glen at the same spot where JD McDuffie was killed in a NASCAR race, but he managed to recover and continue his racing career.
My great uncle raced in Formula 3 in the late 1960s/1970 and even raced against a young Niki Lauda and Dr. Helmut Marko in Interserie (Thruxton 1970). My great aunt didn't want him racing anymore soon after he started due to how dangerous it was and he quit. He had raced in all sorts of BARC races earlier in the decade. Even at that time there were serious concerns over safety
I started watching racing about the middle of the 1980s. Still amazing to me what was considered normal in the 60s and through the 70s.
There's a lot we have Bernie to thank for.
I remember Stewart talking about that accident, especially the bit about Graham Hill, who always had that Victorian melodrama criminal's moustache (he was apparently an incredibly sweet guy, as well as brave, but his sense of humour was renowned for being rather wicked, so I am positive he grew that tache so he could twirl it), and this young man, naked in a hayloft and the shocked nuns turning up. The way he told that part in particular was fricking hilarious, because could just see Hill playing up to the scene 😆.
I've always found it hard to take to Stewart in some ways - it's hard to put my finger on why, exactly - but I've always 100% admired his driving skill and his compassion for his fellow drivers and their families, pouring his heart and soul into making the racing as safe as possible. For that latter reason alone, he deserves even greater recognition than he already has, because I am damned certain that due directly to his "nagging", many more drivers got to retire than they otherwise would.
Hell, even if it was "just" one driver's life, he should be recognised more for his achievement. Without him, it would have taken until Senna's death for any number of improvements to be made, and that could well have been far sooner than it tragically was, and I dread to think how many "anonymous" drivers would have died in the interim. We might not be as far down the line when it comes to safety devices now had he not started then. So I'll always tip my hat to him for that.
Senna wouldn't even have been around to die as he would probably have been killed in F3 if it wasn't for Jackies 'nagging'
Just a small trivia item correction for you, regarding the bit about "Phil Hill's McLaren used as a camera car" being one of the few cars coming around to start the second lap.
Phil Hill, of course, had retired from racing by 1966, and was not competing in the race. He was, on the other hand, being employed by the film production for the movie Grand Prix, being filmed during the 1966 F1 season, which was filming quite a lot of footage of the real races to include in the film. He actually had a (small) speaking role in the movie, as a barely mentioned fictional driver character. But aside from that, he played an important part in the production as the driver of a camera car, which was actually on track with the real field at times.
That car was actually a heavily modified Ford GT-40, which had been stripped of bodywork to enable the mounting of a fairly elaborate bunch of framework fabricated and attached to the car to provide camera mounts for the big bulky Panavision 70mm film cameras used. There was a bit about that in some documentary on the making of the movie I saw (if memory serves, it might have been on a bonus disc of the DVD release of the movie).
Phil Hill was on track when the 1966 Belgian GP got going, in the GT-40 camera car, and he told a story (in that same documentary?) about the experience of driving into effectively a wall of water on that infamous lap. A weird twist was that, while he was, understandably, directed to not get mixed up among the field (which would obviously annoy people), when they all drove into the rain, as some drivers understandably backed way off (probably much more because of visibility than grip), he decided that he was comfortable going faster than that, and he just went past. I believe he passed Dan Gurney, possibly others, and you know what's extra interesting there? The front facing camera shot showing this is IN THE ACTUAL MOVIE!
By the way, as a side note about that movie. I, being an old fart now, actually went and saw Grand Prix just after its release in a theater equipped to show the full extra wide screen format, along with a state of the art for the time sound system, and I can tell you, as a young boy experiencing this with what was a fairly recently developed interest in auto racing including this mysterious European Grand Prix racing (I'm an American who first got interested in all this starting with the Indy 500), it was SPECTACULAR. It's too bad the word "awesome" has been a little devalued by overuse, because that is exactly what it was, jaw dropping stuff. (For context, this was in a time when, at least here in the US, the only television coverage we could see at the time, 1967, consisted of the races being shot on 16mm film and then edited down to a highlight reel of maybe 20 to 30 minutes and voiceover commentary added.)
Seen photos of Phil Hill in the camera car GT40, but was under the impression that he was in an old Lotus 25 with a mounted film camera for the opening laps of the Belgian GP (maybe the same as the Monaco GP)
According to Peter Windsor, John Surtees's drive was the single greatest individual performance he has ever seen.
American checking in: There has been no finer ambassador for motorsport than Jackie Stewart, ever.
A possibly apocryphal story I heard was that he came to Ascot Speedway in California to call a dirt track event for ABC’s Wide World Of Sports and somebody asked him if he wanted to take a few laps in one of the cars.
He demurred, saying ‘I forgot to bring a helmet and suit” , and somebody offered him said helmet and suit.
His reply: ‘I forgot my balls as well’.
It was not just a dirt track event, it was CRA Sprint Cars, and I've heard stories that whenever he was in the area he made it a point to go to Ascot and watch the sprinters
@@mikewhitcomb6558
He loves it all to be sure. And track owner JC Agajinian was a towering figure in American Motorsport who’s family is still involved.
Yes, this was captured at least in part, in the film Grand Prix, the behind the scenes documentary on it explained about it, it's on the DVD release which I have, somewhere. Fascinating stuff how the movie crew were there and caught what was happening. In those days the movie crew went to the actual races and often stayed behind a few days and royally screwed up the schedule of the weekend.
Also you can't mention Belgium and floods without 2021's June floods too
EDIT: Yes, Phil Hill was used as a camera car, but there was at least one other as well. That film was not shy about the consequences of going off in '66-'67. If you've not seen the movie. Watch it, it is a fantastic look at the way F1 was back then. And it had a lot of the top stars in it, and the behind the scenes part is, if I recall right. The director wanted to illustrate how wet it was. So there's this shot of a stopwatch with water splashed on it. Then it cuts to, IIRC, actual race footage? I may be getting that and Le Mans mixed up but I'm 99% certain there was actual footage of how wet it was in the film
EDIT #2: And, by the way. If you can find a copy of Four Wheel Drift online, it was a book that came with Grand Prix Legends and it pretty much gets across how terrifying Spa was in those days. I've heard it said cars pushed/got to/past 200 mph in '66 and '67 and definitely in 69-70 as well. 185 is still bloody terrifying, but...200 is mind blowing really. Wasn't the Masta straight downhill a little as well at points?
For a detailed and horrific look at this topic I highly recommend the BBC documentary Grand Prix: The Killer Years. The arrogance and indifference back then was astonishing. F1 killed at least one driver every year until 1976 when Niki Lauda finally beat the odds and barely survived being burned to a crisp.
Yes, I have seen this on TV in the USA, some sports channel had this documentary on it. F1 did but even worse was they said in that documentary was that worse was in F2 where it was averaging each season out to be a death per race if doing the average math during a 5 year period from 1967 to 1972.
Actually no one was killed in 1972 in F1 or 1965 or 1963 or 1956 or 1950-1953. More by luck than anything else.
@@caseysmith544 That's complete rubbish. Clark died in 1968 in a F2 race and Gerhard Mittler in 1969 but thats it for the time period.
Great video. Not enough can really be said about what Jackie Stewart has done for the sport in terms of safety. The era in which he began racing was losing several drivers a year to accidents. The children of drivers at the time were asking each other when their father was going to die, like it was a normal scheduled thing.
A great quote from Jackie is that he never drove a lap of the Nurburgring more than he had to.
Just a bit of a heads up - if anyone wants to know what happens after this thing with Jackie Stewart I thoroughly recommend "life in the fast lane" by Prof Sid Watkins. I'm sure many know of this book alreyad but if you've missed it, it is a MUST read.
I think you mean "Life at the Limit." Yes, it is a book that every F1 fan should read. He also wrote a sequel, "Beyond the Limit."
Just FYI, for any series other than F!, La Source still is the end of the lap at Spa, not the beginning.
Sir Jackie is one of those I include in my personal list of people who have made it easy to be a motorsports fan ( along with others Like Sid Watkins, Terry Trammell & Steve Olvey, and Bob Hubbard & Jim Downing). My Dad was a racing fan way back-- starting around Fangio's time-- and I can't imagine what is was like to follow the sport when competitors died fairly often. (unfortunately, he passed away many years ago now, so I can't ask him.)
I don’t know how a lot more drivers don’t die in that era. Jackie Stuart also made a video called driving with Jackie Stuart. It was basically telling you how to rip around the country side & not attract attention. Thanks for sharing
👍🏻👍🏻🙃🙃
The accident was horrifying and luckily no-one was hurt. But without it there would have been many driver deaths and injuries
F1s old tombstone policy at work. Someone has to die from it before they bring in Saftey to stop it.
Still happening to these days. The Halo only happened because of Bianchi( still questions of if it would have save him)
It's (almost) always like that -- unless something tragic or at least very, very serious happens, nothing changes. And if those changes require money, the odds for them to happen go down even more.
I remember an hour long doc on BBC called something like ,F1 the deadly years.
Jackie Stewart had a spanner taped to his steering wheel because he couldnt get out without first removing the steering wheel😬
And burning to death in your car was horribly common.
Something like 3 to 4 drivers died per season.
Excellent. This might be your best video ever, mate. This is your magnum opus.
I think that F1 Safetybis Sir Jackie's greatest legacy.
At the same time, when I look at the TT, I feel something has been lost. I don't want to see people die for entertainment, yet the shadow of Death does give 'something' - you watch a TT race, you know that on average on that weekend - someone is going to die.
They go there willingly and partly because it is dangerous - like climbing Everest.
Whether it's bravery or stupidity, there is something transformative about watching someone face down Death, give him the middle finger, pile on more throttle and let the fates decide the outcome.
As I write this, I feel that for essentially a day job (f1) then this level of risk is unacceptable, but for something one-off and voluntary...
If this topic interests the younger viewers, I highly recommend the movie “Gran Prix”. Simply one of the greatest race car movies ever made!
Cheers!
While Stewart was a fierce competitor he thought and acted in the best interest of the sport and drivers and not just for himself. I can't help but think we could use more gentlemen like Stewart in the sport today.
Not forgetting the 1998 race which started in wet conditions and there was carnage in front of the old pits
Sir Jackie is my personal all-time hero.
Thank you Aidan. Very entertaining content. BTW, I like what you have done with your hair style. You have a nice wave going on the top.
Should just shave it off😂😂
Billy Connolly would call it the Arthur scargill look
Jackie may not be the best driver to ever win an F1 Championship, but it is likely the most important. With out him it's likely we'd have seen a lot more dead drivers. Not just in F1 but in all of motor sport and the real world. Racing Safety Improvements trickle out to every place there is cars.
One of Scotland's national treasures and one of the few Scots who we can actually be proud of. Plus of course the only man qualified and with big enough balls to call out Senna's driving, shall we say, "tactics".
my favourite channel to watch at 4am :)
I remember playing a modded version of F1 challenge which had classic cars including 1960 era of Monaco and they must’ve had death wishes exiting the tunnel section due to the right left flick of a chicane that I don’t even wanna call it a chicane trying to shave off as much time as possible. Thank god motor racing takes safety first nowadays
@Alex Irizarry I believe so
It was like 2019/2020
David Hobbs used to relay and old Jack Brabham line, complete with accent, every time the weather looked bad in Belgium: “Rain at Spah? Pahk it!”
At a 24 hour race at Spa in 1973, Jochen Mass’ was climbing into the car for his stint and his co-driver told him to look out for body parts at the Masta kink. Only instead of pieces of fiberglass or sheet metal, it was pieces of a marshal who had been hit by a car. Three drivers ended up dying in that one race.
Dear lord, that was so callous! I frankly don't know what else to say without launching into a tirade.
Made of sterner stuff back then. Jesus.
FYI, Clark was running the Lotus 43 with the BRM H-16 lump at Watkins Glen in 1966. Only race that engine ever won, although Stewart managed to finish second at Spa in 1967.
Think from that time on, every works BRM raced with a spanner taped tother steering column. Only from stories like this do we realise how dangerous racing was in the 60s. I do remember that race, I realised then what a great talent Jochen Rindt was.
Oh nice one Aidan, another good one for me to watch
Isn’t ‘66 the year that Hollywood followed the teams from track to track to make its first big budget movie about F1?
Yes it is. Grand Prix was released that year, directed by John Frankenheimer.
@@TheShockninja I’ve seen parts of that movie. Is there a Jim Clark cameo in it? It was made right after he accomplished something no driver will ever duplicate- F1 and Indianapolis 500 Champion, in the same year
Indeed Clark does have a you-blink-you-miss-it cameo late in the film before the GP at Brands Hatch.
@@shanestanton8 There are lots of cameos in it. Graham Hill even has a (very short) speaking part. There's one scene where there's a discussion between drivers. Graham Hill says something, and then gets up and walks to the back of the room. As he goes past Jochen Rindt, Rindt trips him up. This wasn't in the script of course.
Stewart raced at Mid-Ohio and they made a lot of safety changes to the track after that one weekend.
Had to fix that track again in mid 2010's when after one weekend with last race at that track for NASCSR's Bush that is now Nationwide a drivers pit crew a for a different driver lost a leg there because of how small the walls were pit crew was allowed to be on the wall. Now how it happened was that a pissed off Kyle Bush was yet again doing something stupid drove off into the next driver's lane crushing a pit crew driver from another team because Kyle was pissed at how slow his pit time was at that race. The one pit crew person had to be rushed to the hospital while the race was red flagged during his take away by ambulance before the race resumed. The guy ended up losing a leg or part of a leg and was not able to work for the team the rest of that season but came back the next year to be in the garage crew for that team and was even the last minute Gas man for a longer oval race of at least 1.5 miles or more. NASCAR has since ban racing in top 3 divisions Cup, Nationwide, and Truck at race tracks like this with too small of pit areas behind the walls or with low walls like Mid-Ohio since these were at the time the only 3 racing series in NASCAR that do enough laps to have pit crews. Now with ARCA being bought by NSACAR, this is a different story.
Great story. Thanks!!
Lewis, getting a penalty for gaining an advantage? How times have changed...
Louis Stanley never gets enough (if any credit) for bringing F1 safety standards into the 20th Century.
I wonder if we today can really grasp the attitude of a generation who saw two world wars in as many decades. Your idea of what does and doesn't constitute "safety" has to be a bit twisted when you've seen something like that. The cool thing is, if you want to see how bad the rain at that year's Belgian GP was, all you have to do is watch the equivalent scene from Frankenheimer's movie, "Grand Prix". He filmed the race that year using helicopters and a GT40 camera car, so amazingly we don't just have footage of that race, we have it in technicolour. It's probably not a coincidence that was the last time he filmed an actual race, though.
Also, just to nitpick: Clark's win at the Glen was achieved with the H16 engine, not the 2.0-litre. It was famously the only win the H16 ever managed, and in fact it wasn't even Clark's engine - he'd blown up his own in qualifying and had to start with the works team's spare engine, which wasn't expected to last a single lap. That race would make a good Story Time all on its own, come to think of it. ;)
You tell that story better than sir Jackie
Good old JYS, making this a sport we can enjoy. I can't imagine it would have been mainstream popular if it was still something with such a high death rate.
Good atuff. More of a similar vein please. 😊👍👍
awesome video
Difficult to imagine the sort of danger these men were living with. It affected their families as well. When you see your young son has an anxiety disorder and he asks his mother “when is daddy going to die?” That has to be a wake up call!
If I'm not mistaken, Clark won at the Glen with the BRM H-16, not a 2 liter engine.
Apparently, in the early days they thought a bit like fighter pilots-they just accepted that they were going to lose some people
It would be like getting the opportunity to take a shuttle to space, knowing the risks. Cars had just started becoming that fast and I imagine the allure of that thrill would be impossible to pass up. And being one of the earliest creates legend, like we remember those who first walked on the moon.
When we are talking about Wet Belgium GP... how can you not mention 1998 and THAT crash
If I remember rightly that incident was also written very amusingly in Graham Hill's Autobiography " Life at the limit"
Another awesome video, thank you !
I’d love to see a Stewart/Grosjean interview
Thanks for bring the past to life....
One of things that Jackie says about the spa crash is that Hill had only just spun out. He hadn't hit anything or damaged his car in any way and could have continued if he wanted... but he didnt. Jackie was lucky that hill happened to spin right where Jackie was and saw he needed help.
ua-cam.com/video/L3ojAl4rgWY/v-deo.html
Note none if these cars are staged in these precarious positions.
I have a small tattoo of Jackie on my back because he’s had it since before I was born
It was just a farce and Jackie got lucky that the car didn't catch on fire.
I have heard on a Documentary on TV that in the 1960's at one point there was one death per race, especially in Formula 2 still into the 1970's and if not for Jackie Steward prompting the drivers to all boycott the most dangerous races there would not be this movement of safety by the organizations top head. I think Jackie Stewart was one of the first drivers to use a wing in the 1960's taking the idea from Indy cars racing division that had a guy racing with in 1967 an adjustable wing for Indy that later became a fixed for the season as mandated for safety for race after the wings went flying off. Now they are bolted on wings stuck in place for both Indy and F1. I know that in Indy cars Cart as it was at the time they did allow the option of wearing either a full helmet or an open helmet up to sometime in the 1980's but that it needed to be __ rated thus starting the trend for helmet crash ratings and in Formula racing the racers needed to have a full helmet starting sometime in the 1970's.
It wasn't quite that bad but it was still bad. If you look at the entries in the 1966 Belgian GP 7/19 died in racing crashes,(Rindt, Spence, Bandini, Bonnier, Siffert, Clark, Mclaren), Hulme did die in a racecar but of a heart attack. G Hill in a plane crash whilst Ginther, Brabham, Surtees, Ligier, P Hill, Gurney, Bondurant, Arundell and Wilson all lived long lives. Stewart is the only one alive it was about 50/50 in the late 60's wether you would get out alive
If you look at the entries in Stewarts last GP only 3/28 died in crashes including sadly Cevert in qualifying Peterson and Revson are the other two. Indeed 14/28 are still alive to this day. the other 11 include two road crashes (Hailwood and Regazzoni two plane crashes (Hill and Pace) one did die in a racecar but of natural causes. 2 died young but not of racing reasons (Hunt and Beuttler) whilst 4 lived long lives but are now gone Lauda Amon Reutemann and Beltoise
Never forget that Jackie decided to retire from racing and had told his team boss but not his wife. He didn't want her counting down the races only for him to be killed so he kept it to himself and only told her after his last drive.
That nun moment - or, when prudence gets prioritised over compassion. It would have been funny, if it wasn't so scary.
You didn't mention Seaman's fatal crash at Spa in 1939 !
I'd rather be alive and be called a tw@t than be dead and not remembered at all .
The ones that are dead are remembered More
What is scary is that the 66 regulation already required all car to have an general eletric circuit-breaker operating automatically or at the disposal of the driver(Art. 296 e) of the appendix J). So they were openly driving a illegal car and no one cared about it.
Imagine a sport where the stars get killed weekly and the ptsd and the other health issues caused to the survivors of this crazy sport start an uproar by governing bodies and the general public. It's like playing russian roulette in the NFL.
I do wonder, if Stewart had died in that accident, how many more drivers would have lost their lives in the next decades because sir Jackie would not have been such an essential figure in F1 safety.
bails of hay for walls is where indycar got the idea for the softer walls at the indy 500.
Wasn’t the Japanese GP 1994 the first F1 race started behind a safety car? And also the first ever rolling start?
Admittedly, the safety car-led rolling start was technically a “restart” of the race; but does it still not count?
Should've been a rolling start both times in '94 but both parts of the race began from a standing start
Belgium 1997 was the first race to begin under the SC
They didn't like to do the rolling start because that was "something Americans did." It would be interesting to see a standing start in an IndyCar race, or even a NASCAR race, on a road course. I don't think it could be done on an oval.
@@RRaquello
Indycar could probably do standing starts but I don't think nascar could because their fields are so large that the cars would either be lining up 3-4 wide on the super speedways/road circuits or in the case of short tracks there's the potential for the front half of the field to "catch up" to the stragglers at the back within a lap or two which would cause utter chaos.
Wonder what the director of Grand Prix '66 John Frankenheimer must have thought, at least when he saw all those wrecked race-cars on that weekend, also if you minus Jean-Pierre Sarti crash near the end of the race (which I think was scripted)?.
You should add more images when talking about a specific topic
You wanna pay for them?
Safety? Look at Klematski's picture of Fangio 'riding' the Maserati to victory at the 1957 German GP, shellac helmet, polo shirt and no harness. He was very lucky at Le Mans 1955.
Wow
How inept were the Belgium police to lose THE DAM AMBULANCE WITH A F1 DRIVER IN IT
boy I'm... early
Aren't we all, brother
Pyrelli keep bragging about how much water their tyres can handle and how they improved that number but as a result all the water that those tyres encounter is thrown up as spray and nowadays we are way more likely to see a race stopped because of spray rather than because of too much standing water so it’s probably better is pyrelli reduces how much water the tyres throw up
If they threw up less water the cars would just be aquaplaning everywhere because they HAVE to shift that much water.
Mad how lax they were about safety. I suppose to start with these men had just come back from war so a bit of speed is nothing to them. As the cars got quicker you'd think they'd updatr the circuits.
Le mans 1955 a driver and 83 spectators were killed they just carried on w the race.
Yeah,,,, I would _still_ get in one of those old cars and give it the what-for.
Stay the hell away from my Isle of Man.
The most Clark-thing ever
Ah sir Jackie. The one notably absent from the GOAT debate.
Does that amuse you?
@@deezynar a little. The case can be made for Stewart being the most important figure in the history of Motorsport.
He's certainly made a certain fanbase rather irate. Certainly
@@heliumtrophy yeah they make alot of noise.
He's a great driver, but he himself would be the first to say that Jim Clark was better than him
I started watching racing in 700 BC with the chariots of ancient Athens, I couldn't believe how dangerous it was.
Had to stop watching after a minute due to the ridiculous background music . Why ?????
That music is in several of his videos. What exactly is the problem?
I don't really see what concern it is if yours
Of yours . My opinion and he m sticking with it. Thanks .
@@graemeadamson7272 You said yourself you "Had to stop watching after a minute due to the ridiculous background music" so I was interested in knowing what your problem with it was. Its not that deep and I'm not sure what was the need for the snarky response.
Still don't understand why you need to know , but if it helps you - I find it extremely irritating . There is simply no need for the ridiculous background music . I will not be watching anymore of this content.
Snarky ??
“Former US Vice President Mike Spence” are you taking the piss? I know your humor on that side of the pond is a bit more dry than in the US, but I don’t get it. Mike Pence was a Vice President and never a racing driver. Mike Spence was a racing driver who actually died testing in 1968.
You dense fella
third 😁
546th after a ten second penalty.
Sorry.
@@anonincognito617 😂