Dan Wheldon died tragically this weekend in the final round of the Indy car series at Las Vegas. It seems pointless to pass on my condolences to his family since I am fairly certain that they don't read my blog, but needless to say it is terrible news and news that I can't imagine having to recieve.
There seem to be two extremees of what to do about death in motorsport. No matter what we do there will always be the risk of people getting killed racing cars. When it comes down to it, motor racing is about doing fairly unwise things in machines that are designed to be as fast as possible, not as safe as possible. That being said there are people that believe that death should be present in motor racing in order to give some sort of assurance that what drivers are doing is not only bloody skillful but also bloody brave. Hemingway said "there are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." And I get his point. These drivers we watch every week are bloody brave because they could get killed in some pretty frightening ways. I think that I am not exagerating when I say that there is also a lot of hero worship that goes on surrounding drivers that died on the track. Would Gilles Villeneuve be so well remembered if he didn't die on the track but instead went on to never win a world title. I don't mean to sound insulting to Villeneuve, I am just questioning the mentality of us fans. No doubt he was good, but do we give him more credit simply because he died. Most people wouldn't hesitate to say that Senna was better than Prost but both drivers won a title when they had each other as team mates and people are much quicker to ermember the dirty antics of living Schumacher than the dead Senna. Again, I think that we quick to want to create a hero out of people for dying while racing.
The other end of the arguement of course is that any death in motorsport is a terrible thing. I happen to like most of the drivers in Formula 1 at the moment and I don't particularly want to see any of them die in front of me. It has only happened a couple of times that I thought a driver wasn't going to come out of a wreck with the heart still pumping. Robert Kubica in Montreal and Luciano Burti in Spa in 2001. Tony Stewart said it best when asked by a reporter if he thought that Nascar should be more dangerous. I suggest you look it up on YouTube because I can't say it as well as him. What he said in effect (in a way that only Tony Stewart can) was that maybe they should cut the legs of the reporters chairs so that they could fall off and cause some entertainment for everyone. In other words, how the hell would you like it if your job was made intentionally dangerous in order to give everyone a kick.
As fans we need to remember that these drivers we watch are brave on the one hand, but on the other they are humans not heroes. They are humans with families and friends. The more that can be done to make sure they get home safe to their families and friends the better.
There seem to be two extremees of what to do about death in motorsport. No matter what we do there will always be the risk of people getting killed racing cars. When it comes down to it, motor racing is about doing fairly unwise things in machines that are designed to be as fast as possible, not as safe as possible. That being said there are people that believe that death should be present in motor racing in order to give some sort of assurance that what drivers are doing is not only bloody skillful but also bloody brave. Hemingway said "there are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." And I get his point. These drivers we watch every week are bloody brave because they could get killed in some pretty frightening ways. I think that I am not exagerating when I say that there is also a lot of hero worship that goes on surrounding drivers that died on the track. Would Gilles Villeneuve be so well remembered if he didn't die on the track but instead went on to never win a world title. I don't mean to sound insulting to Villeneuve, I am just questioning the mentality of us fans. No doubt he was good, but do we give him more credit simply because he died. Most people wouldn't hesitate to say that Senna was better than Prost but both drivers won a title when they had each other as team mates and people are much quicker to ermember the dirty antics of living Schumacher than the dead Senna. Again, I think that we quick to want to create a hero out of people for dying while racing.
The other end of the arguement of course is that any death in motorsport is a terrible thing. I happen to like most of the drivers in Formula 1 at the moment and I don't particularly want to see any of them die in front of me. It has only happened a couple of times that I thought a driver wasn't going to come out of a wreck with the heart still pumping. Robert Kubica in Montreal and Luciano Burti in Spa in 2001. Tony Stewart said it best when asked by a reporter if he thought that Nascar should be more dangerous. I suggest you look it up on YouTube because I can't say it as well as him. What he said in effect (in a way that only Tony Stewart can) was that maybe they should cut the legs of the reporters chairs so that they could fall off and cause some entertainment for everyone. In other words, how the hell would you like it if your job was made intentionally dangerous in order to give everyone a kick.
As fans we need to remember that these drivers we watch are brave on the one hand, but on the other they are humans not heroes. They are humans with families and friends. The more that can be done to make sure they get home safe to their families and friends the better.
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