Jackie Stewart knows what he's talking about. He raced at a time when the average F1 driver had a 1 in 3 chance of dying during a race weekend and lost one of his dearest friends & teammate Francois Cevert to a horrific accident at Watkins Glenn in 1973 after which he retired and became a thorn in the FIA's side by co-founding the Formula One Drivers Association whose sole purpose was to push for safety improvements in F1 both for tracks and cars. He helped make F1 a safer form of racing.
This is a man who knows what it is like to lose good friends to accidents in motorsport. When it has come to safety advocacy, Jackie is second to none.
To all the ppl calling him a "arrogant European", he isn't saying anything that the Indycar drivers themselves weren't already saying BEFORE the race at Las Vegas. None wanted that race but did it anyway bc they were loyal to the series. But none of them were happy about it. Too many cars on a short high-banked track. Not a good decision at all to race there with open wheel cars.
Jackie made racing safer without being a nanny or a hand wringing whiner. Jackie did what he did from his heart and a true love of Formula-1 racing. A true Man among Men.
Absolutely, about Jackie but Nobody could survive Dan's crash. It happened because of dirty air. By that, I mean that the combination of the wings with the number of cars, makes the bad crash inevitable. Indy ran 230 in qualifying but they don't ever race as fast as they qualify. They put in just enough fuel to go 4 laps and remove all that isn't essential but where the car will still pass tech. I have only been to indy once, 1981. They were running well older 200 in qualifying. W had tickets on pit road and still couldn't tell which car it was till they slowed down. Like I said earlier. Nobody has really cared as much about indy as they did when guys got their ride because they could run sprints, midgets, etc. When the car owners broke from USAC so they could run all road courses the Indy cars sarted losing fans. Actually, the fans disappeared when the rear engine cars came into style and owners wouldn't hire a US driver without road course experience and there is no way to get the experience, unless you had rich parents, IE:Andretti, Unser.
Thank you for the upload. I'll get this in before anyone's tempted to troll. Jackie Stewart's opinion comes from his experience. If you want to see where this comes from, search for, and watch "BBC Grand Prix - The Killer Years". Watch it all, and see how far we've come, and realise how far we have to go. Then post. RIP Dan. You were a wonderful ambassador for British motorsport.
Jackie Stewart is an icon in motor racing . The keys very smart man when it comes to things like this . And he perfectly understands the reasons it happen
Well said, Jackie Stewart and Francois Cevert were really good mates. When Cevert was killed Stewart had raced 99 GP races. He never raced again after his friends death.In those days F1 racing claimed many lives. RIP Francois Cevert.
It's scary to read some of the comments below me, just how ill-informed, uneducated & over-opinionated on motorsport can some individuals be...??? I'll stick with & agree 100% with a guy who's been there..done it..seen it..won it..all at first hand...Sir JYS.
The main difference between Indy and Las Vegas, Indy actually has 4 turns. Vegas along with most other ovals are true ovals. An oval is actually egg shaped. The one thing that he forgot to mention is Indy cars aren't the ultimate goal for racers here. Very few racers start out on asphalt road courses. Instead they are running either sprint cars or some type of late model on dirt. The main problem with our racing as compared to UK racing is we want to race every week and there isn't enough money to support that much racing if you travel. I am 65 and have seen the popularity of Indy cars totally do a 180 for lack of American drivers. Indy has raced under the banners of USAC, CART, Indy racing league and now the Izod indy cars. I can see how an owner like Roger penske or the half dozen billionaires that it takes, would be skeptical on taking a chance on a driver with little or no experience. Everybody has their own favorite type car but there are probably some form of bomber class first, then sprint cars. Back to the point. You can't expect a successful season when you can't have race teams that can afford to travel. Road racing never has been as popular as oval track racing because for years you got your ride by working your way up through the ranks. When you only have a half dozen owners that can afford travel expenses, let alone field a team, there is not road racing circuit that will survive. Now, the drivers want to prove what they can do. They pick the most dangerous car there is, a sprint car, win a ton of races. Find your own sponsor, then go to an owner and ask to drive his car. Every year there are winning drivers that are replaced in NASCAR even, because the owners and sponsors want a young driver to represent their product. I don't see any way of saving Indy car racing in the US. I live in central oklahoma. The next closest oval track is Texas, next kansas city, these are 300 miles from where I live. I used that because it would be the easiest place to come from. Iowa has an oval but it is 15 miles from arguably the best dirt track in the country. If you asked any person off the street, who were 5 Indy Car or formula 1 racers and they couldn't but they could easily name 5 NASCAR drivers. I hate to rant but when people don't care about the race and we need huge teams to just field the 500, we are whipping a dead horse. When everyone is losing money nobody wants to run the cost up. Actually, out tracks do have very good safety hospitals on the track premisses and helicopters to fly farther if needed. When the wrong person gets killed or seriously injured here, NASCAR dos something to improve safety, but not until.
Jackie Stewart was the best analyst in the history of auto racing on TV. I only wish he had come out of retirement to have done Fox's coverage of NASCAR.
Sir Jackie Stewart raced in F1 at a time when the chances of getting killed during a race weekend were as high as 1 in 3. After his team mate and best friend Francois Cevert was killed at Watkins Glenn in 1971 in a hideous accident where his body was bisected by an improperly installed steel guard rail he immediately retired from racing and dedicated himself to being an activist for driver and circuit safety becoming one of the founding members of the Formula One Drivers Association.
Cevert was killed in 73. Other close friends of Jackie Stewart being killed were Jim Clar at F2 race at Hockenheim 1968 and Jochen Rindt 1970 in practice for the GP at Monza.
Cevert was killed in 1973, Stewart said he was very fast and Stewart was planning to retire at the end of the year leaving Cevert as the lead driver for Tyrell. The death of Cevert caused Stewart to retire immediately with the approval of the team and not compete in the race. Jo Siffert was killed in 1971 and was also one of Stewarts close friends.
That is a widespread urban legend. The pole in Suzuka has always been on the dirty side of the track up to that time. Senna and Berger visited the stewards together on Saturday morning BEFORE the qualifying and asked them to put the pole on the racing line. Their request was REJECTED right on the spot. Senna was NEVER guaranteed the pole position on the racing line, NEVER. Jo Ramirez and even Ron Dennis confirmed this fact many times, stop falling for cheap hero-making marketing.
I agree with some of his statements about safety, but to say most of the Indycar champions have been produced by British racing is kinda arrogant. F1 only became safe when the tracks were redesigned or dropped of the schedule for safety sake. Please stop trying to compare 2 different forms of racing. F1 in 60's,70's, 80's and part of 90's was great racing were the driver could make a difference. Now it's just a engineering competition example being Jenson Button being a non-factor until Brawn.
Yes James0555,"Grand Prix - The Killer Years" is an eye opening look back at what I once thought was my favorite Formula One decade. One sad image that I didn't know till watching orchose not to remember, was that Jim Clark, like alot of drivers of that era, was not wearing seat belts and was consequently thrown from the car on impact with the tree.
You are incorrect sir. They do indeed reach speeds of well over 220MPH. You are comparing road cars with racing cars. They do not drive road cars at these races.
"...Certain tracks of certain lengths should only have a certain number of cars driving." One car per four hundred feet of track; 5,280 feet x 2.5 (miles circumference) = 13,200 feet, which when / 400 feet per car is...33 starters. The American Automobile Association Contest Board, the ancient-original sanctioning body for American motorsport from its inception to the end of the 1955 season, mandated this rule: in 1912.
I went to Indy one time. It was the first USGP in 2000. I was totally flabbergasted by what a DUMP the surrounding area of the track was. The Indianapollis Speedway is smack dab in the middle of a S**thole industrial. Park. Lime Rock is one of the most beautiful places to see racing in the world. It is my most visited track. I have lived most of my life in CT or western MA. My only other F1 experience was at Zandvoort.1983. Nice place but still not beautifful like Lime Rock. I imagine Watkins Glen and Road America are equally beautiful places as Lime Rock but less brutal to race on. I still wonder why Jackie didn't return to F1 wih the advent of carbon fiber chassis and much better safety in the late 70s
"Before the practice, he [Senna] and Berger had already asked the stewards of the race to change the grid, with Prost's knowledge, as Prost was unconcerned with it. However, the stewards declined to comply." Jo Ramirez: Memoirs of a racing man, page 196. Cheap myth that Senna was guaranteed the grid change but then "the FIA fucked him and put him in the dirty side of the track". Had he not been driven by his enormous ego, he would have let Prost getting the pole hence allowing himself to
start from the racing line side and not from the dirty side. But of course, this was out of the question. What he did was disgusting and dangerous - and anyone in their right mind wouldn't dare to compare this accident with the one from the previous year. That happened at 60 km/h with no other cars around, in the last laps of the race, meaning almost empty fuel tanks. Senna deliberately crashed at over 180 kp/h, with 200 liters of extra flammable fuel in each cars, having the whole pack
*Continued* Championship Cars have always been the most technologically advanced form of auto racing in the United States, and are fundamentally designed to maintain extremely high speeds for much longer periods of time, per the nature of oval courses, than F1 cars, at the cost of considerably less performance than the F1s on road and street courses. Regarding any scale of "class rating" on the cars, the 1950s through 1970s saw numerous F1 chassis be entered in American events, on equal terms.
If Vegas were at 2 degrees of banking all around, this accident would not have happened. It’s because of the banking, not the length. IndyCar races at Iowa every year, which is less than a mile long. It’s the progressive banking, which makes three or even four lines around each corner feasible, that did it. Kentucky has steady 17° banking around the turns and that’s somewhat safer than Vegas.
He didn't like some of the things that Ayrton did on track (like ramming Alain Prost off the track at Suzuka in 1990) but never said anything negative about the man himself.
I find it very weird how she asked how the safety measures compared to Formula 1, then Jackie went on this rant about how Britain has bred some of the best drivers in the world
of 28 other cars screaming down the corner behind them, also carrying 200 liters of fuel each. They could have been killed. Gos knows what could have happened if some 3-4 other cars would have crashed out in the gravel trap because of the tumultuous nature of a fast first corner of a Formula 1 race. Senna might have been a brilliant driver, but he also was a horrible, ruthless, angry, obsessed and dangerous competitor - willing to kill or to be killed and using his car as a weapon.
The ignorance of motorsport of the Sky personality hurts the interview despite Jackie being on-point throughout. Jackie KNOWS American open-wheel racing, as he was a fixture for many years doing the broadcasts for ABC during the season. Anyway, networks would be better served to have an enthusiast do the interviews.
Americans love the kinds of motorsport where they can see all the cars pretty much all the time. Build a big loop, build a grandstand around the loop, cram people into it and stick way too many really fast cars on the loop.
Can we just remember Wheldon when watching videos like this instead of these petty F1 vs Ovals arguments, there's a time and a place for that and this isn't it!
I was at long beach cal. at the Indy car race in the nineties I was talking to a tech guy he said the Indy and f1 cars were airplanes with wheels and they are getting faster every year and sanctioning body IRL would have to slow them down eventually
I remember the 1980's and turbocharged cars, strange that from 1982 to 1988 there were no deaths in these cars except for de Angelis in testing in 1986.
While there were some drivers with limited experience, everyone had driven in at least one other IndyCar race that season. IndyCar actually has a seldom used 105% rule during the race (see DiSilvestro and Alesi getting the black flag after 10 laps in this year's 500 when they were about to get lapped). But there was only 1 second difference over a 2-lap run in qualifying between 1-34. A 102% rule would have kept everyone in. The cars never had the chance to spread out.
This reporter has no idea what she is talking about, but I always like hearing Jackie comment on safety in motor sports even if I usually disagree with him to some extent.
Dude indycars range around 190-235 on the vegas track. and average around 225. Nascar cup cars averages 206 at michigan where they go 185-220 around the track.
The Indy cars are now safer. He forgot to mention or he didnt know that the new indy cars is a hell of a lot safer and would have saved Dan Wheldon's life. The rear wheels on the new car are now enclosed or technically u can call them rear fenders. So dan wouldnt have launched like he did if they had rear fenders.
Indycar has done nothing to reduce speeds. Even now they are still racing at Indy at speeds in exess of 220 mph. All it takes is a series of events to propel a car into the fence, and we could very well have another accident similar to that of Dan Wheldon. With open cockpits there is always a risk of the driver being seriously injured or killed.
They have done lots to reduce speeds. Unfortunately, every time they do, technology takes over. Indy Car is basically a few mega dollar teams. Chip Gannassi, Penske, Andretti Rahal/Letterman. Sure there are a few stragglers, but year in and year out, they are the front runners. The Indianapolis 500 is the only race that isn't sanctioned by the Indy Car Series. It is owned and run by the Hullman/George family and has for its entire life. The race has always been sponsored by USAC and if the people that run the Indy car series, the three high dollar teams set certain rules, the 500 has to go along with them or it won't have a race.
The funny thing is that you never hear a race car driver saying it is too fast or too dangerous.That is what they choose to do. That is why fighter pilots fly fighter planes and other people do dangerous things. It is their choice and nobody else's to interfere. It is sad when fans get hurt, yes, but it is also sad when a parent has a child in the car and has a wreck. If you fear for your safety, stay home and hope nobody kicks your door in.
I read the book by Nikki Lauda called my years with Farrari. Fact is that I have raced motorcycles my entire life and never has anyone held me at gunpoint and made me do something that I didn't want to do. The people that make the biggest noise about safety are the people that shouldn't even have an opinion. Racing is dangerous, but it should be regulated by the people that are directly involved with it, not the fans, sponsors, or the government. We have allowed that to happen too often and it has become where the sport is controlled by corporate dollars instead of car owners and drivers. At this time, anyone with money can get into racing, regardless of the talent they possess. That not only diminishes the sport's credibility, but also endangers the lives of the participants. When you go to a local race and see the same drivers spinning out, week after week, by themselves and can't run an eight lap heat race at racing speed, there lies the problem, not with speed itself. I don't expect anybody to agree with me because that is the unpopular view. Few people want to admit that they don't even know how an internal combustion engine works, so how do you expect them to admit that they have no business dictating any policy in regards to racing. Let them put their work into something that they actually know something about and leave setting racing policy to people that are directly involved in the sport.
Everyone should have and opinion. It's called freedom of speech. However, there are people who have a more educated opinion, thus it is taken more seriously.
The thrill of racing is that it is fast but it does not have to be as dangerous as this race, Nascar was not much to ruin anyway, no loss to motor racing, All oval tracks should go.
Am a big F1 fan an over the years since 2001 F1 has changed ALOT, Engine size first V12 then 3.0L V10 then 2.4L V8 now 1.6L V6 Turbo its getting to the point of theres no speed at all :( an this is the future??? No. Comon bernie bring back the V10's an V12's!!
Monaco 2018 Red Bull 1.6 L V 6 set pole at 1. 10.81 and fastest lap at 1.14.26. Lap distance 2.073 miles 1985 Lotus Renault, 1.5 L V 12 set pole at 1.20.5 Ferrari 1.5 L V 12 fastest lap at 1.22.637, Lap distance 2.057 miles 1993 Williams 3.5 L V 10 set pole at 1.20.27 and fastest lap 1,23.604. Lap distance 2.068 miles. Or maybe Monza 2018 Ferrari 1.6 L V 6 set pole at 1.19.119. Mercedes 1.6 L V 6 fastest lap 1.22.497 lap distance 3.6 miles. 1985 Lotus 1.5 L V 6 set pole at 1.25.084. Williams 1.6 L V 6 fastest lap 1.28.283. Lap distance 3.6 miles. 1993 Williams 3.5 L V 10 set pole at 1.21.179. and fastest lap 1.23.575 Lap distance 3.604 miles. I guess the cars now are not so slow.
I can say that f1 drivers are bye far not the greatest drivers in the world because they do not have to deal with a car going that fast all the way around the track every week. That is why most f1 drivers get hurt or kill on ovals because they do not have a clue what the fuck they are doing on it and smash in to some body. And by the way the Dan wheldon crash was just a freek acident. That was just racing.
You know why he did that? He obviously wouldn't have done that to him just for the championship. He would have raced like a man. He was fucked off because the FIA fucked him and put him in the dirty side of the track, he worked his arse off for pole, and on the morning of the race they moved it, who wouldnt be annoyed if the prost beat you to turn 1 when you had pole.
I take my afternoon nap instead of watching Indy cars racing around an oval track waiting for an accident, the only reason to watch that brain dead form of car racing completely devoid of excitement.
