The Tragedy of Francois Cevert 

I spent an evening with Sir Jackie and lady Helen. This was at Beaulieu and Murray walker was there. Jackie gifted me a signed copy of his autobiography which I will always treasure and spoke in depth about Francois death and this era of the sport. Sir Jackie is a true gentleman,ambassador and legend of motor sport and has done so much to raise the safety of F1 and the lower formulas.

They died like flies in those days. Car, motorcycle... From the perspective of today's, nearly sterile standards, the races of the day seem almost suicidal. Great storytelling, thank you.

As gruesome as Cevert's death was, it was instantaneous. The accidents of Piers Courage and especially Roger Williamson (both, coincidentally at Zandvoort) were worse because the drivers did not die immediately but instead were consumed by fire.

Man Jackie Stewart is a legend in every sense of the word, the survive that era being one of the fastest men in the world and winning races while he lost so many colleagues and friends.. it must’ve seemed hopeless at times for him.. helped so many young drivers and seeing them die in such horrific ways before their careers could get going must’ve been one of the hardest things to be a part of.. he is one of the most important people in motorsports history.

I lived in France then and shortly before his death Francois Cevert was a guest in the biggest Sunday variety show. He was a great pianist and that day he played part of Beethoven ' s Pathetique. It was a very very moving moment. My first reaction when I heard about his death was to remember him playing the piano that day. He was a wondeful man and driver.

I was a young boy when I started following Formula 1. In short order, we lost Clark, Rindt, Cevert, Revson, and Williamson which was on live television. The following year, poor Helmuth Koenigs would die at Watkins Glen in an equally gruesome manner as Francois Cevert for almost the same reason: poorly mounted Armco barriers!! I still think about Cevert and that day. RIP

I was at the Glen that weekend, but thankfully missed the crash. I've followed F1 pretty closely in the years since, but somehow that weekend was the day a lot of the music died for me.

It is true that the safety that is in F1 can be attributed to Sir Jacky Stewart I don’t think anyone can argue that point he was the one champion of safety!

Now that's a voice over to tell a story , Bravo Sir Bravo

What a sad sad story. Nothing but respect for Sir Jackie.

Cevert couldnt have asked for a better Mentor than Jackie Stewart ..Good vid.

I attended the USGP for many years, in my youth. I was present at the Glen for his victory there, and also for his last event, two years later. The weekend took a somber turn after news circulated that he had been killed.

Denny Hulme didn't pronounce his name "Hume". He pronounced it with the L. His father, Clive Hulme VC said, "You can't knock the L out of a Hulme".

A very well put together documentary. Maybe it’s just me but I feel it’s more disrespectful not to watch content like this . It keeps their accomplishments alive for future generations . No words can express the admiration these drivers and many like them deserve. RIP ❤🇬🇧

So sad. In the documentary “1” Francois Cevert had such personality and looks. He seemed like a great guy and it was clear why Sir Jackie loved him so much.

Thank you for recounting this story. I was there at the track that fateful day in October 1973, I still remember it with sadness.

One of the best, if not the best storytelling I have ever listened to. I have seen and listened to lots of documentaries on F1. This was so sensitiv and respectful, though clinical in details and pictures. Thank you for all the work you put into it!

Thank you for such a brilliant telling of such a sad and horrific story.

It blows my mind that F1 left Piers Courage's charred body in his car with a sheet over it as the race continued (6:30). That shows how barbaric morals were in racing in the 1970's. It is barbaric enough to continue the race at all, but it is mentally depraved for F1 to casually toss a sheet over his remains as cars zoomed past his corpse for another 2 hours with women and children in the audience staring down at the scene of death. That's an ethical standard one would expect in a Roman Gladiator event thousands of years ago.

Been a huge F1 fan and follower since forever but I have to confess that I had never heard of Cevert. Incredibly tragic and sad story. Reminiscent of Senna's story, except Cevert never got that far seeing how time was cut short. Being a protege of Stewart there's no doubt in my mind that he was set for great accomplishments in this sport. Sure he and Senna are now good friends.

This was my first time watching one of your videos. It was very well done. A very interesting and tasteful treatment for a difficult subject.

Thank you for this piece of F1 history. A very sad story but told with the respect that it deserves. Just won a new subscriber to the channel. Congrats. Cheers.

Just found your channel, excited to see more of your storytelling going forward. Excellent so far, time to binge watch your other videos.

Watch at 1.25 speed

That was an extremely thoughtful and measured video. Thank you.

RIP François Cevert...tu avaos tout d'un grand pilote avec une magnifique carrière. Tu restes dans les pensées des fans de F1 pour toujours.😢

Thank you for your moving narration.

Thank you for telling this tragic, but nevertheless, important story of a past warrior.

A fitting, and somber, tribute to a great driver and likely an even better human being. I've been an avid follower of F1 since the early '60's. The carnage of the '60's and '70's nearly had me turning my back on the sport. The death of Jim Clark was particularly devastating. Then came Stewart and his enigmatic protege. To this day, the death of Francois Cervert is as upsetting as the first instance that I became aware of it. There is a photograph of Jackie, his wife Helen, and Francois. Helen is looking at Francois as if she were madly in love with him. I suspect that in a way she was. But so was Jackie and the three of them were as close as any family ever. Jackie and Helen's children adored Francois. I can't imagine the pain they all suffered and to this day, I have to suppress a tear when I recall the life and untimely passing of Francois Cevert.

Really interesting and a story I didn't RIP Francois. It's incredible to consider that Jackie is the last surviving Formula One World Champion from the 1960s, as well as the oldest living F1 winner.

ABSOLUTELY 💯 BRILLIANT 👏, but a very sad result (RIP) one great video and voice over 😢 🙏 💔 💙.

First video I've seen from your work. You are an excellent script writer and voice actor in my opinion therefore ... I have subscribed to your channel.

I saw my first F1 race in 1970, in 1971 I started watching every race and soon I was a fan of Francois. I was so sure he would be a champion, he oozed class and style and was a damn good driver. I was 11 when I found out he'd died and I cried for days, Years later I did a lot of research into him and his fatal crash and it was utterly heartbreaking and horrific. I still have a photo of Francois on my wall and I'll never forget him. RIP Francois, you would have been champion for sure. I do wish you hadn't shown the gruesome images though.

Thanks for the great storytelling of a tragedy. And sharing the photos of the young men and their machines.

Excellent video, great sounding voice over . Amazing two kiwis in f1 then, we are hoping Liam Lawson will fly the flag for NZ 🤞🏽I didn’t hesitate to subscribe.

A top quality and thoroughly professional account of this young man's time in F1. Well done.

Total respect for the men who raced in that era. One thing's for sure is that none of them would have had any hair on their balls because hair doesn't grow on steel. There's not much I can say about Sir Jackie that hasn't already been said, true F1 royalty. Perhaps the security guards at the Miami GP should watch a few of these clips just so they know who they're dealing with.

The drivers in that era in of F1 were incredibly brave

Subscribed. Did you just start? You should have a lot more than a thousand subscribers!! Very good job!

very good vidéo ! thanks from france !

A beautiful man, great driver, lovely person. Too sad for words.

The pace of your narration is perfect. You say exactly what you want to say, in a way that allows the listener to absorb and appreciate every detail. Time slowed down for me as I listened to you tell the story - and the backstory - of a tragedy that occurred at 150 miles per hour.

An excellent production, on a sad story.

Excellent video, TY! I was at WGI that day. Thankfully, as a HS teenager, the car was covered by the time I reached the site on the circuit's lower road. I remember Francois' victory at WGI. It was my first ever F1 GP. Following, I had seen the 1-2 finish at WGI; a driving clinic by Team Tyrell. My hopes were with Sir Jackie for his 100th GP race, but I was a huge fan of Francois. I hitchhiked home after the crash.

The photo of Courage mid crash is a new one to me, had always kind of wondered the mechanics of how that crash happened. Was a horrible one, Ceverts being one of the few worse. What a horrible time of F1 that was. This was a really well done video, subscribed and look forward to seeing more!

excellent work.

Thank you for telling these people's stories and how does Sports have evolved and how people made them safer I remember these races I've been watching racing since I was a little girl

Jackie Stewart told Francois to drive through the corner before, that in a higher gear, so the car would be more stable. It's on video. That actual conversation. Jackie never thought it would be the last time he would talk to Francois. Francois was loved by many people. His death really got Jackie Stewart angry about all the dying in auto racing and the ridiculous acceptance of it. To this day, Jackie Stewart remembers the young man fondly and it's clearly a painful memory for him to talk about.

i was there at "The Glen" when the crash happened in 1973, camping with friends.. we were on an elevated location, west of the track..a lot of fire and smoke ...Team Tyrrell and Stewart pulled out afterwards..

Several years ago I spotted Sir Jackie Stewart's autobiography in a local charity shop - i couldn't believe my luck when I found it was a signed copy. Aside from being probably the best autobiography I've ever read, it's also extremely sobering. The sheer number of horrifying accidents during this period is almost beyond belief.

I don't think having fewer safety features both on the tracks and in the cars made F1 any more real in the '70s than it is today, just more deadly, which is cryptic measure of how real racing is.

Thanks for a great story. 👍

What an interesting and tragic clip. Such a promising star, but like many other amazing drivers taken far too soon. RIP 🙏

Powerful video. Man it was dangerous back then. My older brother was a huge Jackie Stewart fan so of course I am too! Thought the narration was well done too. 👍

Denny Hume passed away many years later, suffering a heart attack while racing at the Bathurst 1000km race in Australia. Ickx also raced a few times a Bathurst

Brilliant video mate, hope you have more to come.

Those roll bars back then were a joke " Designed only to save weight, Not lives ☠️

Vackre Frasse, en av min barndoms stora hjältar... Thanx for sharing... Love from Sweden 💖

Stewart referred to the 70's as "The killing years".

Excellent video. Horrible accident. Race In Paradise, Legend.

brilliant documentary, what a sad story, RIP francois

One of F1's greatest up and coming drivers. Over the years seeing his driving, i think he was one of france's best drivers ever to of lived. Life tragically cut short, no one deserves what happened to him, cars were so dangerous then, you had to have balls of steel to drive them hard like they did in the 80s and pre 80s cars. Even those who were last were still heros to of even drove cars like this, they were some of the best drivers ever to of lived, no matter where they were placed, purely because the cars were a handfull, manual gearbox, manual set up of suspension etc.

saw the doc “the quick and the dead” which featured stewart and cervert. at the end of the doc it gives a tribute to all F1 drivers who died and it mentions Cervert. no safety at all. these guys were essentially test dummies out there on the track.

Oh, I remember him so well. I was in my teenage years then and a great fan of his. Not because of F1 which never interested me but because I was in love. To me in those days he was the best looking man. That's why I never forget the day he died 😢

beautifully done,,,, nice one,,

Jackie Stewart’s words about Francois are just heart breaking.

Perfect narration ❤️ May they rest in peace ❤

There have been many brutal deaths in F1. Helmuth Koinigg and Tom Pryce come to mind.

So horrific and sad.

I recently saw a documentary with Sir Jackie Stewart, and he was visibly shaken when the topic of this day came up.

Those extremely fast accelerating cars were so dangerous in the past. No in car fire extinguishers, no fire suit. Extremely volatile fuels and no fuel cell. It is not really apparent until you had attended one of those races back then. I go to CART and NASCAR races occasionally in Northern California now and even though these cars are so much safer, the speeds are unbelievable.

I can remember doing the research on this crash nearly 10 years ago and it still haunts me. I often wonder if track marshals and paramedics had PTSD just from being the first responders to that scene. At least it would've basically been a near instant death.

History would repeat itself when Mario Andretti won the championship, and his understudy died in the same race.

I raced at the Glen a lot in the 80s and 90s in SCCA events. I can confirm that the curbs all the way around the track are brutal, and it's vital to stay off them because they'll throw you across the track if you hit them. Contrast those curbs to rumble strips that are used at most other tracks. Added to that is the fact that the ARMCO barriers are only a couple of feet off the track in most places. I crashed there in 1994 at the last corner before the front straight. I hit the barrier backward at around 90mph and bounced back onto the track, causing a red flag. There was no energy-absorbing material there at that time, although when I went back a few years later I noticed that they had installed material there and down into the entrance to the Boot. Those are the only places I remember that had it. Those guardrails are brutal.

This piece is very well researched and written. I was a teenager during this time and access to information was every 30 days in print media.

A very sad video, narrated with total respect. You've got a new subscriber.

Gruesome stuff. I'm almost certain that they wouldn't have wanted to go out in any other way. Cool upload.

The past 3 french race winners were all one offs. It goes back almost 30 years!

Sadly the 1970s claimed the lives of too many great drivers, the work of Jackie Stewart and also Syd Watkins is invaluable.

If memory serves I recall see a picture of an F1 crash, involving double armco barriers, in Motor Sport Magazine. The car had split the barrier and the car stopped at about the steering wheel of the car. The photo was taken from the other side of the barrier showing the shocked face of the driver. I seem to remember the driver as Jody Scheckter and the circuit as Kyalami. I've tried multiple searches without success making me think time has clouded my memory.

EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIP French legend - would have won (with Stewart mentoring at races) the following WDC champion - one of France's finest.

I was at the Glen when this accident occurred. Rip

Yes i subscribed also. So many comments below or above this one. It's hard to put a tick on those comments, not because there bad, there not, it's because of the sad demise of a human being. So many F1 drivers gone, thirty years ago Senna went to drive with these deceased legendary driver's, the word dead is too permanent, i prefer the word deceased. I watched Senna"s last race on TV, it wasn't a happy weekend. LEST WE FORGET. 😢🇦🇺🏎️

I really appreciate the somber respect with which this tragic story is told. We live in a different world today from that of 1970s Formula racing. I doubt many of us could take that sort of carnage as a requisite for sport.

16:03 is that an arm at the bottom right of screen?

6:40 Piers Courage"s De Tomaso 505/38 had an aluminium monocoque and was not made from magnesium. The wheels might have been magnesium though. It was the Honda R302 from 1968 that had a magnesium skinned monocoque. Jo Schlesser was killed in one when it caught fire at the French Grand Prix that year. Even so, aluminium burns (obviously not as ferociously as magnesium and doesn't react adversely to water like magnesium does). It was the amount of fuel that was in the car when it crashed that caused such a large fire.

Younger vieweres may not appreciate those were the days of armco barriers almost all around the track, dangerous for cars but incredibly so for bike riders. Today they have been replaced with wide run-off areas.

In consecutive years, two horribly deadly crashes at the very same track and exactly with the same killing factor. Car racing often meant carelessness in those years, at least in that respect a lot has been improved, fortunately

Magnesium car? You can't even put water on magnesium.

I was at the Glen that weekend. When no one came around during practice, everyone knew something bad had happened, which was verified by loudspeakers announcing, in French, "Cevert et mort." Later that day, I joined the crowds walking the track. At the point of the accident, people were picking up bits of blue fiberglass lying along the track, as goulash souvenirs.

Hi, very interesting, thank you - subscribed. Just one thing, there's no film of Stewart advising Cevert on gearing (or anything else) on that day at the Glen in 1973. The clip you show is from Monaco in 1971, there's another clip too, wrongly dated as 1973 by some, but in fact from earlier. Cevert had been injured in the previous race in Canada when he went straight into the barriers after a bump with Scheckter. His ankles were very badly hurt, he tried to recover during the holiday with the Stewarts to which you refer, and there's long been speculation that he still wasn't 100% at the Glen and that this caused or contributed to his fatal crash. The constructors' title was still up for grabs, hence Amon being used as a third driver looking for a point or two, of course the team withdrew letting Lotus in to win it. He also knew that Scheckter was joining Tyrrell in 1974 and, (as Jackie Stewart still insists all these years later) didn't know that Jackie was to announce his retirement and Francois's elevation to No 1 in the team immediately after the race. He may have overstated his recovery and insisted on driving to try to 'prove' something to Ken Tyrrell, or to other team bosses for 1974, if he thought Scheckter was going to force him out of Tyrrell. There's another Scheckter connection (allegedly). Cevert crashed at the esses soon after the start/finish line and the pit exit, and it's long been argued that Schecker exited the pits in front of Cevert, causing Francois, on a flying lap as you say, to change his line slightly, so he wasn't quite right at the esses a few seconds later, hence the crash when he tried to power through them. (It wasn't the end of practice BTW, he could have tried again in the afternoon.)

A phenomenal and extremely dangerous era

Never knew any of the details of Cevert's tragic death. What was the issue with the car being unstable in 3rd gear? The car was running a Cosworth DFV, right?

I watched the 1973 Argentinian GP live. Cevert took the lead over Regazzoni (who didn't last long) followed by Stewart, but a tire in Sir Jackie's car began to slowly lose pressure, and at that time teams were not prepared to change them quickly, so he stayed on track allowing Cevert to take the lead while focusing on blocking Fittipaldi who had a horrible start. To be honest Sir Jackie's tactics were pretty debatable, causing Emerson to drive the entire main straight with his fist raised to see whether the stewards took action (they didn't). Eventually Fittipaldi managed to get past Stewart, chased Cevert and passed him with ease to win the race. Amazingly, Stewart finished 3rd on what at that point was a noticeably flat tire.

Stewart told two people he was going to retire; Ken Tyrell and the man in charge of Ford's motorsport division.

Great storytelling. I recommend playing at 1.25x speed.

Please shift gears so we can continue listening!

It is always the 'big' names, the superstar drivers, team owners, wives, organizers that get the spotlight in these stories; but give a moments thought to the poor old volunteer marshals who had to live the rest of their lives with what they witnessed a close quarters. They didn't go back to their Monaco residents and meet with physiatrists.

Beyond Tragic. GodSpeed, Francois ... ^v^