Here's the problem... if there was no danger whatsoever, where would the excitement be in a balls to the wall overtake? As daft as it sounds, danger is part of what makes racing exciting. That doesn't mean we want crashes or people hurt though.
For me, the excitement from a risky overtake comes from the fact that both drivers might be out of the race, or the significance those extra points for pulling off the move could have in the championship. Not the risk of injury.
No one wants anybody to be injured, but if the sport is sanitised totally, then it is no longer a sporting spectacle. Jules' accident was a freak, a number of factors all coming together to make the tragic event that happened. You can't legislate for every possible eventuality in racing, you can only make it as safe as possible but at the same time ensure that it is still racing and a sport the viewing public want to watch. When cars are going at 200mph, something, at some time, at some point, will go wrong. That it has been 20 years since the last F1 death at a race track of a driver, shows just how far the sport has come. Before that the gap was 8 years (86 - 94)m before that 4 years. That is progress. Every time there is a fatality or serious injury, it is looked at to see whether it could be prevented again. But as said, there is only so much you can do.
But on the other side, The only way you can avoid injuries entirely in F1 is to cancel the sport altogether. If you have several cars all doing high speeds, sooner or later somebody is going to hit something or someone and the laws of physics dictate that a sudden impact won't be good for the human body. So that risk of injury is always there regardless. We've perhaps become a bit complacent as to how bad accidents can be because we've seen so many huge shunts with drivers walking away in the past 20 years. Nobody wants anybody to ever get hurt, but the risk of the cars being out the race and drivers getting hurt in the process go hand in hand, Whether people realise it fully or not, that is part of the thrill and it is something that is totally impossible to avoid, even if you make the cars indestructible, the human body and the forces it would be put under most certainly isn't. All that can be done is to make sure all unnecessary risks are kept to a minimum, such as the conditions tractors are recovering cars etc.
I get what you're saying, but think of this. If two tight rope walkers were walking a rope over the grand canyon. One does it with a safety cable, net and a parachute, and the other does it without, which would be the most captivating? I don't want to see people get hurt, I hate it, but danger is part of the motor racing spectacle, and one could argue that the safer circuits become, the more lax and error prone drivers become.
That's a nice gesture. I wonder if we'll see any obvious livery changes for Hungary. Ferrari have ran with black nose cones after 9/11 and after the Pope died.
I don't know where I stand on the whole retiring numbers to be honest. There's some where I've felt they should be, like #3 in NASCAR (which wasn't), but unless it's a long standing number for a driver, I'm not sure if the gesture has the same significance. I know that reads wrong, and I'm not getting my thoughts across clearly. I'm certainly not suggesting they shouldn't retire it or are wrong to retire it, or suggesting that Jules was insignificant... I'm just unsure about it. I almost think there'd be more significance in another driver picking up the number and racing it in Jules honor in the future.
I imagine all the drivers will carry the #17 or #ForzaJules somewhere on their car or helmet. They all carried the Lionheart logo when Dan Wheldon was sadly killed back in 2011.
I can see what you mean. It was Jules 4th choice number, not something that had any significance to him before F1, and he only used it 15 times. It's also not something that has been done before, although granted F1 only recently had drivers keep their numbers.
To be fair to Hamilton, as the sports reigning world champion (And Britains highest profile driver), he's kinda getting put on the spot a lot right now by idiots like Benson wanting comments on it, there's not a lot he can say and no matter what he does, Benson makes it ALL about Hamilton (and how wonderful he is). It's sickening, but not really his fault. Unlike his slightly insensitive look at me Instagram/twitter posts. As for the number, i don't think it had much relevance to Jules so isn't really a fitting tribute, but it's partly IMO because numbers are chosen now, who will want to chose 17 as "their" number given what significance and history is now attached to it?. It'll likely have been effectively retired anyway, so making it official is a nice gesture all the same.
An idea dripping with false sentimentality, how many WDC's have died, and they didn't get theirs retired? As to the funeral, they're always a PR gold mine, whenever there's a celebrity one I picture the scene from Zoolander.
I think the point of retiring the number is that, in future, whenever someone wonders why there's no number 17, the answer will be Jules.
To an extent I do agree with the false sentimentality, however it is more relevant now because death is so rare in Formula 1 it becomes something out of the norm, rather than the accepted, so it is deemed to be marked by such a 'gesture'. I do think that if someone wished to carry the number 17 in the future then that is up to them, but I would think most would not out of respect. Also, previous WDC's didn't have a single number throughout their career. Clark, Senna and Rindt for example didn't carry the same number for their WDC's that they had used throughout their careers, so you couldn't retire a number that was synonymous with them as their simply wasn't one. Senna carried no's 12, 27 & 1 for his 3 WDC's
In this current world of constant litigation , I guess this is not surprising. Jules Bianchi: Late F1 driver's family sue over 'avoidable' death http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/36386227
I'm curious which angle they'll take with the litigation. It's a while back so I might be off on the details, but presumably the easiest thing to argue is that the race shouldn't have been run because the medical helicopter couldn't fly? Therefore whoever overruled safety policy to force the race to run is culpable to some degree. I wonder if the speed Bianchi took into the corner under double yellows will be brought up. Is that on the driver, or is the action against Marussia going to argue that they pressured him into driving at unsafe speeds?
If they win, then will any race ever be run in wet conditions? To take it to a further extreme, if the teams/organisers/FIA are going to be sued if there is a death or serious injury then what happens to motor racing in general? Surely there must be indemnities in place that restrict the liability in case of accidents like this? Speed was an issue, didn't they prove that Bianchi hadn't reacted to double yellows and thus his own actions were a direct contribution to the accident? It's not like anyone else went off that corner once the flags were waved, therefore why was it just him that came off the circuit once the warning was out that there was a danger there?
