Safety debate continues in the world of Formula One

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Safety has become the hot topic of motorsport after last fortnight’s double disaster. IndyCar racer Dan Wheldon died from injuries sustained in a 15-car pile-up at the season-ending Las Vegas race while Marco Simoncelli was killed at the Malaysian MotoGP.

Former world champion Jackie Stewart, who advocated improved safety standards in the late ’60s, said Formula 1 could not afford to relax though the last fatality came in 1994 when Ayrton Senna was killed at the San Marino GP.

“The interlocking of wheels is the biggest issue in the sport now,” said Stewart, referring to Mark Webber’s accident during last year’s Valencia race, where the Australian ran into the back of Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus and took off.

At Spa-Francorchamps in 1966, Stewart ran off the track while driving at 165 mph in heavy rain and crashed into a telephone pole and a shed before coming to rest in a farmer’s outbuilding.

His steering column pinned his leg and there were no track crews to extricate me nor were proper tools available.

“In my time there was no safety. It was just us driving fast without any real assurance of coming back alive. The chances of me dying in a Formula One car are two out of three. It is good that F1 has improved a lot in safety, but the work should continue,” said Stewart.

Stewart praised the Buddh International Circuit for giving paramount importance to safety during construction it. “I think this track has been built with safety in mind. Some sections of the track are 22 metres wide. The corners here are wide and the straights are long and it gives drivers a chance to correct things if things are going wrong,” he added.

Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher said the deaths of two motorsport stars was down to fate rather than deficiencies in the sport’s safety.

“Nothing is totally safe in life. If something has to happen, that is something I would call fate, and fate is something we are all faced with,” he said.