Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone was clearly jonesing for his spotlight fix last week as he made known his desire to accommodate ‘fake rain’ in races in the not-too distant future. His wish to market the sport to greater effect, combined with ever-apparent egotism , is the primary drive behind this motion; as he says, “we’re in the entertainment business”.
Even if the idea of ‘fake rain’ is speedily put to bed, Ecclestone will be happy that he has given the sport something of a stir and reinforced his own reputation as an exciting major player in the upper echelons of F1. The quest, for Ecclestone and others like him, to enhance the spectacle of the sport is endless and neither his sincerity nor the strength of his resolution to force through this particular measure are of great importance at this stage. Also irrelevant at present is any theory on whether it truly would be an effective measure or whether we would see the sport plummet into the realm of farce.
To quote Mark Webber, late greats Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna would be “turning in their graves if they thought we’d have sprinklers and hoses lined up around the track”. There was certainly sentiment abound by 1994 that deaths in F1 were an aspect of a fast-fading bygone era. The tragic events of that year at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, where both Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna lost their lives, shattered this mentality and shook the sport to its core. With renewed vigour safety measures were pursued across the board and, thankfully, there have been no more fatalities amongst the drivers since.
Now, some 17 years on, are we in danger of slipping into a similar comfort-zone? The fact that there have been no fatalities amongst the drivers glosses over a great number of issues. For one, the memories of both the 2000 Italian Grand Prix and the 2001 Australian Grand Prix – each of which witnessed the death of a trackside marshal – are still far too fresh to be forgotten, whilst the horrendous respective crashes of Ralf Schumacher (USA, 2004) and Robert Kubica (Canada, 2007) are easily recalled. Indeed, the latter man proved last month just how dangerous motor racing in general can be as he suffered, amongst other injuries, a partially severed hand in a rallying accident. Even in 2010 we witnessed Mark Webber somersault his Red Bull over the back of Heikki Kovaleinen’s Lotus in Valencia and Vitantonio Liuzzi collide head-on with Michael Schumacher in Abu Dhabi. Not to labour the point but there was also the terrifying double wheel-detachment of Sebastien Buemi’s Toro Rosso in practice in China; from the onboard camera we see the front wheels easily vault the perimeter fence and land who-knows-where.
These make up but the tip of an iceberg and anyone who thinks that Formula One can afford to relax its safety standards would do well to research further. For that is what artificially dampening the track would do – multiply the number of opportunities for harm to come to a participant. Ecclestone might see it as the inclusion of an intriguing and inoffensive variable but once the track is wet the situation if squarely beyond his control. The fact that we increasingly see the safety car used for extended periods in wet grands prix (take Korea 2010, for example) demonstrates that rain is first a danger to be respected and second a tool for entertainment.
No comments:
Post a Comment