The heavy toll of motor racing

The clebrated columnist ‘Taki’ of The Spectator has been reminded by Adam Cooper’s book Piers Courage Last of the Gentlemen Racers of the racing drivers he numbered among his friends who were killed while competing. Taki refers to Cooper as a motorsport journalist of impeccable credentials.

Taki’s friends included Wolfgang von Trips, the Marquis Alfonso de Portago, Graham Hill, Jo Bonnier and Jochen Rindt. All are mentioned in William Court’s morbid but interesting book Grand Prix Requiem (Patrick Stephens, 1992), which was preceded by his commendable two-volume Grand Prix history Power and Glory.

It is astonishing how many drivers were killed before Sir Jackie Stewart’s intervention caused better safety measures to be introduced.

I find that, before this, a surprising number of minor races during the 1930s, in France and elsewhere, involved injuries and even fatalities to spectators, as well as to drivers, but were nevertheless run again. Presumably, if you watched from a forbidden place, just too bad!

And Le Mans survived the horrific 1955 crash involving onlookers in the apparent safety of the public areas.