Jules Bianchi was 25 when he made his final grand prix start at Suzuka - a gifted driver whose future can now only be imagined
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As I write these words, almost exactly 12 years after the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix, which was run on October 5 of that year, I can still summon to mind with an immediacy that is genuinely unnerving the peculiar unease of that Sunday afternoon. I was at Suzuka that day, working for McLaren, and from the moment the 22 cars gathered on the grid I had a sense that we might not be about to engage in an ordinary Formula 1 grand prix. To be clear, I am not claiming any unusual prophetic ability, for Typhoon Phanfone, a powerful tropical cyclone, had brought heavy rain, the track surface was treacherously slippery, and visibility was extremely poor. The race was started behind the safety car, but it was stopped after only two laps because conditions were clearly undriveable. Twenty minutes later it was restarted, also behind the safety car. It was a horrible day for racing F1 cars.
Standing in the McLaren garage, listening via my radio headset to our drivers Kevin Magnussen (whose 22nd birthday it was) and Jenson Button describing the awful conditions out on the circuit, I remember thinking, quite clearly, that already I did not much care how the race would turn out for us. Our boys had qualified seventh (Magnussen) and eighth (Button) and, although there was always the possibility that rain might throw the order into a proverbial blender, we were hardly expecting a stellar haul of world championship points. Already, all I really wanted was for the race to run its course without incident, all 22 drivers to return to their garages safely, and everyone to be able to go home; and I was not alone in that thinking, for there was something about the torrential downpour, the lead-grey half-light, and the way the racetrack disappeared into the mist as you looked at it that made a safe outcome feel like the only thing that mattered.
The 2014 Japanese Grand Prix began behind the safety car as Typhoon Phanfone brought torrential rain
Grand Prix Photo
Even so, as the race wore on, the rain abated somewhat, and it eventually settled into something approaching normality, although the conditions remained decidedly tricky because, although the racing line was drying, there was wet tarmac on both sides of it and even quite deep puddles here and there. Both Magnussen and Button were showing well, and it looked as though world championship points would be a possibility for us. Then, on lap 42 out of a scheduled 53, Adrian Sutil’s Sauber aquaplaned into the Dunlop Curve tyre barrier. He was fortunate to emerge unhurt, but a recovery vehicle, a heavy-duty tractor-crane, was sent out to remove his damaged car. Double waved yellow flags were displayed before the corner, instructing the drivers to slow down (but by how much?) and be prepared to stop (if necessary).
Crucially, and as it would transpire tragically, no safety car was deployed, even though a tractor-crane was operating trackside beside Sutil’s broken Sauber. So it was that when, on lap 43, Jules Bianchi lost control of his Marussia on that same section of track, his car skated across the run-off area and struck the rear of the tractor-crane. The nosecone of his Marussia went underneath that 6.5-tonne vehicle, destroying its roll hoop, and the violence of the collision was such that all 6.5 tonnes were momentarily jolted off the ground.
The race was stopped, and Bianchi was treated trackside by the FIA medical team before being driven to the circuit’s medical centre, then on to Mie Prefectural General Medical Centre in Yokkaichi. The weather was still so bad that a helicopter evacuation had not proved possible, so the journey was made by ambulance – a half-hour drive. We F1 team folk continued to do our jobs, albeit somewhat perfunctorily, almost on autopilot, while WhatsApping one another feverishly in a vain effort to find out what had happened to Marussia’s young ace. But information was scarce, fragmented, and worryingly inconclusive. The FIA eventually confirmed that Jules had sustained “a severe head injury”, and that he was “undergoing surgery”.
Bianchi during his final Formula 1 race weekend at Suzuka, where the young Marussia driver’s career was cut tragically short
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It was at that point that the atmosphere at Suzuka changed. After a grand prix has ended, F1 paddocks and pitlanes are usually an industrious mixture of noise, bustle, and distraction: the cheery energy of mechanics rushing about; the pneumatic whine of power tools being used; the rattling of forklifts ferrying pallets of car parts hither and thither; the radio hubbub of engineers debriefing; and the chaos of competing TV crews demanding interviews, journalists chasing stories, and sponsors asking for more wine. But all that now seemed irrelevant. No-one wanted to talk about the result (Lewis Hamilton won). No-one wanted to talk about world championship points (we scored 10). Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, and Sebastian Vettel stood on the podium, but no champagne was sprayed.
Instead, the entire Suzuka International Racing Course became enveloped by a truth that no-one quite dared articulate. We did not know what Bianchi’s prognosis was, but the silence from the hospital was itself a kind of information. I remember speaking to my friend Alex Wurz, the former F1 driver who was commentating on the race for Austrian television broadcaster ORF. We spoke at length about what had happened, about the seriousness of the accident, and about what it meant to see something like that occur in a sport in which all of us understood, at least theoretically, the risks we were dealing with. A few months ago he and I spoke again about that dreadful day, and I included what he said in a feature interview that I wrote recently for Motor Sport. Here is what he said, and I think it bears repeating in this column.
“It was Sebastian Vettel who suggested that I become GPDA [Grand Prix Drivers’ Association] chairman, even though I wasn’t an active F1 driver any more, because he made the very good point that it would be beneficial to have a GPDA chairman who had the right experience yet could be impartial because he wasn’t racing for an F1 team. Before me, the chairman had always been an active F1 driver, you see? I wasn’t sure, because I wanted to focus on my business, but he asked me at least to do a presentation to the drivers, at Suzuka in 2014, in the drivers’ meeting there, to tell them what I thought the role, remit, and responsibility of the GPDA should be. After all, I’d been a director of the GPDA before, when David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher had been my fellow directors, with Michael as chairman. So, on the Saturday of the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix I did my presentation during the drivers’ meeting, and afterwards one of the drivers, Jules Bianchi, repeated Sebastian’s suggestion: ‘You should be our chairman, Alex.’ But still I wasn’t sure.
Bianchi celebrated ninth place at Monaco in 2014 – the result that delivered Marussia’s first Formula 1 points
Grand Prix Photo
“Then, the next day, Jules had his terrible accident, from which he never recovered, and I realised, as I was doing the live ORF TV commentary, that there was no-one in the paddock who was impartial and who could do the crucial work of going around all the teams and all the media, helping and guiding them towards a consistent and considerate set of statements and positions in respect of what was clearly a tragic developing situation. So I excused myself from the ORF commentary box, I ran down to the F1 paddock, and I did it myself. I took the job of GPDA chairman after that.”
I had been due to fly home to London that night. Instead, I asked my PA to cancel my flight and book me onto another one the following day. I wanted to stay because I intended to be there for my friend Tracy Novak, my comms/PR opposite number at Marussia. I flew home the next day, having not been able to help Tracy much other than by offering a few warm words and the odd hug. Several days later the Bianchi family confirmed that Jules had suffered a diffuse axonal brain injury and that he remained in a critical condition. The F1 community waited, day after day, week after week, for more news. Sometimes there was an update; more often there was nothing. He never regained consciousness and his death was eventually announced more than nine months later.
I did not know Jules well, but I met him quite a few times, and on every occasion I remember him being both cheerful and charming. He was also confident yet unassuming, and I think that was because he saw no need to advertise his talent. Indeed, he was right not to do so, because it was plainly obvious to anyone who had been paying attention. He was naturally gifted and effortlessly quick. Managed by Nicolas Todt (the son of Ferrari team principal turned FIA president Jean Todt) and a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, he had clearly been marked out for a future at the very highest level. He had already won races (plenty) and championships (a couple) in Formula Renault 2.0, Formula Renault 3.5, Formula 3 Euro Series, and GP2, and in 2013, his first F1 season with Marussia, he had comprehensively outperformed his team-mate Max Chilton.
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Jules Bianchi lost his life five years ago, following a crash at the 2014 Japanese GP. His Marussia colleagues remember a talent that seemed destined for success
But, for me, the defining Bianchi moment came at Monaco in 2014. There, driving for one of the smallest teams in F1, he produced a drive that transcended the mediocrity of the car whose controls he was so deftly operating. He finished ninth, despite incurring a five-second penalty without which he would have been classified eighth, and in so doing he scored not only his first F1 points but also the first F1 points in Marussia’s history.
I can still see the smile on his face in the Monaco paddock afterwards. One F1 grandee after another traipsed all the way down to the Marussia paddock hospitality unit, and one after another they hugged him. For a tiny F1 team, starved of opportunities to celebrate, it was an extraordinary afternoon, and for Bianchi it must have felt like a glimpse of a glorious future that many believed would be his to enjoy once the Ferrari bosses had promoted him to their famed Scuderia.
Had he lived, Jules Lucien André Bianchi would be only 36 now. We cannot know what he might have achieved. Perhaps he would have won F1 grands prix; maybe he would have won F1 drivers’ world championships; we do not know, we cannot know, because Suzuka 2014 changed everything. But now, a dozen years later almost to the very day, when I think of that wretched race I remember a young Frenchman with an uncomplicated smile, surrounded by experienced racing people who knew that he had produced something special at Monaco 19 weeks earlier, and I fervently wish that he had lived to be able to show us all what that something special might have gone on to deliver in a competitive F1 car.
