As a kid, growing up in the 60's, Jackie was my IDOL!!!!!
He did get preachy at times but he was usually right. I remember Jackie was visiting the speed booth at the Daytona 24 hr in 2001 watching Dale Sr drive the vette in the wet at night and commented how he thought it was ridiculous that Dale Sr was still wearing an open face helmet. It was that year at the Daytona 500 that he had his fatal crash. The accident investigators concluded that a full face helmet would have saved his life.....
Paying right now about $ 400 for my seat at the Hungarian GP. That's for about 3 hours. Not really bloody cheap.
Absoultely agree, Jackie Stewart has done more for F-1 than almost anyone... his post F-1 career is probabbly more important than when he was driving... as for a driver he was top class, espoused being smooth, and un emotional... let the car do the work. As a figure in Motorsport... I think he THE Figure... nobody has as much respect, yea he older now, but you have to remember he raced F-1 back in the 60's when drivers used to get killed every other race, was World Champ 3 times when you had to really take risks! As for his campaign on Safety... someone had to do it...I think thousands of racing drivers up and down the ladder owe him their lives! For me he is the most outstanding Racing / Driving personality... may not be the best driver, but when you talk about overall influence in the sport... Steward is WAY WAY ahead of anybody else! He also wone in F-1, CAN AM, Sports cars, Indy cars, raced Nascar ( with Jim Clark ) and survived to tell it! I have met him several times, and he is truly a SUPER NICE MAN! always gives an autograph, poses for a picture, and never is rude... he knows where his bread is buttered, and is a connusmate businessman. It will be a sad day when we no longer have him!
Most influential person of F1 is IMHO Bernie. Steward started the safety discussions, but Bernie took the sport from an "amateur show" to the highly professional level it is at today. For better or worse.
Absolutely, the Armco flexes and bends and takes a lot of kinetic energy out of a crash. One of the best readily available examples of this is seen in LeMans the movie when the 917 goes into the barrier at high speed. I would guess that your crash would have been a non-event if the Armco had not been there assuming adequate run off area. Concrete walls are even worse than the Armco barrier. I am a proponent of run off area rather than Armco. Get the car that has lost control off of the track where secondary impact from other cars and pieces of the crashing car are not a danger to other cars and drivers. Given the escalation of speeds that took place in Stewart's era, the lack of adequate run off area at many circuits and the cost of providing it for an existing track, perhaps it was the best that could be hoped for at the time. That being said, I still feel that Armco cost many drivers, particularly in open wheeled cars, their lives or at least resulted in very serious injury.
Although at first I considered him "not nearly Jimmy Stewart" I gained respect after a time...especially post career when I read his autobiography "Faster". He intimates that a lot of his safety crusade came about after the fatal crash of Joichim Rindt, his close friend. And he frankly states that a lot of the other drivers were derisive of the safety crusade. I was also very impressed that he overcame dyslexia, became not only world champion, but was also an olympic quality trap shooter.
Maybe, but I might also have ended up on a railway line ... oops. It was a stupid bit of driving ... Later in the season I grew to respect sand traps , anybody that thinks they are dangerous, etc. has it wrong IMO. Pete
Agree with you there. When I go to Melbourne, I just pay general admission and no stand seat ... I can then wander around (the other races are boring, so I go and look at the historics). All I have to do is work out where I want to watch the race from and get there early on race day and RUN to get that spot. Pete
Name a track that has not been drastically changed, a chicane at LeMans, Kyalami reconfigured, the 'Ring, Hockenheim, all of them...
I read an article written by a top team designer, I don´t remember, maybe he was Gavin Fisher, where he said that it´s safer to put the driver ahead of the front tires because there is less risk of being hit by a flying wheel or suspension arm. The cars where more dangerous in the 60s becuase the chassis resistance was slower than in the 70s and 80s.
Are you boys talking about that nice little old scottish woman who volunteered to come on Top Gear and teach 'Captain Slow' how to drive more quickly?
The only problem was when they started putting the drivers too far forward in the early 80s. After aerodynamics dictated that the cooling systems be hidden inboard as much as possible the feet of the drivers suddenly became the forward-most point of the car. Any time there was a wreck, it almost became automatic for the driver to sustain foot and leg injuries. F1 as well as Indy.
The fact that JYS's name doesn't come up reguarly among the all time greats is not so much a reflection on JYS as it is the misaligned (and that's putting it WAY nicely) attitudes of most racing fans. Most tend to idolize only those who have no problem being an ********* to win.
Any driver that has 3 WCs ranks among the very best ever to compete in F1. I certainly bring him up in any conversation about past greats. I got to meet Jackie a few years ago. I got his autograph (something I so rarely ask for, but how often to you get to meet a triple WC????). He was such a gentleman - I was very impressed! A class act, through and through.
I think all modern GP drivers own Stewart a vote of thanks for making the sport infinitely safer. I loved F1 racing in the old pre-aerodynamic days but definitly not the blood and guts of that time. On TV Stewart appears to be somewhat of a school-mistress type lecturing prima dona. But I am glad to hear form previos posts of people that have met him that this is not so. As far as driving ablity ranking is concerned, I break the rankings into 3 catergories. (and yes, there are drivers that span more than one) Emotional divers: Mansell, Senna, Villenueve (the first), Rindt Thinking/analytical drivers: Stewart, Prost, Schumacher Engineering Drivers: Brabham, McLaren, Hulme
