F1 Accidents: Great Escapes

There have been too many deaths in F1 over the years, Gilles Villeneuve, Riccardo Paletti, Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna being the most recent.

When you get to thinking about it, there are quite a few ways to have an accident in an F1 car -beyond the obvious smacking into a concrete wall at 180mph. And as a result of many of these fatalities, leaps in the safety of both the cars and the circuits have ensued, but there is always possibility for an accident when cars are going at the edge of their capability, with people present.

So here, we look not at the fatalities, but some of the extraordinary near misses that have occurred over the decades. Not only are there many dangers for the drivers, but also to spectators, Marshalls and other professional people trackside.

In 1991, the late, great Ayrton Senna had this extraordinary near miss with a Marshall in the Monaco GP. What the Marshall thought he was doing is anyone’s guess.

Arrton Senna Monaco 1991

 A 2011 Formula 1 charity event in Japan nearly ended it for this guy when he thought it a good idea to hop over the road, only to meet Sebastien Buemi coming down it. He’s described variously as a Marshall, but he looks for all the world like either paparazzi or an errant fan to me.

Marshal hit by F1 car in Japan

Animals on the track is another interesting one. It used to be worse of course, back in the day and in 1987 at the Austrian Grand Prix, Stefan Johansson’s McLaren struck a deer during practice. Suffice it to say, the deer became venison, but Stefan was unharmed.

One tends to equate water hazards with a leisurely round of golf, but two-time F1 Champion Alberto Ascari managed to do the unthinkable when he failed to negotiate the chicane in the 1955 Monaco GP, vaulting the barricade and ending up in the drink. So fortunate to escape with his life on that occasion, he died just four days later, testing a car at Monza.

Alberto Ascari 1955

In the early 70’s, safety traps in the form of ‘catch fencing’ came in, with mixed results. The idea was they would slow the car gently, thereby reducing the possibility of injury, either to the driver or spectators from any flying debris. However, what happened on a couple of occasions was that the errant car dragged fence posts out of the ground, which became a danger in themselves to all and sundry, whilst drivers became wrapped and trapped when the vehicle eventually came to a stop, quite often in flames.

 Hit by flying debris

Jon Verstappen near miss

In 1994 Brundle being struck on the head by the wheel of a flying Jos Verstappen in his Benetton is as narrow a miss as you’d want. Brundle counting himself very fortunate not to have died. In fact, Verstappen was in another potentially career ending accident in Hockenheim ’94, when his car went up in flames in the pits. A charmed life indeed.

Perhaps the most enduring accident for those of us old enough to have witnessed it, is perhaps Niki Lauda in his 1976 Nurburgring inferno, nowhere near the pits or any assistance. Injured for life, but so lucky to have come away from it alive and indeed, working to this day in F1.

Niki Lauda, Nurburgring inferno

Ayrton Senna’s demise is attributed to being struck in the head by a piece of his own car and there have been numerous accidents over the years which have resulted in injury or near misses from the same, be they parts of cars, or something dislodged and sent flying as a result of being struck by a speeding car.

Equipment failure

Sometimes, it doesn’t even take a crash, such as the case of Jo Bonnier in his Maserati 250F, doing over 160mph in the 1958 Spa-Francorchamps. When his engine failed, he wasn’t expecting the propeller shaft to come through the car and smack him in the arse.

Mario Andretti’s Lotus car exploded in 1977, not from a fuel accident, but the fire extinguisher.

Many of the most dangerous accidents happen however, when cars get airborne. You can build in as many crash buffer zones as you like, but when a car flips over, it’s more luck than engineering as to whether it takes the driver or anyone else out.

There was Christian Fittipaldi’s rather unexpected but no less spectacular collision with Minardi team mate Pierluigi Martini in the 1993 Italian GP. Fortunate to land the right way up…

Christian Fittipaldi and Perluigi Martini collison

Going airborne can mean in alot of instances, especially in early races, that cars ended up in the crowd and these two examples really for me are the most extraordinarily messy crashes that somehow ended without loss of life:

In 1974, Arturo Merzario flipped his Iso Marlboro F1, knocking down spectators and actually landing ontop of a photographer. Astonishingly, no none was injured.

1982 French Grand Prix (watch from 2:20mins in)

In the 1982 French Grand Prix Mauro Baldi and Jochen Mass collided at speed and Mass’s car took off, hitting a catch fence, then a tyre barrier, flipping it upside down into spectators, as it caught fire. An enormous accident by anyone’s standards, but no fatalities, only a few minor burns to a very few spectators. Nothing short of miraculous in fact.