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Seat Belts Belatedly Come to Formula 1 (Preston Lerner) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Break Fix's History of Motorsport Series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argo Singer Family
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Seat Belts belatedly.
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Come to Formula One by Preston Lerner.
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For the past half century, the FIA has been the principal driver
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behind efforts to make racing safer.
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It wasn't always so, although the SCCA required seat belts in 1957, the FIA
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didn't follow suit until 1972 From the dawn of road racing, conventional wisdom
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held the drivers should jump out of the cockpit when a crash was imminent.
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A technique perfected by Maston Gregory.
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This myth was conclusively exploded by a largely forgotten British physician by the
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name of Michael Henderson, who conducted crash investigations for the RAF.
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In 1968.
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Henderson, who Mood lighted as a club racer and freelance journalist
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wrote Motor Racing and Safety, the foundational text on this subject.
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At the same time, he fitted his own race cars with four point harnesses,
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augmented with an anti-submarine strap, inspired by a parachute design.
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This, put him in touch with Terrence Dumbo Willans, a record setting Parachutist, who
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tested ejection seats for the RAF Willans.
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Later went into business with another club racer, John Ning.
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By 19 69, 6 point Willans harnesses were found in almost every car on the F1 grid.
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The battle for seat belts had been won almost before it started.
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Preston Lerner is a freelance writer who has covered racing and many other
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subjects for the past four decades.
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For many years, he was a regular contributor to Automobile
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Magazine and Road and Track.
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Mr. Lerner is also the author and co-author of six books.
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Most recently, Shelby American, the Renegades, who built the cars,
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won the races and lived the legend.
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The material used in television turns its gaze on motor sports, is drawn from
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his upcoming book, the Deadliest Decade, which will examine the safety commercial
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and technological developments that transform racing from 1964 to 1973.
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So today I will be speaking about how Formula One.
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Finally, belatedly accepted seat belt.
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May find this hard to believe considering the status of Formula One these days,
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but seat belts were not commonplace in Formula One until late 1960s.
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They weren't required until 1972.
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Now, this is long after they were standard equipment here in the United States.
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This is a j Foyt in a Dirt Champ car in 1964.
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You can see pretty clearly here that he's wearing shoulder harnesses.
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And in fact, in 1968, seat belts were required in all American passenger
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cars, yet they were not in almost any Formula One cars at the time.
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And there's a strange story behind this, which I'm going to tell here today.
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I think most people would agree that these days, formula One is considered
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the pinnacle of motor sports.
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It's the most expensive form of racing.
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Uses the most exotic technology and it has, I think, the
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most enviable safety record.
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Since 1994, only one driver has been killed in a Formula One race, and this is
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largely because of the safety protocols and technology that the FIA has adopted,
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and they deserve a lot of credit for making racing an incredibly safe sport.
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This was not always the case.
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You go back to the fifties, sixties, and into the seventies
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where the one cars were among the most lethal vehicles on the planet.
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Ersonal once told me one time I had a one in three chance of dying.
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Emerson was a two time world champion, two time IndyCar champion, 9,500 winner.
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Very charismatic figure.
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When he told me this, I thought he was exaggerating, to be honest.
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But I went back and looked at the records and in his fourth Formula
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one race at Monza in 19 70, 27, drivers participated in practice.
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Nine of them later died in race cars.
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Now it's true they didn't all die in Formula One cars.
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If you look at the years 1964 to 1973, and that's the period that I'm
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studying, 10 drivers died in Formula One races in that 10 year period.
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So a pretty appalling safety record.
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Some of you may recall Peter Bryant best known for designing and building
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Can-Am cars, but earlier in his career, he worked, this is in the
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mid sixties, worked on Formula One cars and worked in Indy cars.
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And of that experience, he said, compared with the contemporary Indy cars.
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F1 cars were death traps.
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Bobby Unter three time Incar champion Indy 500 winner.
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That is, I was even more skating in his assessment based on his experience driving
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A BRM in the Canadian Grand Prix in 1968.
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He said in those days, formula One was way behind IndyCar, racing way behind.
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Their technologies weren't up with ours.
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Safety was, I ventured to say, 10 years behind.
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In those days, they used to kill drivers like popped popcorn.
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Uncle Bobby had a unique turn of phrase.
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I would say there were a couple of factors at play here.
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The most obvious and probably most important was technology.
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1966, formula One regulations changed from a maximum of 1.5 liters to three liters.
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So engines doubled in size and uh, speeds went up, I don't
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know, 30, 40 miles an hour.
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This is also the period when wings and downforce first appear.
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There was also a, uh, tire war going on between Firestone, Goodyear, and Dunlop.
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And during war, that's when technology advances exponentially.
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So it was with tires.
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Tires became much wider.
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They became lower profile.
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They were much stickier.
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This is when the slick tire, the tread tire, was invented,
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at least for road racing.
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So cornering speeds went up dramatically.
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And corners are, of course, where the most serious accidents occur.
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And you have to remember that in this period.
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The road courses in Europe were largely just that they were road courses,
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runoff areas had things like trees and telephone poles, sometimes farmhouses
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and barns and things you did not want to hit at high speed, and when you did
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hit them, the results were often fatal.
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Second factor in explaining this appalling safety record
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was the attitudes of the era.
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Yes.
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When a driver was killed, there was naturally a period of mourning and grief,
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but the general consensus at the time was.
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This came with the territory and it was sort of the cost of doing business.
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You have to remember that 1960s were only one generation removed from
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World War ii, a global conflict, and when something like 50 million
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people died, many of them civilians.
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So when a young man who was doing something voluntarily without a
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gun being put to his head doing something, in fact, that a lot of
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the fans wish they were doing himself when he was killed in a race car.
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Yes, people were sad, but it didn't spark outrage the way it would do.
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Now, another factor is that in those days, danger was considered
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part and parcel of the sport it was, or the appeal of the sport.
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It was what made the sport special and distinguished it from stick
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and ball sports like baseball, football, and basketball.
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This was a philosophy that was adopted not just by fans and journalists, but
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by many of the drivers themselves.
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So, uh, you have to, that needs to be accounted for.
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Third factor was politics.
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In those days, the hierarchy of racing was very strictly delineated.
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At the top of the totem pole were the Blue Bloods, the aristocratic members of
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the Old Boy network who ran the National Sporting Clubs, these were the people who
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made up the directors of the CSI, which was the competition arm of the FIA back
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then, and they ran the put on the races that made up the Formula One schedule.
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The middle class was represented by instructors and vendors.
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Guys like Mike Len and Colin Chapman, and they were, you know,
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the equivalent of the shopkeepers.
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The small shopkeepers are entrepreneurs of the day, clever guys to be sure,
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but, you know, involved in the, the grubby endeavor of making a living.
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The drivers were a level below them, and they were analogous, I
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guess, to plumbers and electricians.
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They were people with special skills and they were compensated for them.
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In the case of superstars like Sterling Moss and Jimmy Clark,
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they were compensated very well.
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But by and large, they were considered to be interchangeable cogs in the machine.
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And when it came to safety, the aristocrats who ran the sport
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didn't see a moral case for safety.
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And as a practical matter, they realized it would cost a small fortune, well,
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actually a, a large fortune to, to line racetracks with miles of guardrails
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to equip and train firefighters and to hire medical staff and outfit hospitals.
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I mean, this would cost a lot of money, and there wasn't a lot of
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money in racing in those days.
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There's no real big time sponsorship before, uh,
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lucrative television contracts.
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So the money was gonna come out of their pockets, and they had no
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intention of spending it to keep a couple of drivers from getting killed.
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The constructor didn't object to safety per se, but for them,
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as a practical matter, making course safer would take time.
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It would cost money, probably add weight.
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Added weight means slower lap times, and slower Lap times is exactly what
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you don't want if you're a constructor.
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So as far as they were concerned, the only way they were going to implement any
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sort of safety upgrades into their cars is if it was required by the regulations.
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The only group with a vested interest in safety were the drivers, and they
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were the ones that had no leverage.
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And so nothing really happened on that front.
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This can be seen very clearly in the rules that the FIA promulgated
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regarding safety during this period.
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I mean, there are so measly as to be almost non-existent, a couple
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of red letter dates, and so 1952.
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Helmets are required.
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Good thing.
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The problem is the only helmets into the sixties that is were there glorified paper
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mache, which had been designed originally for British colonial administrators, and
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then there were sort of the cork helmets that had been designed for polo players.
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Phil Hill once set about his helmet that he called his
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helmet a uh, a cardboard hat.
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The point being that it really didn't do much to protect dryer from head
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injuries in the case of an accident.
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1961, the FIA required roll bars.
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What they didn't do was require roll bars that were tall enough or robust enough to
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actually protect the driver in the case of a rollover accident, apocryphal stories
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about guys making roll bars out of wood and painting them to look like metal.
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And it said that Colin Chapman told his mechanics never push a car
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around the paddock by the roll bar.
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Point being that they were so flimsy as to.
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Really not be worth what they weighed.
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1963, the FAA required fire retardant uniforms.
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And again, this sounds like another step in the right direction except for
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the inconvenient fact that Gen Nomex wasn't yet commercially available
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and there was no fire retardant material out there for drivers to use.
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While there was actually an aluminized, things that firefighters were aware,
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but this was not practical for drivers.
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So they were the normal cotton uniforms.
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And what they would do is they would soak it in a. Solution of boric acid,
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which supposedly added a couple of seconds of, of flame protection.
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Basically, these suits were as valuable in a fire as the helmets
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were in the case of a crash.
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And in 1964, the FIA promulgated regulations governing the installation
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of seat belts, again, a good thing.
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Unfortunately, what they didn't do is require seat belts.
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So as a result, nobody installed seat belts, the first team
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to show up with seat belts.
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The operation outta Southern California, this was an All American team, and
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the reason why they had seat belts is they drew their inspiration, not
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from Formula One, but from Indy, where everyone was already using seat belts.
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SCS looked beautiful, but they were dogs slow.
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And when they debuted at Monaco, they were so far off the pace that prevent.
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Lo asked Sterling Moss if he would take a spin in the car and see if he
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could figure out what the problem was.
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Moss agreed and he gets over to the car, he looks in the cockpit, sees
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the seat belt, and what does he do?
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Doesn't put 'em on.
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He sits on top of them and he goes down.
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And this was very much par for the course back in the day Formula, the one that is.
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As if people didn't understand what seat belts were.
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They'd been around supposedly since the middle of 19th century
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when they were used on gliders.
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And 1911, when the Wright brothers delivered one of their first
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airplanes to the US Army, it was equipped with a leather restraint.
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By 1928, all American planes had to have be equipped with seat belts.
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And during World War ii, all American combat pilots wore four point harnesses.
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So.
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Two lap belts, two shoulder belts.
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Took a little while for seat belts to get to the car.
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World.
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Nash was the first manufacturer to offer seat belts as an option.
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This is 1949 and in 1951, seat belts became available as an aftermarket
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item, but the real red letter date for seat belts is 1959, and that's
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when Neils Boland, who was the chief safety engineer at Volvo,
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patented the three point seatbelt.
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This almost immediately became the industry standard.
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And in 19 68, 3 point seat belts were required on all American passenger cars.
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Racers took a little longer to get with the program, so to speak.
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Supposedly Barney Oldfield put seat belts on a race car in 1922.
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That's what I read.
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Can't really find any confirmation of that.
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And.
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At that point, uh, Barney would've been pretty old and longer than than
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two, so I'm not sure what sort of race car he would've been racing back then.
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But after World War ii, seat belts became commonplace.
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Worst surplus harnesses were available and they were bought up and used by
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drivers in Indy cars and sprint cars.
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Midgets stock cars Dragsters 1954.
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The SECA required seat belts in all of its cars competing in races.
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And that included even the Pist, sprites and Crosley Hotshots.
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So by the 1960s, basically every serious driver in the United States would be
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using a seatbelt, not so over in Europe.
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In fact, well, until the sixties.
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Most road races thought in Europe, thought that seat belts were
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dangerous rather than a benefit.
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Conventional wisdom was that given the opportunity you were supposed to jump
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outta the cockpit before an accident, more or less like a, uh, a pilot
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bailing out of a stricken airplane.
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Richard Atwood, who won Lamont 1971 and a P nine 17, told me we all knew the cars
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were deformed in the case of a crash.
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That's why belts weren't really thought of as being a particularly good idea,
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especially if the car caught fire.
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The most accomplished practitioner of bailing out of a race car before an
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accident was American Maed Gregory, who famously leapt out of a lister
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jag at Silverstone in 58, and then he did it again at Goodwood the
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next year in a, um, Turro Jaguar.
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Peter Bryant tells a funny story about Gregory a couple of years later, before
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the Tasman series, he was doing a seat fitting with Masterton Gregory.
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So they're in the garage and Gregory's in the cockpit.
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Everything's kinda low key, and then all of a sudden Gregory jumps up.
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Pulls himself outta the cockpit, onto the floor of the garage, and
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Brian thinks something's wrong.
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Maybe the car's on fire.
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And he goes, what's going on?
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Gregory calmly stuck a stick of red licorice in his mouth.
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And don't worry, I always check out the escape route when I drive a different car.
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As you might imagine, a lot of unbelted drivers flew out of their
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cars unintentionally over in Europe.
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Probably the most famous incident.
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You may have seen this photo, a pretty well known photo of Hans Herman
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watching his BRM Bavel roll at ous after he's been ejected from the cockpit.
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Now, fortunately, Herman wasn't hurt in this accident, but this was very much
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the exception rather than the rule.
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Mos learned this lesson the hard way a.
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At Monaco was thrown out of cockpit of his Lotus at SPA Grievously.
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Injured at RAN in 1964.
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Team Lotus Driver Peter run's career ended when he was thrown outta the cockpit.
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Jean Pierre s for permanent injuries to his left arm, 1965.
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John Serty motorcycle champion broke his pelvis and several other bones
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when he was half thrown out of the cockpit of his Lola T 70 of most sport.
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He wasn't wearing a seatbelt and Lucky Kassner wasn't
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wearing a seatbelt, was killed.
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A couple months later during the LAMA test, Kassner was actually driving a
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Maserati coup, so he was thrown out of the cockpit of a a closed cockpit car,
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which gives you some idea of the forces that were involved in these crashes.
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The stories of how seat belts finally came to Formula One has rarely been told,
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and it stars a, an unlikely and largely unknown hero In the name of a young
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British physician, Dr. Michael Henderson, he was a hardcore racing fan While he
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was in medical school, he worked as a track announcer and he wrote freelance
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articles for car magazines 1960, he managed to, uh, go club racing in a Lotus
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seven that he caged at a Colin Chapman.
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When he, uh, earned his medical degree, he went to work for the Royal Air
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Force Study in Aviation medicine area.
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And when he started doing that, he, he made a surprising discovery.
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He realized that the aviation industry had been studying high speed accidents
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for decades, and in fact, they had a whole all sorts of protocols
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for how to minimize accidents that resulted from high speed crashes.
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And as he told me.
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I began to understand that there was a science of vehicle safety out there
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that we didn't have to ignore the fact that people are getting injured in
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racing accidents any more than you would ignore any other kind of melody realms.
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The aviation medicine textbook that we were using at the time
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was about three inches thick.
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It was a major book, and yet nothing had been done to adopt any of this material.
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Psychological, physiological impact, resistance, anything to motor racing.
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Henderson was no dummy, so he decided to apply some of what
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he learned to his own racing.
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Uh, when he went, ran a touring car at the, at the Berg ring, he fitted it
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with a three point belt and he said, did the same thing with his street
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car, which was a Jaar XK 1 20 19 66.
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He bought a Malick U2 Clubman and his plan was to put in a four
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point harness, like the ones he used by RAF pilots he worked with.
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But he realized pretty quickly that the lay down seating position, which
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is very similar to a a formula car.
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Meant that in the case of a funnel collision, he would slide under
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the belts as a submarine under them and he could be grievously injured.
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So his state, what happened, he had trained as a parachute, and it struck
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him that the crotch restraints in a military parachute might be able to
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be adapted to a four point harness to provide anti-submarine protection.
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So he went to a company called Britax, which was then in the seatbelt business.
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It's now in the car seat business, and he convinced them to build
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a harness to his specifications, perhaps looped around his thighs.
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To provide the anti submarine protection.
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And this created the first six point harness used in road racing competition.
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Angels should have been singing and, uh, trumpets blaring.
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Instead, there was silence.
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So to draw up some publicity, Henderson wrote a couple of articles
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and these generated nothing more than, uh, polite indifference.
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So he now embarked on plan C, and he contacted various British racing
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organizations and he persuaded them.
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To agree to send him information about all the accidents that
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occurred in the upcoming season.
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His idea was to collect all this data, kind of crunch it, and then,
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um, write a book about his findings.
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That's exactly what he did.
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Wrote the book in 67, published it in 1968.
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Motor Racing and Safety is the foundational text of the
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Motorsport Safety Movement.
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Drawing on his analysis of more than 200 accidents, Henderson
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comprehensively demolished the myth.
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It made sense to jump out of a moving race car and he made the affirmative
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case for wearing a seat belt dad gravitas to his thesis and also to
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get more people to buy his book.
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He decided to get a luminary, someone luminary in the motor sports world to
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write the forward, and he approached Lewis Stanley who ran the Formula One team.
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And Stanley was a somewhat controversial figure, always dressed
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in blue blazers and gray flannel sax.
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He was somewhat pompous, could be a bit pretentious.
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Critics considered him the Colonel Blimp.
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The motorsports world.
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On the other hand, he was just about the only member of the aristocrats who
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ran racing, who believed in safety, and he'd almost single-handedly created
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the international ground pre-medical service, which provided a well-equipped
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mobile hospital that, uh, went from track to track Henderson pitches.
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Stanley Stanley invites him to come to his estate.
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New Cambridge Henderson shows up, gives him a spiel about seat belts, and when
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he gets finished, suddenly goes right.
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I agree.
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I'll put belts in Jackie Stewart's car.
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By this time, Henderson was dissatisfied with the locking mechanism that
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Britax was using for the six point harness as fate would have it.
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He was working on a program at the time to upgrade the seat belts and
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the F four phantoms that the RAF was buying from McDonald Douglas.
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This had put him in touch with the GQ Parachute company, which had
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provided all the parachutes used by the RA during the Second World War.
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Henderson asked GQ if they might create a six point harness for
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him, and they advised him to get in touch with their chief consultant.
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Major Terrence Willens.
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Now Willens is one truly remarkable, remarkable character.
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Not so much for his racing stuff, but just for his entire career.
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Orphaned at 13, he worked as a Bronco buster, as a teenager,
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while he was still in his teens.
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When, uh, world War II erupted, he volunteered for the British Calvary
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and trained as a paratrooper.
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Before his first jump, his instructor yelled, uncurl, your ears Dumbo and fly.
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Willens he was for the rest of his life.
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He served as a so-called Pathfinder during the war landing behind enemy
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lines in France, Greece, and Italy.
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After the war, he performed a series of incredibly risky high altitude
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tests and eventually became known as the father of British Sport Para.
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He performed the first live fire ejection seat tests of the fallen net jet fighter.
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He wing walked without a parachute of ear shows, and he also worked
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as a motion pitcher, stuntman.
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So Willans and Henderson collaborated to create the six point harness that GQ and
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manufactured and made available to Formula One drivers at the start of the 68 season.
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Several of them had read Henderson's book and they were what, I guess
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you'd call seatbelt curious.
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The major holdout, unfortunately, was the best known driver in Formula One.
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That was Jimmy Clark, two ton world champion.
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Jimmy absolutely refused to wear a belt.
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Henderson recalls, and this is kind of weird, I don't really understand
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this, because when Clark raced in Indy 500, he had to wear a belt.
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It was required.
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By usac, and so he was wearing seat belts when he won the 500 in
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1965, but he refused to put them in his Formula One car, and he wasn't
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wearing them in the Formula two car.
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He was racing in Hockenheim on April 7th, 1968.
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This was a dreadful, dreary weekend.
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It was rainy Clark's cars.
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Lotus had a misfire.
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He was running mid-pack early in the race tire deflated.
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Got into a terrible tank.
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Slapper couldn't control it.
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Car hit the tree at high speed.
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He was thrown outta the cockpit and his head slammed
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against the trunk of the tree.
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About 10 to 12 feet up, killed instantly.
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This was pretty much a come to Jesus moment for Clark's colleagues.
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Chris Aon, who was uh, the number one driver in the Ferrari team said,
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speaking for many of his colleagues.
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Jimmy's death was the most profound thing that had happened to me in my
22:22
recent career because I felt if it could happen to him, what chance did
22:25
the rest of us have had to confess?
22:27
I don't think seat belts would've saved.
22:28
Jimmy Clark Chenbo accident was just too violent.
22:31
On the other hand, drivers didn't have access to any
22:33
other sort of driver equipment.
22:35
I mean, it was either seat belts or was nothing.
22:37
So during the course of the 68 season, many drivers, most drivers, adopted
22:41
and started wearing seat belts.
22:42
As Henderson told me, it confirmed my belief that human beings are sentient
22:46
creatures if given the right information.
22:48
They understand that there are reasonable things to do anyway.
22:51
Interest in seat belts naturally filtered down to less exalted forms of racing.
22:55
John Finning was an early convert.
22:57
He had been one of the more successful British Formula three drivers early
23:02
in the sixties before retiring.
23:03
19 60, 80, he wanted to get back into racing on an amateur
23:06
basis, do some hill climbing.
23:07
And his wife agreed to allow him to do so, only if he invested
23:11
in the latest in safety gear.
23:12
So he bought a, um, a Nomex suit, which was available at then end.
23:15
He bought a, uh, full face helmet, which was available by then, and
23:19
he wanted to buy some seat belts.
23:20
But it wasn't like you could go to Pegasus or your local race shop and
23:24
pick up a pair of, uh, racing belts.
23:25
They, they weren't available.
23:26
So.
23:27
The only guy he knew who was wearing seat belts was his old
23:30
F three rival Jackie Stewart.
23:32
So Fing called BRM, found whose supplier was they put him in touch with GQ and
23:37
GQ put him in touch with Dumbo Wills.
23:39
Willin met with fending when he was in the area, performing some ejection seat tests.
23:43
Fending bought a four point harness and installed it in his hill climb car.
23:47
Fending had a race shop, that's what he did for a living.
23:49
And so people would come over and they would look at his car and
23:51
they'd, uh, look inside the cockpit and go, Hey, what's that stuff there?
23:54
Seat belts.
23:55
And a couple of people said, well, that sounds like a pretty good idea.
23:57
I mean, we should, maybe I should be wearing seat belts.
23:59
So fitting, started selling seat belts and after about six months.
24:03
He went to Willans and said, Dumbo, did you ever think of
24:06
doing this professionally and stop trying to kill yourself?
24:08
Jumping out airplanes I him into forming a company.
24:11
He was the brains and I was the salesman manufacturing.
24:15
Became the first major player in the racing market and its signature.
24:19
Royal Blue Belts could be seen in virtually every F1 car of the Euro.
24:22
You can still see a lot.
24:23
I mean, will is still in business and you can still see a lot of them today.
24:26
It's their favorites in uh, uh, restored F1 cars that are vintage
24:29
racing, especially cars of the DFE era.
24:31
Very, very popular and very good.
24:33
By this time, ironically, Dr. Henderson had sort of gotten
24:37
out of the seatbelt business.
24:38
Well, he was never really in the business, but he sort of got outta that world.
24:41
He moved to Australia and embarked on a new and fruitful career in
24:44
road car safety, and he eventually served as director of Traffic
24:47
Safety in New South Wales.
24:48
But he kept in touch with his old racing pals.
24:50
And so in, uh, January 69 Formula, the one drivers, several of them came over
24:55
to race in at Taman series in Australia.
24:58
He had dinner with Jochen rent.
25:00
Was a hard nosed Austrian who'd more or less taken Clark's place as the
25:04
number one driver on the Lotus team.
25:06
And after Jimmy Clark, he was probably the most vocal advocate for safety.
25:10
During this era, he was a big believer in what Henderson preaching and he told
25:14
Henderson, I've read your book and I agree with everything you say, but you
25:17
will never get me wearing crotch belts believe that in the case of an accident,
25:21
the thigh belts, the crotch belts would crush his private parts, which would be
25:24
very painful if in fact that was the case.
25:26
But Henderson explained that's not what the way they worked.
25:28
But, uh, Ridge couldn't be convinced and so he continued to race with a four
25:33
point harness, did not have the crash builds with anti-submarine protection.
25:38
To September 5th, 1970 practice for the Italian Grand Prix Monza rent coming
25:43
off four consecutive victories in the summer in the groundbreaking Lotus 72
25:49
there Monza in practice, he had just blown past any human, about 190 miles
25:53
an hour, and in the brake zone for the parabolic at his car, suddenly viewed
25:57
to the left and ran it to a guardrail.
25:59
Had the guardrail been stored properly, it wouldn't have been a terrible accident.
26:03
Well, it might have been a bad accident, but it wouldn't
26:04
have been a fatal accident.
26:05
That's for sure.
26:06
Uh, unfortunately, the guardrail was not installed properly.
26:09
The bottom strand gave way.
26:11
The wedge nose of the Lotus 72 dug in underneath it and
26:14
it came to an immediate stop.
26:15
Rin was thrust forward in the cockpit, and since he wasn't wearing a submarine
26:19
belt, he slid forward and the belt buckle severed his jugular vein.
26:23
He was dead before medical attention could.
26:27
Later that year, rent became the first driver ever.
26:31
World driving champion.
26:33
Despite.
26:34
The FIA didn't take action to require six point harnesses.
26:38
In fact, they didn't require seat belts at all, which is a dereliction of duty.
26:42
That's a little hard to understand.
26:43
I mean, you didn't have to be a safety advocate to understand
26:46
seat belts made a lot of sense.
26:48
1969, British privateer, John Wolf was killed on the first lap of the 24
26:54
hours of LAMA when he crashed without wearing seat belts in his Porsche.
26:57
Nine 17 a week before rent was killed at Mona British Amateur, Chris Summers.
27:04
Who wore street clothes when he raced and refused to wear a harness, died when he
27:08
was thrown from the cockpit of his Lola T 1 72, in a formula of 5,000 race at Ston.
27:14
Almost exactly a year later, his friend and fellow 5,000 racer Peter Houghton,
27:18
who likewise wore street clothes when he raced and didn't wear seat belts,
27:22
died when he was ejected from the cockpit of his Cooper T 90 at Ton Park.
27:27
It wasn't until 19 72, 19 72 that the f. Belatedly mandated six point harnesses
27:35
long after the vast majority of formula cars were already out with them.
27:39
How many drivers have been badly hurt or killed needlessly before
27:42
action was taken too many.
27:44
The lesson to be learned from the history of seat belt is clear.
27:46
If racing was to be made safer, the changes wouldn't come from the top down.
27:50
They would be forced on the sport from the bottom up by the people whose
27:53
lives were at risk, which made sense.
27:56
After all, revolutions are won on the battlefield, not in the boardroom.
28:00
Thanks for tuning in.
28:01
Really appreciate it.
28:03
Thanks also to Duke Inger, Bob Barr and the rest of the crew
28:07
who put on this symposium.
28:08
Tremendous amount of work goes into a project like this, and they
28:11
deserve a huge pat on the back.
28:13
Anyway, thank you very much.
28:14
Take care.
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