Welcome to the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1. This is the omnibus edition, where the seven separate shows (originally released over seven days) are brought together in one place.
This was the first mini series Sidepodcast ever released, originally in 2007, and served as a good introduction to the sport for those who had never watched before.
Welcome to F1 People, a short series from Sidepodcast presenting a biography of the names you need to know. In this fifth episode, we’re looking at Jackie Stewart.
John Young Stewart, better known as Jackie, was born on June 11th 1939 in Dumbartonshire, Scotland. He was immersed into the world of cars and motorsport from the very beginning. The family business was a Jaguar dealership, where Jackie apprenticed as a mechanic. His father had raced motorcycles in his spare time, and his brother Jimmy was becoming a renowned local racing driver. After an accident at Le Mans saw Jimmy injured, their parents discouraged any interest in the sport. Jackie took up shooting, instead, and just missed out on a place in the 1960 Olympics.
Despite the disapproval from his parents, Jackie accepted an offer from a customer of the garage to test cars at Oulten Park. He entered many races and won a lot of them but the most important win was probably at Goodwood. He impressed everyone present and Ken Tyrell, then running the Formula Junior team for Cooper, heard of this new rising talent and made some calls. Jackie tested a new Formula 3 car against Bruce McLaren, and outshone him, resulting in an offer from Tyrell right there and then.
He made his debut for Tyrell in Formula Three in 1964. His debut race saw him gain a lead of over 20 seconds after just two laps, extended to over 40 seconds by the end of the race. On the strength of this, he was offered a Formula 1 driver with Cooper, but he chose to remain at Tyrell and get some experience. He lost just two races and became the F3 champion.
The next year he impressed Colin Chapman at a Formula 1 test for Lotus, but again declined the drive and chose Formula Two instead.
1965 saw his first full season as an F1 driver for BRM, and he continued his impressive form. Through his career he drove for Tyrell, for March, and Matra, winning 27 races and three world championships. He is one of the few drivers to choose to leave the sport at the top rather than see his performance drop off. He retired in 1973.
During the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, it rained considerably and there were many crashes. Jackie Stewart found himself upside down, trapped in his car by the steering wheel, with fuel pouring around him, for 25 minutes. Two other drivers had to free him using tools from a spectator. Thankfully, he emerged relatively unscathed, but the incident wakened Stewart’s senses to the need for improved safety considerations. There were no crews to extricate drivers from damaged cars, and there were no medical facilities on track. His wait for an ambulance was unpleasant and long. Racing conditions
were dangerous and unnecessarily so. During a period of ten years, Stewart knew over 50 friends and colleagues that died during races – the chances of a fatal accident during that time were two out of there.
Stewart teamed up with his BRM boss Louis Stanley to campaign for better safety provisions at races. Safety barriers were a rarity until Jackie called attention to it. He hired a private doctor to attend races, until the medical situation could be improved. Seat belts, helmets, fireproof clothes, all of these are down to Stewarts unwillingness to give in. He rallied track owners to sort out their facilities, and he called on the drivers to boycott races if they were not up to scratch.
After his retirement from Formula 1, Stewart became a consultant for Ford, and a commentator for NASCAR, and even returned to the sport with his own Stewart Grand Prix racing team. He set up the team with his son Paul, and they worked on it together until 2000, when Jackie retired. The team had then become Jaguar Racing. Both his son Paul, one of two, along with Mark, and Jackie’s wife Helen were diagnosed with cancer, and in 2002, Stewart himself had an operation to remove a tumour from his cheek. He continues to be an active spokesman for safety, and is currently having an argument through the media (and through lawyers) with FIA President Max Mosley. His
autobiography has just been released.
But his most important post-racing activities were the amazing safety improvements he almost single-handedly brought about. Of course, he upset many people along the way, but in his eyes, safety is more important than
popularity, and in 2001, the knighthood that made him Sir Jackie Stewart, proves just that.
That’s all for this episode. Tomorrow we will be looking at another important person from Formula 1, so please, join me then.
It’s all about going as fast as you possibly can and beating your opponents at all costs. But at high speeds, and with such delicate equipment, safety is an important part of the sport. From the basics of a helmet and gloves, to specifics like fireproof underwear are all there to protect the driver when things go wrong.
Your driver is sitting in the cockpit, often referred to as the tub, or survival cell. This is because the basics of a driver’s survival starts here. Constructed of carbon fibre, it is both light and strong. Crash structures are built into the front and rear of the cell along with the roll hoop whose job it is to protect the driver if the car rolls, hitting the ground before the driver’s helmet.
Keeping the driver in his seat is more than your average seat belt. It comprises of four belts joined by a central buckle, shoulders and hips, to ensure the driver is fixed securely. His most vulnerable part is probably the head and neck. Aptly, this is protected by then HANS system – head and neck support system. It’s a device that joins the driver’s torso to his helmet and it’s goal is to reduce the loadings to a driver’s head and neck during the rapid deceleration caused by an accident.
Moving away from the driver to the car, you’ll find on each wheel a restraint system, which prevents the tyre from flying off uncontrollably. As well as protecting the driver, this also protects marshals and spectators, as do run off areas and tyre walls. These are in place for when a car loses control and leaves the track. Smashing into a tyre wall greatly reduces speed and impact, and run-off areas provide a safe haven for an out of control car.
Before a car can even take to a track, it has to pass a number of mandatory FIA crash tests. These are similar to the crash tests your average road car goes through, to ensure that the structure can absorb a certain amount of force on impact. This guarantees a minimum level of safety for the driver.
Now we understand how a driver is protected, the last thing to cover in the area of safety, is what happens immediately after an accident on track. If the accident is relatively inconsequential, marshals will be asked to wave a yellow flag, indicating that drivers must slow down around the affected area. If the accident is more serious, the safety car can be deployed. During a race, the safety car is constantly on standby. So, a car may be stranded in a dangerous position on the track, in which case a safety car will be deployed to slow down the remaining racers. With the safety car deployed and the cars slowed behind it, marshals are able to clear an accident in relative safety so that the race can continue without further disruption. Cars remain queued up behind the safety car until stewards deem the course safe again, at which point the safety car peels into the pits and the cars resume racing when they reach the start / finish line.
Although it may seem quite a convoluted process, it’s important to keep your drivers running safely throughout the season.
Having covered all the basics of Formula 1, the last topic in our series will be how you can get to a race.
We’ve had a look at all the good stuff about F1, the speed, the races, the cars. Now it’s time to take a look at the flip side to that – the rule enforcers.
Your boo’s and hiss’s should be aimed at the FIA, who represent the interests of the majority of motorsport worldwide. I’d tell you what it stands for but it’s in French and I probably wouldn’t do it justice. They are based in Paris, y’see.
The FIA’s main remit is to increase motorsport safety, manage championships, specify regulations and set calendars. Basically this means they have to make all the important decisions. They’re also heavily involved in everyday road safety.
Other than Formula 1, they also preside over the World Rally Championship and the World Touring Car Championship. F1 is their highest profile sport though – the one that gets them in the news all the time, for both good and bad reasons.
Within Formula 1, the FIA face a constant battle with the manufacturer’s who wish to spend more money more often, whereas the FIA continue to try to reign in excess spending by introducing restrictions such as two-race engines, and single tyre suppliers. The idea behind the cost-cutting measures is to make sure that the sport can include independent teams such as Williams – a team who’s sole reason for being is to race in F1. Manufacturer’s come and go but it’s the independents who really stay on in people’s hearts.
When a team is doing something a little bit dodgy, that perhaps another team wants to complain about, they take it to the race stewards. These are the people who make the decisions about particular races, including safety cars, flags, and they have the power to start and stop the race. They can be compared to the referee’s in a football game or the umpire in a tennis match. If teams disagree with the steward’s decision, they can escalate their complaint to the International Court of Appeal. This is run by the FIA, and is more like a court case with lawyers and such like. The ICA decision is final.
When it comes to safety, the driver’s get to have their say in the form of the Grand Prix Driver’s Association. This is basically a union for Formula 1 drivers, chaired by a nominated current driver. The GPDA was formed after the death of Ayrton Senna, as a way for drivers to air their views over the state of Formula 1 safety. Often, they don’t agree with the FIA decisions, but with their only power being access to the media, they rarely make a difference.
One final thing that the FIA do which affects us all, is research into motorsport and the environment, including cleaner fuels, and renewable energy. They are involved in several carbon neutrality schemes, for example reforestation projects. This way, they can keep Formula 1 safe and secure for the future.
We mentioned safety briefly today. Our next instalment of the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1 will look at safety in more detail.
The autographed McLaren team jacket, which belonged to Hamilton, failed to reach its reserve price at Bonhams Auctioneers in a sporting memorabilia sale.
Each member of the McLaren team has their own named jacket and this one and it was due to be sold with photographs showing Hamilton signing it.
