Grand Prix: The Killer Years

An amazing BBC doc. One of those documentaries that had me thinking about it days after Id seen it. Truly shocking how F1 drivers were expected to die and how many died in the 60's. Very sad to hear how Chapman of Lotus was so blasé in his experiments and how the races would just continue. Not sure how you'd get your hands on the documentary, but it was on TV last night and its on you tube. After watching Senna I became interested in F1 and this has made me even more interested. The interviews with Jackie Stewart are great and he comes across as a true British hero in the face of greedy and selfish F1 corporation Watch it asap!

As a kid growing up, Grand Prix racing was regarded as the most dangerous sports in the world. Of course during the era I watched the sport on television fatalities were thankfully rare, yet a few years earlier motor racing was lethal and this documentary demonstrates it.

The punch in the gut is that some of the revered team owners come across as callous, designing cars on the edge with no real testing and the drivers as guinea pigs. When it comes to safety, they turned a blind eye and deaf ears.

Some ex world champions from the 1960s and 1970s are on hand to give their views of Grand Prix safety. Others are shown in archive footage or it is left to their widows. The fatal crashes and fires make this difficult viewing.

The tracks were dangerous but track owners did not want to spend money on safety. There was little or no first aid and safety equipment. Team owners were unconcerned. The drivers knew that one shunt and that could be the end of them and it was left to them to make the initial moves to improve their own safety as it were their colleagues that were dying throughout the season.

An interesting and informative documentary and thank goodness that Formula 1 has moved on from those years.

I watched this on Amazon Prime so I'm not sure if the DVD covered these issues but.....Why were there no English sub titles for those people who were speaking in their native language. It would have been nice to be able to understand what they were saying. And why were we not told who was speaking ? Some of the drivers were recognizable like Jackie Stewart and Jackie Ickx, But other interviewees were not identified.

I have Senna on DVD and watched this documentary the other night and was quite blown away. Even if you have no interest in motor sport it is an incredible social statement about power, glory, greed and perhaps absolute egotism. Colin Chapman, especially, does not come out of this looking good.

For those of us old enough, we know what is coming, but the personal insights into those who will die is quite heartbreaking.

I have driven parts of Spa, the Nurburgring and Goodwood (where Moss crashed and Bruce McClaren died) and they are strange places. No birds sing, there is a feeling of dread in the air. If you watch this doco, and Senna, you get the feeling that Senna and Clark knew they were about to die.

At the moment it can be downloaded at Grand Prix-The Killer Years-Video Dailymotion.