Grand Prix: The Killer Years

It's September 10th 1961, and the Grand Prix circus descends upon the Italian town of Monza.

German hero Wolfgang Von Trips lines his Ferrari up on the grid against British golden boy Jim Clark.

At stake is the World Grand Prix crown.

Moments later, 15 spectators and Von Trips would lie scattered and dead.

Astonishingly, this horror at Monza had become the accepted face of Grand Prix in the early '60s,

the race always continuing as the dead bodies were tidied away.

This is the story of that terrifying era,

and the slow, painful road to a safer future.

In my period of driving,

there was only a one out of three chance I was going to live.

There was a two out of three chance I was going to die.

To survive in that period of time,

it's not a question of talent, it's just...a question of pure luck.

It is probably difficult to comprehend today how one could

continue to race with those sort of tragedies literally all around you.

We counted, one night, my wife and I, Helen, at home, counted 57 people who had died.

They thought at the time, "Oh, hell, that could happen to me," but it's like the fighter pilot's thing.

Yes, sure, he's going to get shot down, he could get killed the next day.

You had that mentality, that bravado.

Fuel everywhere, the fuel pump going on.

I say, "This thing is going to blow," because there is a lot of fire.

Whoof, went up in flame. Big fireball.

You're just a passenger when something happens that quickly. There's nothing you can do about it.

And I start praying and asking God, "Should I still continue?

"Should I still be doing this sport?"

I love this sport, but something is wrong with this sport.

It's not just sadness, you're just angry, you're shocked,

you're angry the sport could be as bad as it is

and as negative as this, to have such violence.

15 streamlined thunderbolts roar from the starting line at the German Grand Prix, down Berlin's AVUS track.

The course uses two parallel autobahn lanes...

The 1950s brought together a combustible mix of daredevil drivers and cutting-edge technology.

With cars approaching 200mph and scant regard for safety,

audiences were flocking to the races.

When Hans Herrmann was thrown from his somersaulting BRM

at the 1959 German Grand Prix, the audience applauded his luck.

It was all part of the show.

And it was a show dominated by Mercedes, Maserati and Ferrari.

Winning driver Tony Brooks, with a 139 mph average,

a record for the perilous AVUS race.

So when British driver Tony Brooks won in an historic Ferrari 1-2-3,

few could see the revolution that was coming.

Enzo Ferrari and his contemporaries were about to be toppled from their throne

by a bunch of maverick British designers working out of sheds.

The strong British teams started to come in

to challenge the Italian dominance.

All of a sudden the Coopers won the championship in '59 and '60

with a rear-engined car, and by the end of 1960

the front-engined car like the Ferrari was dead.

Everybody had to go rear-engined.

Charles and John Cooper had effectively rewritten the Grand Prix rule book

by moving the engine from the front to the back.

The road holding was so much better,

you could position the rear-engined car

so much easier, they were so much lighter.

They responded so much more quickly to brakes because they were lighter.

Cooper was a very practical guy,

and I think almost the car was designed on the garage floor with chalk.

Cooper did all this from a small Surbiton lock-up,

proving that success was about fresh thinking, not industrial might.

This gave Colin Chapman, boss of another upstart outfit, the confidence that he could do it, too.

Lotus were about to change Grand Prix forever.

Lotus was a massive threat to anyone.

Chapman was much more of an innovator, lived on the edge.

His philosophy was always push the limit on everything.

We were sort of always in front of the opposition anyway.

We were sort of leading, and the others were sort of following in our wake.

As you approach there, you see these green transporters,

and you think, "This is it, this is the world,

"this is it, this is heaven," and you walk in

and you're surprised. It's small, unbelievably small.

And the smell of the cars, it was just unbelievable.

Colin was a very infectious character.

I always regretted that I didn't stay,

because he showed so much enthusiasm and drive.

He had this perception,

very sensitive, how to improve a car, like intuition.

He would put the hand here and start doing like this...

and I knew something good was going to come out soon.

Enzo Ferrari was a traditionalist, who believed that powerful engines were all you needed for success.

But the British were proving him wrong.

He began to disdainfully refer to them as garagistas - garage teams.

I think he was probably deep down very irritated

that with all his technical sophistication,

that these garages could not only take him on, but beat him.

Speaking technically, to get good acceleration

you need the best possible power to weight ratio.

Right now everyone is this country was using the same engine,

and so everybody basically had the same power.

So the only way to beat the opposition was to add lightness,

and that is what we tried to do.

Colin...most of the time carried it to extremes,

and consequently his cars, although they were quick, were also very fragile...

..and tended to break.

Lotus and its chief engineer Colin Chapman

were fast gaining a reputation for making lethal machines.

One race in 1960 would take a long time to forget.

But if we look at the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa in 1960, there were four accidents.

Three were Lotuses.

Two drivers were killed and two could've been killed.

They just confirmed my decision not to drive for them.

British drivers Alan Stacey and Chris Bristow both perished at Spa,

whilst Mike Taylor had been left badly injured.

Taylor had been sent into a ditch at over 100mph when his Lotus's steering column sheared.

But crucially, Taylor was the first driver ever to argue it was a manufacturing fault.

He demanded compensation.

Because he had bought the car in a commercial transaction,

he was entitled to say it was defective.

"You sold me something which was defective."

Quite a different argument altogether.

And he sued Chapman and it was settled out of court, apparently for a considerable amount of money.

The cars were so fragile that it wasn't really funny sometimes

to drive for him.

Make it light and when it breaks make it lighter still.

That was his attitude. It's always got to be the perfect machine.

These cars were being made to go so fast,

in places where you couldn't afford anything to go wrong

or the driver to make a mistake,

that it was lethal combination,

and that was again part of the mentality that people accepted.

This is the way it was, and there was nothing you could do about it except not do it.

Chapman was very much a product of his time.

Safety in Grand Prix racing was ill-conceived at best.

Flammable straw bales lined tracks. Spectators free to stand anywhere.

Pits open with petrol lying around in barrels.

Overalls made of cotton, and helmets often made of leather.

The drivers wore lucky charms rather than seat belts.

In 1961 and 1962, yet another four drivers and three spectators would be killed.

mechanical failure, trackside negligence and driver error all to blame.

Grand Prix, it seemed, was spiralling out of control.

Out of this atmosphere of risk and tragedy came a new Grand Prix darling.

Clark takes the lead from Hill before the midway point.

Jim Clark wins, averaging close to 121 mph.

Jim Clark was a Scottish farmer's boy with a rare talent.

Chapman had found the perfect driver to turn his team's fortunes around.

Jimmy Clark had this extraordinary ability to drive round problems.

His idea was to nurse the car as much as he could,

and if you look, it was just his sheer class and speed and how he took so little out of the car.

He had the car in perfect balance at all times.

Jim Clark and his Lotus Climax cleaned up in 1963 and 1965.

I had been third in the World Championship in my first year in Formula One in 1965,

and that was an amazing experience for a young, up and coming driver to be on the podium with a fellow Scot.

It began to be known as Batman and Robin,

and there was no doubt who Batman was or who Robin was.

Jim was best man at my wedding, but I said at that time it was the only time I will admit he was best man.

He was a good lad, a good lad.

Both on the track and off the track.

Sandwiched between Clark's championships

was a victory for John Surtees and the classic Ferrari 158.

Lotus would not have it all their own way.

Competition from the garagistas was taking Grand Prix to a new level,

its appeal attracting fresh young blood into the sport.

Jacky Ickx, Jo Siffert, Jackie Stewart,

Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Jackie Oliver and Jochen Rindt were all prepared to disregard their fear

for a taste of Grand Prix glory.

You are there to be the best.

You don't fight against the track,

you fight against your competitors to be the best.

I found that if I learned to be clinical, if I removed emotions,

whether they were highs or lows, I could perform to a better level.

Emotion's a very dangerous thing.

It's a fantastic feeling when I was able to put in a quick lap,

going to the corner, sliding the car, controlling,

drifting the car, brake on the limit.

To me, one of the biggest satisfactions is that relationship with that machinery.

It has to be one where it virtually talks to you.

Read it by the seat of the pants and by the feel it gives through you.

So that when you approach a high speed corner and you get it right...

..it's exhilarating.

You arrive at that corner and you think, "I can get through there without lifting."

So you keep this foot down, like that.

You always stay on the maximum performance.

You know, over 100%, and to be 101, 102% on the edge.

You have to be young, you shouldn't have any fear,

you have to have plenty of dreams and no questions about difficulties.

You go for it.

But you are on the edge, if you take the pressure the wrong way, mentally it's a disaster.

The pressure can destroy you, but you have to take it in a good way.

In the '60s, Grand Prix tracks were chosen specially to intensify that pressure on the drivers,

testing psychological strength as well as skill.

One of the most notorious was the extreme challenge of the 14-kilometre loop at Spa in Belgium.

Spa is a road circuit. High speed corners, doing 180, 200 mph.

So, I mean, if you went off the road, you didn't know what you were going to hit.

But you didn't think about it. It was just a piece of black strip where you just go flat out.

The challenge of Spa was very special.

To get it right was very satisfying, when you had the car or the bike just on the limit.

Spa was the fastest track in Europe at the time,

but the surrounding was not so easy because you are in the middle of the forest, the fields, houses,

electric poles and all these things.

-JACKIE STEWART:

-From a racing driver's point of view,

we could see what the trajectory would be if we got it wrong.

And then Graham Hill and Jim Clark, unfamiliar...

In 1966, Spa would host an extraordinary Grand Prix

in monsoon conditions that would automatically cancel a race today.

..non-starter. And we're all set for the off.

Into a slide on the inside. It's Jochen Rindt.

Jochen Rindt with a Cooper Maserati just behind John Surtees.

It's John Surtees with the three-litre V12...

When it really rained, it could be rather difficult,

and we had a dry start to this race, this 1966 Grand Prix.

We started the race in dry weather.

By the time we came to about the fourth corner,

there was thunder rain.

Well, now, Spa has a reputation for sensational racing at any stage,

but this is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen at a World Championship Grand Prix.

And seven of the best drivers in the world went off in the very first corner.

Aquaplaned off. I wasn't one of them. I'd made a bad start.

Joe Bonnier and Mike Spence the two cars off the road.

The two BRMs still haven't shown up and neither has Jim Clark's Lotus.

-Mike Spence still...

-Then he saw in the field the other BRM, that of Jackie Stewart, upside down.

Most tyres can't accommodate the kind of water that was there that day.

And I went off the road, I hit a woodcutter's hut, I knocked down a telegraph pole,

I hit part of a wall and went down into a lower basement area of a farmyard,

and I was knocked about, and it was the first lap.

I was stuck in the car for about 30 minutes and, of course, it could've gone up at any time.

I was conscious, unconscious, and Graham Hill fortunately came round

and could've continued, but came to help me.

Bob Bondurant and Graham borrowed spanners from spectators' cars

to get the steering wheel removed in order to get me out of the car,

and in fact had to go and find somebody to get an ambulance to come and pick me up.

And the only person there to help was a nun.

I was on a canvas stretcher,

and I remember being laid down on the floor,

and I remember seeing cigarette ends all around me on the floor.

And I think the nun was there because she had first aid equipment.

So that was, in effect, at each of the posts,

what medical attention you could expect.

They put me in the back of an ambulance

and we took off, and the motorcycle policeman lost the ambulance,

and the ambulance didn't know how to get to Liege.

I mean, a parody of errors.

It would be a funny story if it weren't serious.

But when that happens to you, you realise that the system's way wrong.

RACE COMMENTARY: 'Graham Hill took the steering wheel off with Bob Bondurant's help.

'They got Jackie Stewart out of the car.

'25 minutes it took before an ambulance got there

'and Jackie Stewart has now been taken to hospital with a broken rib

'and a broken shoulder...' COMMENTARY FADES

With broken ribs and collarbone,

Jackie Stewart was of the mind

that if the sport wasn't taking care of him,

he would take care of himself.

He taped a spanner to his steering wheel

and organised his own medical cover.

Eventually the drivers paid for a mobile hospital that went to races.

With respirators, heart machines, blood tanks, it was thought to have

everything required for a life threatening accident.

Despite this, three drivers were still to die within the next year.

Bob Anderson skidding into a marshal's post,

John Taylor and Lorenzo Bandini in horrific fires,

Bandini's intensified by straw bales that surrounded the Monaco track.

IN FRENCH:

Bandini was a Ferrari driver.

Enzo Ferrari used to talk about "my terrible joys",

where you want to win,

you're always pushing the limit in different ways,

Chapman one way, Ferrari in another.

People get killed and you have this kind of responsibility

and you also have this will to win

and the two don't always sit very comfortably.

I mean, drivers basically lived on one shunt

and they'd think, one big shunt would be it.

The most dangerous aspect in the '60s and '70s was the risk of fire.

Nine times out of ten if a car crashed,

pretty soon it would be burning.

I think the only way to make sense of motor racing at that time

is to appreciate that the drivers, the officials,

and the spectators had a completely different attitude

to life and death.

There were too many drivers getting killed

and they'd soon sign another one up,

you know, pretty quickly. Test days for the next one.

I mean it was...expendable?

Nearly.

IN FRENCH:

Jochen and I, we were driving in '64, '65,

in a little Mini

with his little van behind, with his car,

and he did everything himself,

and then he met his mechanic down at the circuit.

It was a real hippy time.

Colin Chapman and Lotus were amongst the first to realise

the full potential of the monocoque chassis

and the shift of the engine to the rear of the car.

But in mid 1967, came the coup de grace.

Chapman persuaded Ford to invest £100,000 in a Grand Prix engine

from Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin.

It would become the Grand Prix bargain of the century,

never mind the decade.

And it marked the first time that the engine and the chassis

were put together as integrated units.

So Duckworth and Costin designed the engine

to suit what kind of installation

Chapman and Morris Felipe envisaged in the Lotus 49.

Chapman's genius was to incorporate the 400 Brake Horsepower engine

in the actual structure of the car, making it lighter, yet stronger.

And when the new Lotus 49 was unveiled,

it destroyed the competition.

Here's this wonderful car, that appears at Zandvoort,

and has re-written the rule book on design overnight.

The Cosworth engine was so dominant

that Chapman to share his exclusive advantage with the other teams.

But as the 1968 season began, Lotus remained unbeatable.

They still had Jim Clark, now regarded as peerless.

I don't reckon there's ever been

a better partnership than those two guys.

IN FRENCH:

Out of the car or in the car, he was the same temperament. It was amazing.

And he said, "Follow me around

"and I'll show you a few tips."

So for the first opening lap at the Nurburgring,

I followed Jimmy Clark around.

And then on the second lap he disappeared!

I thought I was doing quite well until then.

'I think that to drive very fast round a circuit

'requires a tremendous amount of self control

'because the limit of driving very fast and going over the limit

'takes a tremendous amount of concentration.'

In the event the 1968 season would hardly be underway

before history was to be cruelly rewritten.

Hockenheim was and is a very Teutonic track.

No other word will do I'm afraid.

It's got these huge concrete grandstands in a great bowl.

It was basically a high speed run.

The track, apart from the complex,

really is like a corridor between tall trees, almost,

and the mist and the rain hang in those trees,

and make it even more miserable.

It's the kind of place you want to get the race over and go home.

On the 7th April 1968,

Germany's second track welcomed spectators for a Formula Two race.

It was a damp, miserable weekend

that is enshrined in memory as the race that nobody wanted to be at.

The teams scheduled to appear included Lotus, Matra and Ferrari.

Accompanying them was a roster of top drivers, including Jim Clark.

There were a lot of reasons why Jimmy was at Hockenheim.

One of which, it was normal in those days

for Formula One drivers to do Formula Two races.

It happened all the time.

However, at this particular race, something was unsettling Clark.

Don't think the weather helped.

He wasn't very happy all weekend, for him,

although he was still his gentleman self.

And Graham wasn't all that happy either.

Graham Hill, who was in the other car.

Clark's car had a misfire problem,

crash damage from the previous week's race,

and a young mechanic, Beaky Sims, to solve the problems.

Jim had other worries, too.

His last words were, "Don't expect me to be

"up there in my usual position.

"I don't trust the tyres.

"I can't get no grip with them.

"Can't get no heat in them."

And we adjusted the car, we softened the shock absorbers,

took the rear roll bars, disconnected to give it more grip,

which is what he wanted,

hoping it was going to be a dry race, but it wasn't.

As the cars took off from the start, averaging speeds of 130 mph,

they left the safety of the stadium area and disappeared into the woods.

Clark was running a lowly 5th, to Jean Pierre Beltoise's Matra.

Seven laps later, Clark failed to return.

He started off and then didn't come round,

and then a Porsche car came up, pace car.

He said, "Can you come with me." I said, "Me? Yeah. OK."

While the race was on,

you joined the circuit and went round and I saw an ambulance there

and thought, "Oh, dear." And then, "Where's the car?

"Where's Jimmy?"

He said, "Come with me" and then I saw what was left of a car.

Where's the engine and gear box?

Somebody's taken them. What's going on?

You know, as a kid you're going...

and then you start to get a little bit scared.

Jim Clark was dead.

Thrown from his car, smashed into trees 15 feet up, breaking his neck.

As the ambulance took Clark's body away, his team mate Graham Hill

was left to deal with the wreckage of the vehicle.

The race in the meantime carried on,

eventually won by Jean-Pierre Beltoise.

IN FRENCH:

There was no blatant mistake made by any individual,

me, for certain, because I was his mechanic,

the only one working on the car

But still, to be associated with his death,

will go with me for the rest of my life,

that will never go away, ever.

He is, to me, probably immortal,

I'm still a big fan.

I say that with feeling.

# Three hours from sundown

# Jeremy flies

# Hoping to keep the sun from his eyes

# East from the city and down to the cave

# In search of a master

# In search of a slave... #

Jimmy was one of his closest friends

and Chapman just couldn't handle it

and he left everything to the mechanics and disappeared.

Jimmy was not the kind of guy you ever expect to die in a race car,

he was too good for that,

and the fact that he did get killed in one

shows again just how dangerous that era was.

If Jimmy Clark could get killed it could happen to anyone.

That's another telling thing, if you look at what Graham

had to go through, because while Chapman,

in his distress, wasn't there, Graham was.

Here you are, you're actually carrying the shattered remains

in which the greatest driver on Earth has been killed,

back to the pits, knowing you're going to be racing one of these cars

in a fortnight's time - that's courage.

That's a very special character that can do that and carry on

and then Graham won the championship for Lotus at the end of the year,

deservedly so.

Jim Clark's funeral was attended by over 50,000 people

at his hometown church in Chirnside, Berwickshire.

Amongst the drivers,

there was sadness, disbelief and a growing anger.

Now they all felt vulnerable.

Jim Clark died almost certainly by a vehicle failure of some kind.

There was no barrier, no fencing, in front of a forest,

and Jim Clark died violently

in a forest, being hit by young trees and big trees alike

and his car was almost totally destroyed, and Jimmy died,

it was just inconceivable.

Over the next three months, these feelings of anger would intensify

as Mike Spence, Ludovico Scarfiotti and Jo Schlesser

would all die on the track,

Schlesser in an experimental and controversial Honda.

It was a concept car which had some interesting features on it

and could have been quite useful

to use as a research car, but it was not suitable for racing.

Did that make you angry to see that car on the grid?

I wasn't very pleased at the time, no. No.

Schlesser was burned alive, the car's magnesium body

burning with such ferocity it was impossible to put out.

IN FRENCH:

'68 was the turning point,

because so many people died in such a short time.

We felt like we were going from one funeral to the next,

it was a bit drastic.

And we weren't at war, we were performing in a sport,

almost a leisure-time sport

for public enjoyment.

This wasn't a war.

I was revolted, because we could save so much more lives,

so many colleagues could be saved.

Jackie Stewart set about revitalising

the Grand Prix Drivers' Association.

He quite rightly made the statement that too many guys

were getting killed because the circuits were not safe enough

and fighting the premise

that part of the danger of losing your life

was what proved you to be the best race driver. Rubbish!

Stewart began pushing for the most rudimentary of safety considerations.

For all drivers to wear fireproof overalls,

certified helmets and a six-point safety harness.

He then moved on to the circuits,

demanding Armco barriers and catch fencing.

But it was going to be a tough fight.

In 1968 at the British Grand Prix,

Jackie wanted some trees removed, and the answer from the RACMSA,

which was the British national sporting authority,

was, if Jackie Stewart wants trees cut down,

he knows where the saws are.

Even within the Grand Prix Drivers' Association,

things were not clean cut.

One of the problems with the GPDA

is that so many people will go to a meeting

and not say a bloody dickie word.

You know, they wouldn't say anything, and then afterwards,

they'd complain, and this was one of the things.

The GPDA could have done with more input

and one of the reasons why perhaps Jackie was allowed

to get away with excesses on some of the views he put forward

was because others were willing to not take the whole thing seriously.

It's always the same.

Out of 24 drivers, there were three or four

that were the leading edge

of which, Jackie Stewart,

and there were deals done, compromise.

IN FRENCH:

We had some conflicts at the time

on the timing of the way to make these moves forward.

In the end, the race always goes ahead

because of the commercial implications of it not.

This rationale had to be challenged and it came to a head

as the drivers contemplated another Belgian Grand Prix,

at the infamous Spa-Francorchamp.

The Grand Prix Drivers' Association went to inspect the track.

When any of the drivers, including myself,

went back to Spa, we weren't warmly welcomed

because what we were asking for was money to be spent

-to take off barbed wire fencing,

which was designed to keep cows in fields.

IN FRENCH:

What's the price of life?

What price do you put on a man or a woman's life?

Because we weren't just talking about the drivers themselves,

we were talking about spectator protection, a car reaching spectators.

We wanted change, they didn't want a change because it costs money.

Who's going to pay for it?

Well, the track owner has to pay for it, they just didn't want to do it, they thought they had more power

than the drivers had, they thought that the teams would capitulate and make their drivers drive.

Well, in fact we didn't do that.

The drivers voted to boycott the race.

Spa was cancelled.

It was a crucial turning point on the journey to making Grand Prix safer.

It was an uphill battle - safety did not come easily and it didn't come cheap.

The motoring press' response to the boycotting of Spa was less than encouraging,

suggesting Grand Prix drivers should "take up knitting using needles without sharp points"

and dismissing Jackie Stewart as "a pious little Scot with beady eyes".

I didn't laugh at them, but I didn't take them seriously.

When you see the grief that's brought to the wife or the girlfriend,

the mother, the father, the brother, the sister, the close friends,

when you see that and you are doing the same thing and you're going out to do the same thing again,

you have to have an immense amount of focus and commitment to do that.

And for anybody to turn round and start telling me that I'm chicken,

well, I was still winning Grand Prix races at that time

and I was still winning world championships, so I really didn't have an awful lot of time for them.

If the safety campaign needed any more justification,

it came at the 1969 American Grand Prix,

when Graham Hill crashed out, horrifically breaking both legs.

The part-time ambulance driver took him to a hospital that was closed.

But while the debate struggled to move up a gear, the cars were still getting faster.

Teams had started to experiment with aerodynamics,

and the next thing to appear on the grid was the aerofoil.

The race to capitalise on downforce was hotting up.

At the Barcelona Grand Prix of 1969, Colin Chapman was confident he had found the holy grail of Grand Prix.

Bigger wings, bigger wings, bigger wings,

massive wings, huge plan area and tiny little struts

that carried the wings where they were much smaller. And then suddenly they snap and break in Spain.

Barcelona, we had the big wing and Chapman said,

"I want to make it wider, with styrofoam and aluminium".

And we put six inches each side from that to this,

and it put so much downforce on, the wings bent in the race

and it put Jochen into the barrier, big time. Huge shunt, it bent the car like a banana.

So you did things at the track without testing, which you can't do now.

It shows that Chapman was always going to push to the limits, and sometimes

you didn't know where the limit was until you'd got empirical evidence.

You know, there's so many things that can go wrong with a racing car,

that the unusual one really is the one that finishes, rather than the one that doesn't.

Wing design had quickly become a dangerous joke

and after his spectacular near-miss, rising star Jochen Rindt

gave voice to his concern in an open letter to the press.

"Formula One is meant to be a serious business, not a hot rod show.

"Wings are dangerous to drivers and spectators,

"they should be banned."

But, you know, it was like, indirectly to Colin.

Indirectly.

He just wanted to show Colin that, "I can tell the world what's going on."

I don't think Colin cared.

The 1969 Grand Prix World Championship was eventually won by Jackie Stewart in the Tyrell Matra.

Ken Tyrell was another British garagista.

He developed Stewart's car around a French Matra chassis.

But in 1970, Stewart and Tyrell's success was cut short.

It was Jochen Rindt, building on his early promise,

now promoted to Lotus's number one, who was the man to beat.

Jochen was, at that time...

..the fastest driver out there, he was tremendous.

Lotus were, at that time, bedding in another new design, the 72.

Wings, though modified, were still on the agenda.

Progress, it seemed, could not be undone.

If it's going to go as quick as it looks, I think's it's going to be a good car.

But despite the drivers' best efforts, safety on the track was still proving elusive,

drivers sitting between two lethal fuel tanks, frequently with disastrous consequences.

And then I steered across the track and I caught Jacky Ickx full side

leading the Spanish Grand Prix on the first lap, in the side tanks.

Wooof, went up in flames, big fireball.

Jacky got out of the Ferrari, and ran into my car and fell over.

This accident was followed by the death of the popular Bruce McLaren.

While testing in England, his Can-Am car lost bodywork and destabilised.

It span off the track, hitting a redundant marshal's post.

Only three weeks later, Piers Courage was killed at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

Crashing heavily, the marshals were unable to put out the ensuing inferno.

The memorial service for Bruce McLaren took place in St Paul's Cathedral,

a very big event, and we were all in attendance.

After the memorial service, we went back to the Dorchester Hotel

and we had a GPDA meeting, and we were all there.

Jochen had gone to the Nurburgring,

and asked for a whole list of things that we wanted them to do.

Now, the Nurburgring was 14.7 miles around,

it had 187 corners, you took off 13 times.

Racing cars weren't designed to fly.

Now, this is the temple

of the most challenging race track in the world

and we are suggesting we might not go there.

There was a lot of concern that, "Oh, you can't do that to the Nurburgring."

Jack Brabham, who was at that time the senior member

of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, I mean, thoroughly experienced racing driver,

had already won the World Championship, by then had won it three times.

And he... Very quiet, never spoke out on anything,

and he stood up and he said "We've got to go with Jackie,

"we can't go to the Nurburgring, this is ridiculous. Look at the number of people we've killed."

In that week we had services for Piers Courage and Bruce McLaren,

and here we were going back to race at the Nurburgring

after they had said, "We'll do nothing that you ask".

It was a ridiculous situation, and they were just holding a pistol to our head

and thinking that we couldn't do it to the Nurburgring.

And the vote went on our favour and we did not race at the Nurburgring.

The German Grand Prix was hastily switched to Hockenheim, Jochen Rindt taking an easy victory.

Rindt was now setting the pace, and as the championship moved to Monza,

he looked forward to clinching the world crown.

But Rindt remained unimpressed by Chapman's latest design,

the Lotus 72, and he asked for his favourite Lotus 49 to be shipped to Italy.

So we get to Monza, and Colin just stands and says,

"Well, the 49 is not here, either you drive the 72 or you don't."

But you are very close to the world championship, you know.

So against his better wishes, Jochen Rindt took the wheel of the Lotus 72.

Soon after, one of his brake shafts failed.

He lost control and veered off the track at 185 miles per hour.

He was very special to me.

He was a very generous, kind man.

I remember being very angry that the world could go on,

when he had to die, but I'm sure that's a very normal feeling, you know?

He did what he loved doing and you can't fight that, you can't argue with that.

Life goes on, and I have a daughter and you have to...

She sort of...

misses a lot, not to have had a father.

She worked in Formula One for four years

and she tried to understand the whole world of motor racing,

I think she did.

You can't ever put the finger on why you like somebody, it's just

the way it is, you either like somebody, love somebody, you can't explain.

Rindt's accident summed up many of the era's shortcomings.

As well as the car's mechanical failure,

the Armco barrier was not properly secured, his car sliding under it, hitting a vertical support.

Also, Rindt himself had not properly fastened his harness, sealing his fate.

Here they have Jochen Rindt,

no-one knew what to do, they're all standing round...

..taking pictures.

And no-one in control.

Jochen was dead, I believe, by the time I got to him.

And the last rites had not been given to him by the priest

but he did so when I was there.

What do we do now?

Chapman, does he carry on?

Yes, of course he carries on.

He did care after the accident because he was charged for manslaughter in Italy

but not in England.

So he couldn't go back for a while.

So Jochen Rindt became the first ever

posthumous World Champion.

I mean, the trophy is there...

..and I went to pick it up for him,

but...

then I was always on tranquilisers, you know.

I couldn't face all that, it was awful.

As the 1970s progressed, the landscape of Grand Prix changed.

In came major sponsors, and with them, a kaleidoscope of colour.

The teething problems with early aerodynamics were a distant memory,

Colin Chapman refining the Lotus 72 into one of the most iconic Grand Prix cars of all time.

With it, Emerson Fittipaldi became the youngest-ever Grand Prix champion.

The best car I ever drove in my racing career was the Lotus 72

because it was a car that I could talk to him,

he talks to me, we understand each other, we love each other.

Chapman was still the kingmaker, but it was now with a heavy heart.

One day he come to me and say "Emerson,

"you know I like you very much, but I don't want to get too close to you,

"I have great loss, I don't want to happen again", he told me this personally.

He was worried about his drivers, like any human being was.

I think the impact when he lost Jimmy was devastating for him.

The sadness that was consuming Chapman, and to some degree the sport itself, was not over yet.

Jo Siffert died at Brands Hatch in 1971,

and Jo Bonnier, who helped push safety issues, perished at Le Mans.

It seemed as though the spectre of death had now established itself within the very DNA of the sport

and its grip could not be shaken loose.

You haven't come to see an accident?

Oh yes, we enjoy accidents as well.

But we like to see the boys drive well.

When you're young, the sport is made for young people, you have dreams,

you have your dreams and you're ready for it.

Don't confuse things - nobody forced us to do it,

there is a time for it, you do it because you are good at it.

Point.

Do you have any favourites amongst the drivers?

No, not any more.

The Drivers' Association tried to exert more pressure with strikes,

or threats of strikes as the years passed.

Starting initiatives such as donating old fireproofs to marshals who had none.

Sponsorship began to exert its own influence.

It brought an external pressure with it that had never been there before,

namely, if you sponsor a car and your name is all over the car,

you perhaps don't want to see a young man being burned to death in it.

However, it would take one heartbreaking incident,

screened across the world on international television,

to finally shame the sport to its senses.

Some 12 lethal years since Wolfgang Von Trips and 15 spectators had lost their lives at Monza.

The tragedy would be played out at Zandvoort, the quirky Dutch seaside track in the dunes.

As a results of Drivers' Association pressure in the early '70s,

Zandvoort had been condemned, and then rebuilt at a cost of £2.5 million.

It was now completely Armco-lined, had a new control tower

and was thought to easily meet the new safety standards.

They'd had Piers Courage's accident in 1970,

they missed the race in '72, did all these changes.

Everybody was there thinking, "This is good, we've moved it forward."

And we drove in the morning to Zandvoort, and we saw all the crowds,

80,000 people, and we were so happy.

Nothing could go wrong, nothing.

The weather was nice, the spectators were there,

the racing cars were on the grid,

we got a beautiful cup from the Royal Automobile Club for all the work we had been doing.

Unbelievable, fantastic.

There was a carnival atmosphere, just like there is at any race, but it was extra special there

because it nearly didn't happen, so everybody was really stoked that they've got their circuit back,

they've got a top-line field, it's all going forward again.

The ship was like building the Titanic, fantastic.

A new track with everything in and on it.

So you feel very happy, and...

everybody was happy.

Maybe the guy on the back of the grid,

not so happy, but the first three anyway.

One of those drivers near the back of the grid was Roger Williamson,

tipped as a future champion, but this would be his last race.

On the eighth lap in only his second Grand Prix, Roger's tyre burst.

His car was hurled upside down and exploded into flames.

The driver of the following car, David Purley, would try to save Roger.

But still the race would not be stopped,

the marshals would be ill-equipped, and communications would fail.

The fire engine would not arrive in time.

I think it's the greatest stain on Formula One's reputation.

When you think of what happened and what was allowed to happen,

nobody comes out of that with any credit apart from David Purley.

Even to the point where the drivers

kept going.

But when you look back at those days and you think, this just happens all the time.

And that was part of the crusade as well. We cannot let this continue.

# Put a candle in the window, ooh

# But I feel I've got to move

# Though I'm gone

# Gone

# I'll be coming home soon

# Long as I can see the light

# Pack my bag and let's get moving

# Cos I'm bound to drift a while, ooh

# Though I'm gone

# Gone

# You don't have to worry, no

# Long as I can see the light. #

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