November 13, 2025 • 30 mins
This episode of The Logbook, our History of Motorsport series, explores the delayed adoption of seat belts in Formula One racing. Preston Lerner discusses the late 1960s and early 1970s safety measures, focusing on Dr. Michael Henderson's role in debunking the myth that escaping a crash unbelted was safer. Henderson's innovative six-point harness design, inspired by aviation, eventually led to universal adoption despite initial resistance from top drivers like Jimmy Clark. The narrative also covers the political and technological barriers to safety improvements in racing, concluding with the tragic deaths that underscored the need for regulatory change.
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00:00 The Early Days of Racing Safety 00:41 The Myth of Escaping the Cockpit 00:51 Michael Henderson's Contributions 01:58 The Adoption of Seat Belts in Racing 02:39 Formula One's Safety Evolution 04:50 Technological Advances and Safety 06:55 The Role of Politics in Racing Safety 21:44 The Tragic Deaths and Their Impact 28:00 Conclusion and Acknowledgements====================
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This episode is part of our HISTORY OF MOTORSPORTS SERIES and is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family - and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Break Fix's History of MotorsportSeries is brought to you in part
by the International Motor RacingResearch Center, as well as the
Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer Family
Seat Belts belatedly.
Come to Formula One by Preston Lerner.
(00:20):
For the past half century, theFIA has been the principal driver
behind efforts to make racing safer.
It wasn't always so, although the SCCArequired seat belts in 1957, the FIA
didn't follow suit until 1972 From thedawn of road racing, conventional wisdom
held the drivers should jump out ofthe cockpit when a crash was imminent.
A technique perfected by Maston Gregory.
(00:41):
This myth was conclusively exploded by alargely forgotten British physician by the
name of Michael Henderson, who conductedcrash investigations for the RAF.
In 1968.
Henderson, who Mood lighted as aclub racer and freelance journalist
wrote Motor Racing and Safety, thefoundational text on this subject.
At the same time, he fitted his ownrace cars with four point harnesses,
(01:01):
augmented with an anti-submarinestrap, inspired by a parachute design.
This, put him in touch with Terrence DumboWillans, a record setting Parachutist, who
tested ejection seats for the RAF Willans.
Later went into business withanother club racer, John Ning.
By 19 69, 6 point Willans harnesses werefound in almost every car on the F1 grid.
The battle for seat belts hadbeen won almost before it started.
(01:25):
Preston Lerner is a freelance writerwho has covered racing and many other
subjects for the past four decades.
For many years, he was a regularcontributor to Automobile
Magazine and Road and Track.
Mr. Lerner is also the authorand co-author of six books.
Most recently, Shelby American,the Renegades, who built the cars,
won the races and lived the legend.
The material used in television turnsits gaze on motor sports, is drawn from
(01:48):
his upcoming book, the Deadliest Decade,which will examine the safety commercial
and technological developments thattransform racing from 1964 to 1973.
So today I will be speakingabout how Formula One.
Finally, belatedly accepted seat belt.
May find this hard to believe consideringthe status of Formula One these days,
but seat belts were not commonplacein Formula One until late 1960s.
(02:12):
They weren't required until 1972.
Now, this is long after they were standardequipment here in the United States.
This is a j Foyt in aDirt Champ car in 1964.
You can see pretty clearly here thathe's wearing shoulder harnesses.
And in fact, in 1968, seat belts wererequired in all American passenger
cars, yet they were not in almostany Formula One cars at the time.
(02:35):
And there's a strange story behind this,which I'm going to tell here today.
I think most people would agree thatthese days, formula One is considered
the pinnacle of motor sports.
It's the most expensive form of racing.
Uses the most exotic technologyand it has, I think, the
most enviable safety record.
Since 1994, only one driver has beenkilled in a Formula One race, and this is
(02:57):
largely because of the safety protocolsand technology that the FIA has adopted,
and they deserve a lot of credit formaking racing an incredibly safe sport.
This was not always the case.
You go back to the fifties,sixties, and into the seventies
where the one cars were among themost lethal vehicles on the planet.
(03:17):
Ersonal once told me one time Ihad a one in three chance of dying.
Emerson was a two time world champion,two time IndyCar champion, 9,500 winner.
Very charismatic figure.
When he told me this, I thoughthe was exaggerating, to be honest.
But I went back and looked at therecords and in his fourth Formula
one race at Monza in 19 70, 27,drivers participated in practice.
(03:40):
Nine of them later died in race cars.
Now it's true they didn'tall die in Formula One cars.
If you look at the years 1964 to1973, and that's the period that I'm
studying, 10 drivers died in FormulaOne races in that 10 year period.
So a pretty appalling safety record.
Some of you may recall Peter Bryantbest known for designing and building
(04:02):
Can-Am cars, but earlier in hiscareer, he worked, this is in the
mid sixties, worked on FormulaOne cars and worked in Indy cars.
And of that experience, he said,compared with the contemporary Indy cars.
F1 cars were death traps.
Bobby Unter three time Incarchampion Indy 500 winner.
That is, I was even more skating in hisassessment based on his experience driving
(04:24):
A BRM in the Canadian Grand Prix in 1968.
He said in those days, formula One wasway behind IndyCar, racing way behind.
Their technologies weren't up with ours.
Safety was, I venturedto say, 10 years behind.
In those days, they used to killdrivers like popped popcorn.
Uncle Bobby had a unique turn of phrase.
I would say there were acouple of factors at play here.
(04:47):
The most obvious and probablymost important was technology.
1966, formula One regulations changed froma maximum of 1.5 liters to three liters.
So engines doubled in size anduh, speeds went up, I don't
know, 30, 40 miles an hour.
This is also the period whenwings and downforce first appear.
There was also a, uh, tire war going onbetween Firestone, Goodyear, and Dunlop.
(05:12):
And during war, that's whentechnology advances exponentially.
So it was with tires.
Tires became much wider.
They became lower profile.
They were much stickier.
This is when the slick tire,the tread tire, was invented,
at least for road racing.
So cornering speeds went up dramatically.
And corners are, of course, wherethe most serious accidents occur.
And you have to rememberthat in this period.
(05:33):
The road courses in Europe were largelyjust that they were road courses,
runoff areas had things like trees andtelephone poles, sometimes farmhouses
and barns and things you did not wantto hit at high speed, and when you did
hit them, the results were often fatal.
Second factor in explainingthis appalling safety record
was the attitudes of the era.
(05:55):
Yes.
When a driver was killed, there wasnaturally a period of mourning and grief,
but the general consensus at the time was.
This came with the territory and itwas sort of the cost of doing business.
You have to remember that 1960s wereonly one generation removed from
World War ii, a global conflict,and when something like 50 million
people died, many of them civilians.
(06:18):
So when a young man who was doingsomething voluntarily without a
gun being put to his head doingsomething, in fact, that a lot of
the fans wish they were doing himselfwhen he was killed in a race car.
Yes, people were sad, but it didn'tspark outrage the way it would do.
Now, another factor is that inthose days, danger was considered
part and parcel of the sport itwas, or the appeal of the sport.
(06:40):
It was what made the sport specialand distinguished it from stick
and ball sports like baseball,football, and basketball.
This was a philosophy that was adoptednot just by fans and journalists, but
by many of the drivers themselves.
So, uh, you have to, thatneeds to be accounted for.
Third factor was politics.
In those days, the hierarchy ofracing was very strictly delineated.
(07:02):
At the top of the totem pole were theBlue Bloods, the aristocratic members of
the Old Boy network who ran the NationalSporting Clubs, these were the people who
made up the directors of the CSI, whichwas the competition arm of the FIA back
then, and they ran the put on the racesthat made up the Formula One schedule.
The middle class was representedby instructors and vendors.
(07:25):
Guys like Mike Len and ColinChapman, and they were, you know,
the equivalent of the shopkeepers.
The small shopkeepers are entrepreneursof the day, clever guys to be sure,
but, you know, involved in the, thegrubby endeavor of making a living.
The drivers were a level belowthem, and they were analogous, I
guess, to plumbers and electricians.
They were people with special skillsand they were compensated for them.
(07:46):
In the case of superstars likeSterling Moss and Jimmy Clark,
they were compensated very well.
But by and large, they were considered tobe interchangeable cogs in the machine.
And when it came to safety, thearistocrats who ran the sport
didn't see a moral case for safety.
And as a practical matter, they realizedit would cost a small fortune, well,
actually a, a large fortune to, to lineracetracks with miles of guardrails
(08:11):
to equip and train firefighters and tohire medical staff and outfit hospitals.
I mean, this would cost a lot ofmoney, and there wasn't a lot of
money in racing in those days.
There's no real big timesponsorship before, uh,
lucrative television contracts.
So the money was gonna come outof their pockets, and they had no
intention of spending it to keep acouple of drivers from getting killed.
(08:31):
The constructor didn't objectto safety per se, but for them,
as a practical matter, makingcourse safer would take time.
It would cost money, probably add weight.
Added weight means slower lap times,and slower Lap times is exactly what
you don't want if you're a constructor.
So as far as they were concerned, theonly way they were going to implement any
sort of safety upgrades into their carsis if it was required by the regulations.
(08:56):
The only group with a vested interestin safety were the drivers, and they
were the ones that had no leverage.
And so nothing reallyhappened on that front.
This can be seen very clearly inthe rules that the FIA promulgated
regarding safety during this period.
I mean, there are so measly as tobe almost non-existent, a couple
of red letter dates, and so 1952.
(09:16):
Helmets are required.
Good thing.
The problem is the only helmets into thesixties that is were there glorified paper
mache, which had been designed originallyfor British colonial administrators, and
then there were sort of the cork helmetsthat had been designed for polo players.
Phil Hill once set about hishelmet that he called his
helmet a uh, a cardboard hat.
(09:37):
The point being that it really didn'tdo much to protect dryer from head
injuries in the case of an accident.
1961, the FIA required roll bars.
What they didn't do was require roll barsthat were tall enough or robust enough to
actually protect the driver in the caseof a rollover accident, apocryphal stories
about guys making roll bars out of woodand painting them to look like metal.
(10:00):
And it said that Colin Chapmantold his mechanics never push a car
around the paddock by the roll bar.
Point being that theywere so flimsy as to.
Really not be worth what they weighed.
1963, the FAA requiredfire retardant uniforms.
And again, this sounds like anotherstep in the right direction except for
the inconvenient fact that Gen Nomexwasn't yet commercially available
(10:22):
and there was no fire retardantmaterial out there for drivers to use.
While there was actually an aluminized,things that firefighters were aware,
but this was not practical for drivers.
So they were the normal cotton uniforms.
And what they would do is they wouldsoak it in a. Solution of boric acid,
which supposedly added a couple ofseconds of, of flame protection.
(10:42):
Basically, these suits were asvaluable in a fire as the helmets
were in the case of a crash.
And in 1964, the FIA promulgatedregulations governing the installation
of seat belts, again, a good thing.
Unfortunately, what they didn'tdo is require seat belts.
So as a result, nobody installedseat belts, the first team
to show up with seat belts.
(11:04):
The operation outta Southern California,this was an All American team, and
the reason why they had seat beltsis they drew their inspiration, not
from Formula One, but from Indy, whereeveryone was already using seat belts.
SCS looked beautiful,but they were dogs slow.
And when they debuted at Monaco, theywere so far off the pace that prevent.
Lo asked Sterling Moss if he wouldtake a spin in the car and see if he
(11:25):
could figure out what the problem was.
Moss agreed and he gets over to thecar, he looks in the cockpit, sees
the seat belt, and what does he do?
Doesn't put 'em on.
He sits on top of them and he goes down.
And this was very much par for the courseback in the day Formula, the one that is.
As if people didn't understandwhat seat belts were.
They'd been around supposedlysince the middle of 19th century
(11:45):
when they were used on gliders.
And 1911, when the Wright brothersdelivered one of their first
airplanes to the US Army, it wasequipped with a leather restraint.
By 1928, all American planes had tohave be equipped with seat belts.
And during World War ii, all Americancombat pilots wore four point harnesses.
So.
Two lap belts, two shoulder belts.
(12:06):
Took a little while for seatbelts to get to the car.
World.
Nash was the first manufacturerto offer seat belts as an option.
This is 1949 and in 1951, seat beltsbecame available as an aftermarket
item, but the real red letter datefor seat belts is 1959, and that's
when Neils Boland, who was thechief safety engineer at Volvo,
(12:26):
patented the three point seatbelt.
This almost immediatelybecame the industry standard.
And in 19 68, 3 point seat belts wererequired on all American passenger cars.
Racers took a little longer toget with the program, so to speak.
Supposedly Barney Oldfield putseat belts on a race car in 1922.
That's what I read.
Can't really find anyconfirmation of that.
(12:47):
And.
At that point, uh, Barney would'vebeen pretty old and longer than than
two, so I'm not sure what sort of racecar he would've been racing back then.
But after World War ii, seatbelts became commonplace.
Worst surplus harnesses were availableand they were bought up and used by
drivers in Indy cars and sprint cars.
Midgets stock cars Dragsters 1954.
(13:09):
The SECA required seat belts inall of its cars competing in races.
And that included even the Pist,sprites and Crosley Hotshots.
So by the 1960s, basically every seriousdriver in the United States would be
using a seatbelt, not so over in Europe.
In fact, well, until the sixties.
Most road races thought in Europe,thought that seat belts were
(13:30):
dangerous rather than a benefit.
Conventional wisdom was that given theopportunity you were supposed to jump
outta the cockpit before an accident,more or less like a, uh, a pilot
bailing out of a stricken airplane.
Richard Atwood, who won Lamont 1971 anda P nine 17, told me we all knew the cars
were deformed in the case of a crash.
That's why belts weren't really thoughtof as being a particularly good idea,
(13:52):
especially if the car caught fire.
The most accomplished practitioner ofbailing out of a race car before an
accident was American Maed Gregory,who famously leapt out of a lister
jag at Silverstone in 58, and thenhe did it again at Goodwood the
next year in a, um, Turro Jaguar.
Peter Bryant tells a funny story aboutGregory a couple of years later, before
the Tasman series, he was doing aseat fitting with Masterton Gregory.
(14:15):
So they're in the garage andGregory's in the cockpit.
Everything's kinda low key, and thenall of a sudden Gregory jumps up.
Pulls himself outta the cockpit,onto the floor of the garage, and
Brian thinks something's wrong.
Maybe the car's on fire.
And he goes, what's going on?
Gregory calmly stuck a stickof red licorice in his mouth.
And don't worry, I always check out theescape route when I drive a different car.
(14:36):
As you might imagine, a lot ofunbelted drivers flew out of their
cars unintentionally over in Europe.
Probably the most famous incident.
You may have seen this photo, apretty well known photo of Hans Herman
watching his BRM Bavel roll at ous afterhe's been ejected from the cockpit.
Now, fortunately, Herman wasn't hurt inthis accident, but this was very much
the exception rather than the rule.
(14:58):
Mos learned this lesson the hard way a.
At Monaco was thrown out of cockpitof his Lotus at SPA Grievously.
Injured at RAN in 1964.
Team Lotus Driver Peter run's career endedwhen he was thrown outta the cockpit.
Jean Pierre s for permanentinjuries to his left arm, 1965.
(15:21):
John Serty motorcycle champion brokehis pelvis and several other bones
when he was half thrown out of thecockpit of his Lola T 70 of most sport.
He wasn't wearing a seatbeltand Lucky Kassner wasn't
wearing a seatbelt, was killed.
A couple months later during the LAMAtest, Kassner was actually driving a
Maserati coup, so he was thrown out ofthe cockpit of a a closed cockpit car,
which gives you some idea of the forcesthat were involved in these crashes.
(15:44):
The stories of how seat belts finallycame to Formula One has rarely been told,
and it stars a, an unlikely and largelyunknown hero In the name of a young
British physician, Dr. Michael Henderson,he was a hardcore racing fan While he
was in medical school, he worked as atrack announcer and he wrote freelance
articles for car magazines 1960, hemanaged to, uh, go club racing in a Lotus
(16:07):
seven that he caged at a Colin Chapman.
When he, uh, earned his medical degree,he went to work for the Royal Air
Force Study in Aviation medicine area.
And when he started doing that,he, he made a surprising discovery.
He realized that the aviation industryhad been studying high speed accidents
for decades, and in fact, theyhad a whole all sorts of protocols
(16:27):
for how to minimize accidents thatresulted from high speed crashes.
And as he told me.
I began to understand that there wasa science of vehicle safety out there
that we didn't have to ignore the factthat people are getting injured in
racing accidents any more than you wouldignore any other kind of melody realms.
The aviation medicine textbookthat we were using at the time
was about three inches thick.
(16:48):
It was a major book, and yet nothing hadbeen done to adopt any of this material.
Psychological, physiological impact,resistance, anything to motor racing.
Henderson was no dummy, so hedecided to apply some of what
he learned to his own racing.
Uh, when he went, ran a touring carat the, at the Berg ring, he fitted it
with a three point belt and he said,did the same thing with his street
car, which was a Jaar XK 1 20 19 66.
(17:10):
He bought a Malick U2 Clubmanand his plan was to put in a four
point harness, like the ones heused by RAF pilots he worked with.
But he realized pretty quickly thatthe lay down seating position, which
is very similar to a a formula car.
Meant that in the case of a funnelcollision, he would slide under
the belts as a submarine under themand he could be grievously injured.
(17:31):
So his state, what happened, he hadtrained as a parachute, and it struck
him that the crotch restraints in amilitary parachute might be able to
be adapted to a four point harnessto provide anti-submarine protection.
So he went to a company called Britax,which was then in the seatbelt business.
It's now in the car seat business,and he convinced them to build
a harness to his specifications,perhaps looped around his thighs.
(17:53):
To provide the anti submarine protection.
And this created the first six pointharness used in road racing competition.
Angels should have been singingand, uh, trumpets blaring.
Instead, there was silence.
So to draw up some publicity,Henderson wrote a couple of articles
and these generated nothing morethan, uh, polite indifference.
So he now embarked on plan C, andhe contacted various British racing
(18:15):
organizations and he persuaded them.
To agree to send him informationabout all the accidents that
occurred in the upcoming season.
His idea was to collect all thisdata, kind of crunch it, and then,
um, write a book about his findings.
That's exactly what he did.
Wrote the book in 67,published it in 1968.
Motor Racing and Safety isthe foundational text of the
(18:37):
Motorsport Safety Movement.
Drawing on his analysis of morethan 200 accidents, Henderson
comprehensively demolished the myth.
It made sense to jump out of a movingrace car and he made the affirmative
case for wearing a seat belt dadgravitas to his thesis and also to
get more people to buy his book.
He decided to get a luminary, someoneluminary in the motor sports world to
(19:01):
write the forward, and he approached LewisStanley who ran the Formula One team.
And Stanley was a somewhatcontroversial figure, always dressed
in blue blazers and gray flannel sax.
He was somewhat pompous,could be a bit pretentious.
Critics considered him the Colonel Blimp.
The motorsports world.
On the other hand, he was just aboutthe only member of the aristocrats who
ran racing, who believed in safety,and he'd almost single-handedly created
(19:24):
the international ground pre-medicalservice, which provided a well-equipped
mobile hospital that, uh, went fromtrack to track Henderson pitches.
Stanley Stanley inviteshim to come to his estate.
New Cambridge Henderson shows up, giveshim a spiel about seat belts, and when
he gets finished, suddenly goes right.
I agree.
I'll put belts in Jackie Stewart's car.
By this time, Henderson was dissatisfiedwith the locking mechanism that
(19:48):
Britax was using for the six pointharness as fate would have it.
He was working on a program at thetime to upgrade the seat belts and
the F four phantoms that the RAFwas buying from McDonald Douglas.
This had put him in touch with theGQ Parachute company, which had
provided all the parachutes used bythe RA during the Second World War.
Henderson asked GQ if they mightcreate a six point harness for
(20:09):
him, and they advised him to get intouch with their chief consultant.
Major Terrence Willens.
Now Willens is one trulyremarkable, remarkable character.
Not so much for his racing stuff,but just for his entire career.
Orphaned at 13, he worked as aBronco buster, as a teenager,
while he was still in his teens.
When, uh, world War II erupted, hevolunteered for the British Calvary
(20:30):
and trained as a paratrooper.
Before his first jump, his instructoryelled, uncurl, your ears Dumbo and fly.
Willens he was for the rest of his life.
He served as a so-called Pathfinderduring the war landing behind enemy
lines in France, Greece, and Italy.
After the war, he performed a seriesof incredibly risky high altitude
tests and eventually became knownas the father of British Sport Para.
(20:53):
He performed the first live fire ejectionseat tests of the fallen net jet fighter.
He wing walked without a parachuteof ear shows, and he also worked
as a motion pitcher, stuntman.
So Willans and Henderson collaborated tocreate the six point harness that GQ and
manufactured and made available to FormulaOne drivers at the start of the 68 season.
(21:14):
Several of them had read Henderson'sbook and they were what, I guess
you'd call seatbelt curious.
The major holdout, unfortunately, wasthe best known driver in Formula One.
That was Jimmy Clark,two ton world champion.
Jimmy absolutely refused to wear a belt.
Henderson recalls, and this is kindof weird, I don't really understand
this, because when Clark raced inIndy 500, he had to wear a belt.
It was required.
(21:35):
By usac, and so he was wearingseat belts when he won the 500 in
1965, but he refused to put them inhis Formula One car, and he wasn't
wearing them in the Formula two car.
He was racing in Hockenheimon April 7th, 1968.
This was a dreadful, dreary weekend.
It was rainy Clark's cars.
Lotus had a misfire.
He was running mid-pack earlyin the race tire deflated.
(21:57):
Got into a terrible tank.
Slapper couldn't control it.
Car hit the tree at high speed.
He was thrown outta thecockpit and his head slammed
against the trunk of the tree.
About 10 to 12 feet up, killed instantly.
This was pretty much a come toJesus moment for Clark's colleagues.
Chris Aon, who was uh, the numberone driver in the Ferrari team said,
(22:17):
speaking for many of his colleagues.
Jimmy's death was the most profoundthing that had happened to me in my
recent career because I felt if itcould happen to him, what chance did
the rest of us have had to confess?
I don't think seat belts would've saved.
Jimmy Clark Chenbo accidentwas just too violent.
On the other hand, driversdidn't have access to any
other sort of driver equipment.
I mean, it was eitherseat belts or was nothing.
(22:37):
So during the course of the 68 season,many drivers, most drivers, adopted
and started wearing seat belts.
As Henderson told me, it confirmed mybelief that human beings are sentient
creatures if given the right information.
They understand that there arereasonable things to do anyway.
Interest in seat belts naturally filtereddown to less exalted forms of racing.
John Finning was an early convert.
(22:57):
He had been one of the more successfulBritish Formula three drivers early
in the sixties before retiring.
19 60, 80, he wanted to getback into racing on an amateur
basis, do some hill climbing.
And his wife agreed to allow himto do so, only if he invested
in the latest in safety gear.
So he bought a, um, a Nomex suit,which was available at then end.
He bought a, uh, full face helmet,which was available by then, and
(23:19):
he wanted to buy some seat belts.
But it wasn't like you could go toPegasus or your local race shop and
pick up a pair of, uh, racing belts.
They, they weren't available.
So.
The only guy he knew who waswearing seat belts was his old
F three rival Jackie Stewart.
So Fing called BRM, found whose supplierwas they put him in touch with GQ and
GQ put him in touch with Dumbo Wills.
(23:39):
Willin met with fending when he was in thearea, performing some ejection seat tests.
Fending bought a four point harnessand installed it in his hill climb car.
Fending had a race shop, that'swhat he did for a living.
And so people would come over andthey would look at his car and
they'd, uh, look inside the cockpitand go, Hey, what's that stuff there?
Seat belts.
And a couple of people said, well,that sounds like a pretty good idea.
I mean, we should, maybe Ishould be wearing seat belts.
(23:59):
So fitting, started selling seatbelts and after about six months.
He went to Willans and said,Dumbo, did you ever think of
doing this professionally andstop trying to kill yourself?
Jumping out airplanes Ihim into forming a company.
He was the brains and I wasthe salesman manufacturing.
Became the first major player inthe racing market and its signature.
Royal Blue Belts could be seen invirtually every F1 car of the Euro.
(24:22):
You can still see a lot.
I mean, will is still in business andyou can still see a lot of them today.
It's their favorites in uh, uh,restored F1 cars that are vintage
racing, especially cars of the DFE era.
Very, very popular and very good.
By this time, ironically, Dr.Henderson had sort of gotten
out of the seatbelt business.
Well, he was never really in the business,but he sort of got outta that world.
He moved to Australia and embarkedon a new and fruitful career in
(24:44):
road car safety, and he eventuallyserved as director of Traffic
Safety in New South Wales.
But he kept in touchwith his old racing pals.
And so in, uh, January 69 Formula, theone drivers, several of them came over
to race in at Taman series in Australia.
He had dinner with Jochen rent.
Was a hard nosed Austrian who'd moreor less taken Clark's place as the
number one driver on the Lotus team.
(25:06):
And after Jimmy Clark, he was probablythe most vocal advocate for safety.
During this era, he was a big believerin what Henderson preaching and he told
Henderson, I've read your book and Iagree with everything you say, but you
will never get me wearing crotch beltsbelieve that in the case of an accident,
the thigh belts, the crotch belts wouldcrush his private parts, which would be
very painful if in fact that was the case.
(25:26):
But Henderson explained that'snot what the way they worked.
But, uh, Ridge couldn't be convincedand so he continued to race with a four
point harness, did not have the crashbuilds with anti-submarine protection.
To September 5th, 1970 practice for theItalian Grand Prix Monza rent coming
off four consecutive victories in thesummer in the groundbreaking Lotus 72
(25:49):
there Monza in practice, he had justblown past any human, about 190 miles
an hour, and in the brake zone for theparabolic at his car, suddenly viewed
to the left and ran it to a guardrail.
Had the guardrail been stored properly,it wouldn't have been a terrible accident.
Well, it might have been abad accident, but it wouldn't
have been a fatal accident.
That's for sure.
Uh, unfortunately, the guardrailwas not installed properly.
(26:09):
The bottom strand gave way.
The wedge nose of the Lotus72 dug in underneath it and
it came to an immediate stop.
Rin was thrust forward in the cockpit,and since he wasn't wearing a submarine
belt, he slid forward and the beltbuckle severed his jugular vein.
He was dead beforemedical attention could.
Later that year, rent becamethe first driver ever.
(26:31):
World driving champion.
Despite.
The FIA didn't take action torequire six point harnesses.
In fact, they didn't require seat beltsat all, which is a dereliction of duty.
That's a little hard to understand.
I mean, you didn't have to bea safety advocate to understand
seat belts made a lot of sense.
1969, British privateer, John Wolfwas killed on the first lap of the 24
(26:54):
hours of LAMA when he crashed withoutwearing seat belts in his Porsche.
Nine 17 a week before rent was killedat Mona British Amateur, Chris Summers.
Who wore street clothes when he raced andrefused to wear a harness, died when he
was thrown from the cockpit of his Lola T1 72, in a formula of 5,000 race at Ston.
Almost exactly a year later, his friendand fellow 5,000 racer Peter Houghton,
(27:18):
who likewise wore street clothes whenhe raced and didn't wear seat belts,
died when he was ejected from thecockpit of his Cooper T 90 at Ton Park.
It wasn't until 19 72, 19 72 that the f.Belatedly mandated six point harnesses
long after the vast majority of formulacars were already out with them.
(27:39):
How many drivers have been badlyhurt or killed needlessly before
action was taken too many.
The lesson to be learned from thehistory of seat belt is clear.
If racing was to be made safer, thechanges wouldn't come from the top down.
They would be forced on the sportfrom the bottom up by the people whose
lives were at risk, which made sense.
After all, revolutions are won on thebattlefield, not in the boardroom.
(28:00):
Thanks for tuning in.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks also to Duke Inger, BobBarr and the rest of the crew
who put on this symposium.
Tremendous amount of work goesinto a project like this, and they
deserve a huge pat on the back.
Anyway, thank you very much.
Take care.
This episode is brought to youin part by the International
(28:23):
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect,share, and preserve the history
of motor sports spanningcontinents, eras, and race series.
The Center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.
(28:44):
The Center welcomes serious researchersand casual fans alike to share stories of
race drivers race series, and race carscaptured on their shelves and walls, and
brought to life through a regular calendarof public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.
(29:07):
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports the compilationand preservation of papers, organizational
records, print ephemera, and images tosafeguard, as well as to broaden and
(29:29):
deepen the understanding of motorizedwheeled land transportation through
the modern age and into the future.
For more information about theSAH, visit www.auto history.org.
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(29:51):
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Seat Belts belatedly.
Come to Formula One by Preston Lerner.
(00:20):
For the past half century, theFIA has been the principal driver
behind efforts to make racing safer.
It wasn't always so, although the SCCArequired seat belts in 1957, the FIA
didn't follow suit until 1972 From thedawn of road racing, conventional wisdom
held the drivers should jump out ofthe cockpit when a crash was imminent.
A technique perfected by Maston Gregory.
(00:41):
This myth was conclusively exploded by alargely forgotten British physician by the
name of Michael Henderson, who conductedcrash investigations for the RAF.
In 1968.
Henderson, who Mood lighted as aclub racer and freelance journalist
wrote Motor Racing and Safety, thefoundational text on this subject.
At the same time, he fitted his ownrace cars with four point harnesses,
(01:01):
augmented with an anti-submarinestrap, inspired by a parachute design.
This, put him in touch with Terrence DumboWillans, a record setting Parachutist, who
tested ejection seats for the RAF Willans.
Later went into business withanother club racer, John Ning.
By 19 69, 6 point Willans harnesses werefound in almost every car on the F1 grid.
The battle for seat belts hadbeen won almost before it started.
(01:25):
Preston Lerner is a freelance writerwho has covered racing and many other
subjects for the past four decades.
For many years, he was a regularcontributor to Automobile
Magazine and Road and Track.
Mr. Lerner is also the authorand co-author of six books.
Most recently, Shelby American,the Renegades, who built the cars,
won the races and lived the legend.
The material used in television turnsits gaze on motor sports, is drawn from
(01:48):
his upcoming book, the Deadliest Decade,which will examine the safety commercial
and technological developments thattransform racing from 1964 to 1973.
So today I will be speakingabout how Formula One.
Finally, belatedly accepted seat belt.
May find this hard to believe consideringthe status of Formula One these days,
but seat belts were not commonplacein Formula One until late 1960s.
(02:12):
They weren't required until 1972.
Now, this is long after they were standardequipment here in the United States.
This is a j Foyt in aDirt Champ car in 1964.
You can see pretty clearly here thathe's wearing shoulder harnesses.
And in fact, in 1968, seat belts wererequired in all American passenger
cars, yet they were not in almostany Formula One cars at the time.
(02:35):
And there's a strange story behind this,which I'm going to tell here today.
I think most people would agree thatthese days, formula One is considered
the pinnacle of motor sports.
It's the most expensive form of racing.
Uses the most exotic technologyand it has, I think, the
most enviable safety record.
Since 1994, only one driver has beenkilled in a Formula One race, and this is
(02:57):
largely because of the safety protocolsand technology that the FIA has adopted,
and they deserve a lot of credit formaking racing an incredibly safe sport.
This was not always the case.
You go back to the fifties,sixties, and into the seventies
where the one cars were among themost lethal vehicles on the planet.
(03:17):
Ersonal once told me one time Ihad a one in three chance of dying.
Emerson was a two time world champion,two time IndyCar champion, 9,500 winner.
Very charismatic figure.
When he told me this, I thoughthe was exaggerating, to be honest.
But I went back and looked at therecords and in his fourth Formula
one race at Monza in 19 70, 27,drivers participated in practice.
(03:40):
Nine of them later died in race cars.
Now it's true they didn'tall die in Formula One cars.
If you look at the years 1964 to1973, and that's the period that I'm
studying, 10 drivers died in FormulaOne races in that 10 year period.
So a pretty appalling safety record.
Some of you may recall Peter Bryantbest known for designing and building
(04:02):
Can-Am cars, but earlier in hiscareer, he worked, this is in the
mid sixties, worked on FormulaOne cars and worked in Indy cars.
And of that experience, he said,compared with the contemporary Indy cars.
F1 cars were death traps.
Bobby Unter three time Incarchampion Indy 500 winner.
That is, I was even more skating in hisassessment based on his experience driving
(04:24):
A BRM in the Canadian Grand Prix in 1968.
He said in those days, formula One wasway behind IndyCar, racing way behind.
Their technologies weren't up with ours.
Safety was, I venturedto say, 10 years behind.
In those days, they used to killdrivers like popped popcorn.
Uncle Bobby had a unique turn of phrase.
I would say there were acouple of factors at play here.
(04:47):
The most obvious and probablymost important was technology.
1966, formula One regulations changed froma maximum of 1.5 liters to three liters.
So engines doubled in size anduh, speeds went up, I don't
know, 30, 40 miles an hour.
This is also the period whenwings and downforce first appear.
There was also a, uh, tire war going onbetween Firestone, Goodyear, and Dunlop.
(05:12):
And during war, that's whentechnology advances exponentially.
So it was with tires.
Tires became much wider.
They became lower profile.
They were much stickier.
This is when the slick tire,the tread tire, was invented,
at least for road racing.
So cornering speeds went up dramatically.
And corners are, of course, wherethe most serious accidents occur.
And you have to rememberthat in this period.
(05:33):
The road courses in Europe were largelyjust that they were road courses,
runoff areas had things like trees andtelephone poles, sometimes farmhouses
and barns and things you did not wantto hit at high speed, and when you did
hit them, the results were often fatal.
Second factor in explainingthis appalling safety record
was the attitudes of the era.
(05:55):
Yes.
When a driver was killed, there wasnaturally a period of mourning and grief,
but the general consensus at the time was.
This came with the territory and itwas sort of the cost of doing business.
You have to remember that 1960s wereonly one generation removed from
World War ii, a global conflict,and when something like 50 million
people died, many of them civilians.
(06:18):
So when a young man who was doingsomething voluntarily without a
gun being put to his head doingsomething, in fact, that a lot of
the fans wish they were doing himselfwhen he was killed in a race car.
Yes, people were sad, but it didn'tspark outrage the way it would do.
Now, another factor is that inthose days, danger was considered
part and parcel of the sport itwas, or the appeal of the sport.
(06:40):
It was what made the sport specialand distinguished it from stick
and ball sports like baseball,football, and basketball.
This was a philosophy that was adoptednot just by fans and journalists, but
by many of the drivers themselves.
So, uh, you have to, thatneeds to be accounted for.
Third factor was politics.
In those days, the hierarchy ofracing was very strictly delineated.
(07:02):
At the top of the totem pole were theBlue Bloods, the aristocratic members of
the Old Boy network who ran the NationalSporting Clubs, these were the people who
made up the directors of the CSI, whichwas the competition arm of the FIA back
then, and they ran the put on the racesthat made up the Formula One schedule.
The middle class was representedby instructors and vendors.
(07:25):
Guys like Mike Len and ColinChapman, and they were, you know,
the equivalent of the shopkeepers.
The small shopkeepers are entrepreneursof the day, clever guys to be sure,
but, you know, involved in the, thegrubby endeavor of making a living.
The drivers were a level belowthem, and they were analogous, I
guess, to plumbers and electricians.
They were people with special skillsand they were compensated for them.
(07:46):
In the case of superstars likeSterling Moss and Jimmy Clark,
they were compensated very well.
But by and large, they were considered tobe interchangeable cogs in the machine.
And when it came to safety, thearistocrats who ran the sport
didn't see a moral case for safety.
And as a practical matter, they realizedit would cost a small fortune, well,
actually a, a large fortune to, to lineracetracks with miles of guardrails
(08:11):
to equip and train firefighters and tohire medical staff and outfit hospitals.
I mean, this would cost a lot ofmoney, and there wasn't a lot of
money in racing in those days.
There's no real big timesponsorship before, uh,
lucrative television contracts.
So the money was gonna come outof their pockets, and they had no
intention of spending it to keep acouple of drivers from getting killed.
(08:31):
The constructor didn't objectto safety per se, but for them,
as a practical matter, makingcourse safer would take time.
It would cost money, probably add weight.
Added weight means slower lap times,and slower Lap times is exactly what
you don't want if you're a constructor.
So as far as they were concerned, theonly way they were going to implement any
sort of safety upgrades into their carsis if it was required by the regulations.
(08:56):
The only group with a vested interestin safety were the drivers, and they
were the ones that had no leverage.
And so nothing reallyhappened on that front.
This can be seen very clearly inthe rules that the FIA promulgated
regarding safety during this period.
I mean, there are so measly as tobe almost non-existent, a couple
of red letter dates, and so 1952.
(09:16):
Helmets are required.
Good thing.
The problem is the only helmets into thesixties that is were there glorified paper
mache, which had been designed originallyfor British colonial administrators, and
then there were sort of the cork helmetsthat had been designed for polo players.
Phil Hill once set about hishelmet that he called his
helmet a uh, a cardboard hat.
(09:37):
The point being that it really didn'tdo much to protect dryer from head
injuries in the case of an accident.
1961, the FIA required roll bars.
What they didn't do was require roll barsthat were tall enough or robust enough to
actually protect the driver in the caseof a rollover accident, apocryphal stories
about guys making roll bars out of woodand painting them to look like metal.
(10:00):
And it said that Colin Chapmantold his mechanics never push a car
around the paddock by the roll bar.
Point being that theywere so flimsy as to.
Really not be worth what they weighed.
1963, the FAA requiredfire retardant uniforms.
And again, this sounds like anotherstep in the right direction except for
the inconvenient fact that Gen Nomexwasn't yet commercially available
(10:22):
and there was no fire retardantmaterial out there for drivers to use.
While there was actually an aluminized,things that firefighters were aware,
but this was not practical for drivers.
So they were the normal cotton uniforms.
And what they would do is they wouldsoak it in a. Solution of boric acid,
which supposedly added a couple ofseconds of, of flame protection.
(10:42):
Basically, these suits were asvaluable in a fire as the helmets
were in the case of a crash.
And in 1964, the FIA promulgatedregulations governing the installation
of seat belts, again, a good thing.
Unfortunately, what they didn'tdo is require seat belts.
So as a result, nobody installedseat belts, the first team
to show up with seat belts.
(11:04):
The operation outta Southern California,this was an All American team, and
the reason why they had seat beltsis they drew their inspiration, not
from Formula One, but from Indy, whereeveryone was already using seat belts.
SCS looked beautiful,but they were dogs slow.
And when they debuted at Monaco, theywere so far off the pace that prevent.
Lo asked Sterling Moss if he wouldtake a spin in the car and see if he
(11:25):
could figure out what the problem was.
Moss agreed and he gets over to thecar, he looks in the cockpit, sees
the seat belt, and what does he do?
Doesn't put 'em on.
He sits on top of them and he goes down.
And this was very much par for the courseback in the day Formula, the one that is.
As if people didn't understandwhat seat belts were.
They'd been around supposedlysince the middle of 19th century
(11:45):
when they were used on gliders.
And 1911, when the Wright brothersdelivered one of their first
airplanes to the US Army, it wasequipped with a leather restraint.
By 1928, all American planes had tohave be equipped with seat belts.
And during World War ii, all Americancombat pilots wore four point harnesses.
So.
Two lap belts, two shoulder belts.
(12:06):
Took a little while for seatbelts to get to the car.
World.
Nash was the first manufacturerto offer seat belts as an option.
This is 1949 and in 1951, seat beltsbecame available as an aftermarket
item, but the real red letter datefor seat belts is 1959, and that's
when Neils Boland, who was thechief safety engineer at Volvo,
(12:26):
patented the three point seatbelt.
This almost immediatelybecame the industry standard.
And in 19 68, 3 point seat belts wererequired on all American passenger cars.
Racers took a little longer toget with the program, so to speak.
Supposedly Barney Oldfield putseat belts on a race car in 1922.
That's what I read.
Can't really find anyconfirmation of that.
(12:47):
And.
At that point, uh, Barney would'vebeen pretty old and longer than than
two, so I'm not sure what sort of racecar he would've been racing back then.
But after World War ii, seatbelts became commonplace.
Worst surplus harnesses were availableand they were bought up and used by
drivers in Indy cars and sprint cars.
Midgets stock cars Dragsters 1954.
(13:09):
The SECA required seat belts inall of its cars competing in races.
And that included even the Pist,sprites and Crosley Hotshots.
So by the 1960s, basically every seriousdriver in the United States would be
using a seatbelt, not so over in Europe.
In fact, well, until the sixties.
Most road races thought in Europe,thought that seat belts were
(13:30):
dangerous rather than a benefit.
Conventional wisdom was that given theopportunity you were supposed to jump
outta the cockpit before an accident,more or less like a, uh, a pilot
bailing out of a stricken airplane.
Richard Atwood, who won Lamont 1971 anda P nine 17, told me we all knew the cars
were deformed in the case of a crash.
That's why belts weren't really thoughtof as being a particularly good idea,
(13:52):
especially if the car caught fire.
The most accomplished practitioner ofbailing out of a race car before an
accident was American Maed Gregory,who famously leapt out of a lister
jag at Silverstone in 58, and thenhe did it again at Goodwood the
next year in a, um, Turro Jaguar.
Peter Bryant tells a funny story aboutGregory a couple of years later, before
the Tasman series, he was doing aseat fitting with Masterton Gregory.
(14:15):
So they're in the garage andGregory's in the cockpit.
Everything's kinda low key, and thenall of a sudden Gregory jumps up.
Pulls himself outta the cockpit,onto the floor of the garage, and
Brian thinks something's wrong.
Maybe the car's on fire.
And he goes, what's going on?
Gregory calmly stuck a stickof red licorice in his mouth.
And don't worry, I always check out theescape route when I drive a different car.
(14:36):
As you might imagine, a lot ofunbelted drivers flew out of their
cars unintentionally over in Europe.
Probably the most famous incident.
You may have seen this photo, apretty well known photo of Hans Herman
watching his BRM Bavel roll at ous afterhe's been ejected from the cockpit.
Now, fortunately, Herman wasn't hurt inthis accident, but this was very much
the exception rather than the rule.
(14:58):
Mos learned this lesson the hard way a.
At Monaco was thrown out of cockpitof his Lotus at SPA Grievously.
Injured at RAN in 1964.
Team Lotus Driver Peter run's career endedwhen he was thrown outta the cockpit.
Jean Pierre s for permanentinjuries to his left arm, 1965.
(15:21):
John Serty motorcycle champion brokehis pelvis and several other bones
when he was half thrown out of thecockpit of his Lola T 70 of most sport.
He wasn't wearing a seatbeltand Lucky Kassner wasn't
wearing a seatbelt, was killed.
A couple months later during the LAMAtest, Kassner was actually driving a
Maserati coup, so he was thrown out ofthe cockpit of a a closed cockpit car,
which gives you some idea of the forcesthat were involved in these crashes.
(15:44):
The stories of how seat belts finallycame to Formula One has rarely been told,
and it stars a, an unlikely and largelyunknown hero In the name of a young
British physician, Dr. Michael Henderson,he was a hardcore racing fan While he
was in medical school, he worked as atrack announcer and he wrote freelance
articles for car magazines 1960, hemanaged to, uh, go club racing in a Lotus
(16:07):
seven that he caged at a Colin Chapman.
When he, uh, earned his medical degree,he went to work for the Royal Air
Force Study in Aviation medicine area.
And when he started doing that,he, he made a surprising discovery.
He realized that the aviation industryhad been studying high speed accidents
for decades, and in fact, theyhad a whole all sorts of protocols
(16:27):
for how to minimize accidents thatresulted from high speed crashes.
And as he told me.
I began to understand that there wasa science of vehicle safety out there
that we didn't have to ignore the factthat people are getting injured in
racing accidents any more than you wouldignore any other kind of melody realms.
The aviation medicine textbookthat we were using at the time
was about three inches thick.
(16:48):
It was a major book, and yet nothing hadbeen done to adopt any of this material.
Psychological, physiological impact,resistance, anything to motor racing.
Henderson was no dummy, so hedecided to apply some of what
he learned to his own racing.
Uh, when he went, ran a touring carat the, at the Berg ring, he fitted it
with a three point belt and he said,did the same thing with his street
car, which was a Jaar XK 1 20 19 66.
(17:10):
He bought a Malick U2 Clubmanand his plan was to put in a four
point harness, like the ones heused by RAF pilots he worked with.
But he realized pretty quickly thatthe lay down seating position, which
is very similar to a a formula car.
Meant that in the case of a funnelcollision, he would slide under
the belts as a submarine under themand he could be grievously injured.
(17:31):
So his state, what happened, he hadtrained as a parachute, and it struck
him that the crotch restraints in amilitary parachute might be able to
be adapted to a four point harnessto provide anti-submarine protection.
So he went to a company called Britax,which was then in the seatbelt business.
It's now in the car seat business,and he convinced them to build
a harness to his specifications,perhaps looped around his thighs.
(17:53):
To provide the anti submarine protection.
And this created the first six pointharness used in road racing competition.
Angels should have been singingand, uh, trumpets blaring.
Instead, there was silence.
So to draw up some publicity,Henderson wrote a couple of articles
and these generated nothing morethan, uh, polite indifference.
So he now embarked on plan C, andhe contacted various British racing
(18:15):
organizations and he persuaded them.
To agree to send him informationabout all the accidents that
occurred in the upcoming season.
His idea was to collect all thisdata, kind of crunch it, and then,
um, write a book about his findings.
That's exactly what he did.
Wrote the book in 67,published it in 1968.
Motor Racing and Safety isthe foundational text of the
(18:37):
Motorsport Safety Movement.
Drawing on his analysis of morethan 200 accidents, Henderson
comprehensively demolished the myth.
It made sense to jump out of a movingrace car and he made the affirmative
case for wearing a seat belt dadgravitas to his thesis and also to
get more people to buy his book.
He decided to get a luminary, someoneluminary in the motor sports world to
(19:01):
write the forward, and he approached LewisStanley who ran the Formula One team.
And Stanley was a somewhatcontroversial figure, always dressed
in blue blazers and gray flannel sax.
He was somewhat pompous,could be a bit pretentious.
Critics considered him the Colonel Blimp.
The motorsports world.
On the other hand, he was just aboutthe only member of the aristocrats who
ran racing, who believed in safety,and he'd almost single-handedly created
(19:24):
the international ground pre-medicalservice, which provided a well-equipped
mobile hospital that, uh, went fromtrack to track Henderson pitches.
Stanley Stanley inviteshim to come to his estate.
New Cambridge Henderson shows up, giveshim a spiel about seat belts, and when
he gets finished, suddenly goes right.
I agree.
I'll put belts in Jackie Stewart's car.
By this time, Henderson was dissatisfiedwith the locking mechanism that
(19:48):
Britax was using for the six pointharness as fate would have it.
He was working on a program at thetime to upgrade the seat belts and
the F four phantoms that the RAFwas buying from McDonald Douglas.
This had put him in touch with theGQ Parachute company, which had
provided all the parachutes used bythe RA during the Second World War.
Henderson asked GQ if they mightcreate a six point harness for
(20:09):
him, and they advised him to get intouch with their chief consultant.
Major Terrence Willens.
Now Willens is one trulyremarkable, remarkable character.
Not so much for his racing stuff,but just for his entire career.
Orphaned at 13, he worked as aBronco buster, as a teenager,
while he was still in his teens.
When, uh, world War II erupted, hevolunteered for the British Calvary
(20:30):
and trained as a paratrooper.
Before his first jump, his instructoryelled, uncurl, your ears Dumbo and fly.
Willens he was for the rest of his life.
He served as a so-called Pathfinderduring the war landing behind enemy
lines in France, Greece, and Italy.
After the war, he performed a seriesof incredibly risky high altitude
tests and eventually became knownas the father of British Sport Para.
(20:53):
He performed the first live fire ejectionseat tests of the fallen net jet fighter.
He wing walked without a parachuteof ear shows, and he also worked
as a motion pitcher, stuntman.
So Willans and Henderson collaborated tocreate the six point harness that GQ and
manufactured and made available to FormulaOne drivers at the start of the 68 season.
(21:14):
Several of them had read Henderson'sbook and they were what, I guess
you'd call seatbelt curious.
The major holdout, unfortunately, wasthe best known driver in Formula One.
That was Jimmy Clark,two ton world champion.
Jimmy absolutely refused to wear a belt.
Henderson recalls, and this is kindof weird, I don't really understand
this, because when Clark raced inIndy 500, he had to wear a belt.
It was required.
(21:35):
By usac, and so he was wearingseat belts when he won the 500 in
1965, but he refused to put them inhis Formula One car, and he wasn't
wearing them in the Formula two car.
He was racing in Hockenheimon April 7th, 1968.
This was a dreadful, dreary weekend.
It was rainy Clark's cars.
Lotus had a misfire.
He was running mid-pack earlyin the race tire deflated.
(21:57):
Got into a terrible tank.
Slapper couldn't control it.
Car hit the tree at high speed.
He was thrown outta thecockpit and his head slammed
against the trunk of the tree.
About 10 to 12 feet up, killed instantly.
This was pretty much a come toJesus moment for Clark's colleagues.
Chris Aon, who was uh, the numberone driver in the Ferrari team said,
(22:17):
speaking for many of his colleagues.
Jimmy's death was the most profoundthing that had happened to me in my
recent career because I felt if itcould happen to him, what chance did
the rest of us have had to confess?
I don't think seat belts would've saved.
Jimmy Clark Chenbo accidentwas just too violent.
On the other hand, driversdidn't have access to any
other sort of driver equipment.
I mean, it was eitherseat belts or was nothing.
(22:37):
So during the course of the 68 season,many drivers, most drivers, adopted
and started wearing seat belts.
As Henderson told me, it confirmed mybelief that human beings are sentient
creatures if given the right information.
They understand that there arereasonable things to do anyway.
Interest in seat belts naturally filtereddown to less exalted forms of racing.
John Finning was an early convert.
(22:57):
He had been one of the more successfulBritish Formula three drivers early
in the sixties before retiring.
19 60, 80, he wanted to getback into racing on an amateur
basis, do some hill climbing.
And his wife agreed to allow himto do so, only if he invested
in the latest in safety gear.
So he bought a, um, a Nomex suit,which was available at then end.
He bought a, uh, full face helmet,which was available by then, and
(23:19):
he wanted to buy some seat belts.
But it wasn't like you could go toPegasus or your local race shop and
pick up a pair of, uh, racing belts.
They, they weren't available.
So.
The only guy he knew who waswearing seat belts was his old
F three rival Jackie Stewart.
So Fing called BRM, found whose supplierwas they put him in touch with GQ and
GQ put him in touch with Dumbo Wills.
(23:39):
Willin met with fending when he was in thearea, performing some ejection seat tests.
Fending bought a four point harnessand installed it in his hill climb car.
Fending had a race shop, that'swhat he did for a living.
And so people would come over andthey would look at his car and
they'd, uh, look inside the cockpitand go, Hey, what's that stuff there?
Seat belts.
And a couple of people said, well,that sounds like a pretty good idea.
I mean, we should, maybe Ishould be wearing seat belts.
(23:59):
So fitting, started selling seatbelts and after about six months.
He went to Willans and said,Dumbo, did you ever think of
doing this professionally andstop trying to kill yourself?
Jumping out airplanes Ihim into forming a company.
He was the brains and I wasthe salesman manufacturing.
Became the first major player inthe racing market and its signature.
Royal Blue Belts could be seen invirtually every F1 car of the Euro.
(24:22):
You can still see a lot.
I mean, will is still in business andyou can still see a lot of them today.
It's their favorites in uh, uh,restored F1 cars that are vintage
racing, especially cars of the DFE era.
Very, very popular and very good.
By this time, ironically, Dr.Henderson had sort of gotten
out of the seatbelt business.
Well, he was never really in the business,but he sort of got outta that world.
He moved to Australia and embarkedon a new and fruitful career in
(24:44):
road car safety, and he eventuallyserved as director of Traffic
Safety in New South Wales.
But he kept in touchwith his old racing pals.
And so in, uh, January 69 Formula, theone drivers, several of them came over
to race in at Taman series in Australia.
He had dinner with Jochen rent.
Was a hard nosed Austrian who'd moreor less taken Clark's place as the
number one driver on the Lotus team.
(25:06):
And after Jimmy Clark, he was probablythe most vocal advocate for safety.
During this era, he was a big believerin what Henderson preaching and he told
Henderson, I've read your book and Iagree with everything you say, but you
will never get me wearing crotch beltsbelieve that in the case of an accident,
the thigh belts, the crotch belts wouldcrush his private parts, which would be
very painful if in fact that was the case.
(25:26):
But Henderson explained that'snot what the way they worked.
But, uh, Ridge couldn't be convincedand so he continued to race with a four
point harness, did not have the crashbuilds with anti-submarine protection.
To September 5th, 1970 practice for theItalian Grand Prix Monza rent coming
off four consecutive victories in thesummer in the groundbreaking Lotus 72
(25:49):
there Monza in practice, he had justblown past any human, about 190 miles
an hour, and in the brake zone for theparabolic at his car, suddenly viewed
to the left and ran it to a guardrail.
Had the guardrail been stored properly,it wouldn't have been a terrible accident.
Well, it might have been abad accident, but it wouldn't
have been a fatal accident.
That's for sure.
Uh, unfortunately, the guardrailwas not installed properly.
(26:09):
The bottom strand gave way.
The wedge nose of the Lotus72 dug in underneath it and
it came to an immediate stop.
Rin was thrust forward in the cockpit,and since he wasn't wearing a submarine
belt, he slid forward and the beltbuckle severed his jugular vein.
He was dead beforemedical attention could.
Later that year, rent becamethe first driver ever.
(26:31):
World driving champion.
Despite.
The FIA didn't take action torequire six point harnesses.
In fact, they didn't require seat beltsat all, which is a dereliction of duty.
That's a little hard to understand.
I mean, you didn't have to bea safety advocate to understand
seat belts made a lot of sense.
1969, British privateer, John Wolfwas killed on the first lap of the 24
(26:54):
hours of LAMA when he crashed withoutwearing seat belts in his Porsche.
Nine 17 a week before rent was killedat Mona British Amateur, Chris Summers.
Who wore street clothes when he raced andrefused to wear a harness, died when he
was thrown from the cockpit of his Lola T1 72, in a formula of 5,000 race at Ston.
Almost exactly a year later, his friendand fellow 5,000 racer Peter Houghton,
(27:18):
who likewise wore street clothes whenhe raced and didn't wear seat belts,
died when he was ejected from thecockpit of his Cooper T 90 at Ton Park.
It wasn't until 19 72, 19 72 that the f.Belatedly mandated six point harnesses
long after the vast majority of formulacars were already out with them.
(27:39):
How many drivers have been badlyhurt or killed needlessly before
action was taken too many.
The lesson to be learned from thehistory of seat belt is clear.
If racing was to be made safer, thechanges wouldn't come from the top down.
They would be forced on the sportfrom the bottom up by the people whose
lives were at risk, which made sense.
After all, revolutions are won on thebattlefield, not in the boardroom.
(28:00):
Thanks for tuning in.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks also to Duke Inger, BobBarr and the rest of the crew
who put on this symposium.
Tremendous amount of work goesinto a project like this, and they
deserve a huge pat on the back.
Anyway, thank you very much.
Take care.
This episode is brought to youin part by the International
(28:23):
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect,share, and preserve the history
of motor sports spanningcontinents, eras, and race series.
The Center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.
(28:44):
The Center welcomes serious researchersand casual fans alike to share stories of
race drivers race series, and race carscaptured on their shelves and walls, and
brought to life through a regular calendarof public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.
(29:07):
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports the compilationand preservation of papers, organizational
records, print ephemera, and images tosafeguard, as well as to broaden and
(29:29):
deepen the understanding of motorizedwheeled land transportation through
the modern age and into the future.
For more information about theSAH, visit www.auto history.org.
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought
to you by Grand Tour Motorsports.
(29:51):
If you'd like to be a guest onthe show or get involved, be sure
to follow us on all social mediaplatforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
And if you'd like to learn moreabout the content of this episode,
be sure to check out the followon article@gtmotorsports.org.
We remain a commercial free and noannual fees organization through
our sponsors, but also throughthe generous support of our fans,
(30:14):
families, and friends through Patreon.
For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month,you can get access to more behind the
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(30:39):
And remember, without you,none of this would be possible.
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