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  • Hunt vs Lauda – BBC2
  • jon1973
    Free Member

    anyone watching?

    tomhoward
    Full Member

    Yep. Didn’t really know much about Lauda’s accident but **** me! Miraculous recovery!

    That, and Hunt is a legend!

    jon1973
    Free Member

    Yes. And racing 6 weeks later???? Finishing in 4th Place?? That’s one tough cookie.

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    Tom-B
    Free Member

    Yep. Excellent. Makes Lewis Hamilton look like even more of a tithead!

    jon1973
    Free Member

    Actually pretty surprised by the celebrating that went on after the win for Hunt at Nürburgring with Lauda in hospital like that. Didn’t seem to show much respect – they just carried on like nothing had happened.

    Tom-B
    Free Member

    They thought that he was alright.

    tomhoward
    Full Member

    Mega karma points for Hunt for arguing the race should be stopped!

    jon1973
    Free Member

    Maybe they thought he was OK, but it was clearly a very serious accident, and he was rushed to hospital. Those who pulled him from the car knew how serious it was. Just would have expected a bit more of a muted celebration.

    But I suppose it easy to say that with the power of hindsight.

    tomhoward
    Full Member

    I suppose given the number of fatal accidents around that time meant that if you didn’t die or break limbs in a crash, it wasn’t ‘that bad’

    andrewh
    Free Member

    I knew the story already, but loved seeing footage of the cars in action.
    They showed a clip of David Purley and ‘that’ accident, (Roger Williamson) that really needed an explanation for those that don’t know, may have given more of an idea of the risks involved and particularly the attitudes to such which existed at the time, otherwise an excellent film.

    iain1775
    Free Member

    Those who pulled him from the car knew how serious it was. Just would have expected a bit more of a muted celebration.

    it was a different era, deaths where commonplace, the fact he was conscious and talking when pulled from the car and put in he ambulance probably meant people underestimated the seriousness of his injuries at the time

    avdave2
    Full Member

    it was a different era, deaths where commonplace, the fact he was conscious and talking when pulled from the car and put in he ambulance probably meant people underestimated the seriousness of his injuries at the time

    Exactly, and guess what, you better party hard now because there is a good chance that it’ll be you next time.

    hora
    Free Member

    Amazing Lauda cameback. The incident mentioned ^ was horrific. Lots of drivers were burnt alive/sufficated etc.

    ScottChegg
    Free Member

    On BBC4 straight after was Grand Prix: The Killer Years.

    Some of the footage made Lauda’s smash look like a bump in a supermarket car park.

    The burning car at Monaco that they put out and you could make out the driver was still in the car. “You could smell the burning flesh for the rest of the day…”

    Staggering, shocking and sobering.

    Nobby
    Full Member

    Lauda’s crash is my earliest surviving memory of F1 – every time since when there’s been a fire I can only think of those scenes of him being dragged from his burning Ferrari.

    Quite looking forward to Rush – it seems those in the sport that have been involved think it’s a very good representation of what happened that season.

    pondo
    Full Member

    That Monaco crash was Lorenzo Bandini – the poor chap was still alive when they dragged him out, he died three days later. 100 000 people turned out for his funeral, and the pope said that Enzo Ferrari was the devil, eating his own children – don’t think he employed any Italian drivers for a long time after that.

    Will watch the Hunt V Lauda doc tonight – can’t wait for Rush, either. If memory serves, I think word had got back to the pits that Lauda had been seen on his feet and talking, so they thought he was gonna be fine.

    highclimber
    Free Member

    Ron Howard’s film should be quite interesting too.

    Lauda has had some bloody good surgery to look that good after 2nd and 3rd deg burns to the face!

    Captain-Pugwash
    Free Member

    I’m 48 and have been watching F1 for a good 40 of those years but its the thing that shock you and you remember are the accidents, i clearly remember Gilles Villeneuves death in 82 seeing his body being thrown out of the car like a rag doll. Senna and Ratzenberger another sad weekend but I remember it as clear as if it was yesterday.
    All very sad but they all know the dangers of getting into a car and driving it to the limits. Thank goodness for modern designs and deaths are few and far between.

    With regards to the party after Lauders accident he was clearly talking to Sid Watkins when they put him in the ambulance and the other drivers though he was as ok. That and the fact that drivers had that kind of attitude in the 60’s and 70’s that the next race could be their last.

    Drapoon
    Free Member

    Watched the doc last night which was pretty good & looking fwd to watching the film (Rush?) which I think comes out in September?

    My dad was a spectator on that part of the circuit at Zandvoort when Williamson was burned alive in his car. He never really spoke about it but I can’t imagine how harrowing it must have been to watch there as the archive footage is distressing ;-(

    andrewh
    Free Member

    That and the fact that drivers had that kind of attitude in the 60’s and 70’s that the next race could be their last

    It’s not that long after the war and the attitude to life was probably a little different. Had these guys been born 20 years earlier they are the kind of people who would have been fighter pilots and probably actually trying to kill each other.

    pondo
    Full Member

    Spot on. I remember seeing Doug Nye talking about George Abacassis, someone once asked George about what would happen were he faced by the terrible choice of running into, say, a group of spectators or the side of a building. “That’s not a choice”, he said, or something similar. “I’d aim for the people – people are squishy!”. It wasn’t that long before then that people were dropping bombs and shooting guns at each other – a different era. I don’t really think that much changed until Jackie Stewart came along, and there was a lot of inertia for him to overcome before things began to change.

    ScottChegg
    Free Member

    Lauda has had some bloody good surgery to look that good after 2nd and 3rd deg burns to the face!

    He really hasn’t. He had enough to make it heal and his eyelids work and gave up after that.

    Age works wonders on burns victims. Some of the Guinea Pig club (WW2 pilots with burns) looked great in their 80’s.

    iain1775
    Free Member

    My dad was a spectator on that part of the circuit at Zandvoort when Williamson was burned alive in his car. He never really spoke about it but I can’t imagine how harrowing it must have been to watch there as the archive footage is distressing ;-(

    I saw Paul Warwick crash and burst into flames right in front of me at Knickerbrook at Oulton Park when I was a kid, he died on way to/in hospital
    It’s still with me every vivid second all these years later, absolutely horrific to experience first hand

    Edukator
    Free Member

    Actually pretty surprised by the celebrating that went on after the win for Hunt at Nürburgring with Lauda in hospital like that. Didn’t seem to show much respect – they just carried on like nothing had happened.

    Mega karma points for Hunt for arguing the race should be stopped!

    A driver was killed at Le Mans recently. The race wasn’t stopped and the other drivers on the same team carried on racing. And I got flamed on here for suggesting the team pull the other cars until they’d worked out exactly what caused the accident in case the same happened to the other two. I suggest attitudes are harder today.

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    We all have to remember that it was a whole different culture back then – not making excuses for it, but it’s worth remembering that death on the roads was also far more common back then. This was the immediate post war generation, who’d witnessed and accepted avoidable death as a daily occurrence.

    In the 60s, my father worked for Lotus in the pre Hethel days – they were in Cheshunt I think. He was a project manager on the Lotus Cortina I believe. Amongst other things, he was tasked with recovering crashed Lotus sports cars and vividly recalls attending a wrecked Elan and finding a woman’s shoe with a foot still in it. His feelings toward Colin Chapman are very negative, he’s gone so far as to describe the Lotus road cars of the day as inherently unsafe.

    The bulk F1 team was staffed by unpaid volunteers, who’d go along to races and help out as mechanics for the good of the company. He tells me that an F1 car of the day was supposed to have a bulkhead between the engine, fuel tank and driver. In the Lotus, with the never ending quest to shed weight, that bulkhead was made of cardboard.

    And by today’s standards, the drivers were paid absolute peanuts too.

    pondo
    Full Member

    I’d heard that story! Chapman tried to pass off paper coated in aluminium paint as a “fireproof bulkhead”.

    tomhoward
    Full Member

    A driver was killed at Le Mans recently. The race wasn’t stopped and the other drivers on the same team carried on racing. And I got flamed on here for suggesting the team pull the other cars until they’d worked out exactly what caused the accident in case the same happened to the other two. I suggest attitudes are harder today.

    With the greatest respect, the accident appeared to be driver error (spun up the rears, then over-corrected). The team was going to pull out but the deceased drivers family insisted they carry on as a mark of respect. IIRC celebrations at the end were distictly muted.

    Sorry, I meant japan, aruging it shouldn’t have started due to the rain, knowing that if it didn’t start, he’d lose the world championship.

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