The 1973 Formula One (F1) Season, the longest in its history at the time, was down to the final race. It was the first week of October, and the teams had descended upon the Watkins Glen International racing circuit, in upstate New York, for the 15th running of the USA Grand Prix. ‘The Flying Scot’, Jackie Stewart, with five wins, had clinched the Drivers Championship two races earlier in Italy, his third title in five years, and was rumoured to be contemplating retirement at the end of the season.
Francois Cevert, the debonair Frenchman, and Stewart’s teammate on the Elf Team Tyrrell, philosophised on Stewart’s quandary, a few days before the race. “Jackie faces two options, neither of them very appealing. He can quit racing and save his life, or he can quit racing and lose what his life is about,” Cevert said. “There are two kinds of death in this sport. Perhaps in any sport. There is physical death, which probably does not hurt so very much, and there is a kind of psychic death, which I’m certain hurts quite a bit. If Jackie retires, what can he do that will take the place of this …”
On the Saturday afternoon of 6th October, during the qualifying session, Cevert, then third in the points standings, following six second-place finishes, lost control of his F1 car in the fast uphill Esses section, a slippery linkage of bends on the race track. According to an eyewitness, the car started to fishtail, left the road and struck the right-hand side barrier before slewing back across the track and coming to rest upside-down on the left-hand side barrier, having broken apart. It was speculated that the race car was travelling at 160 miles per hour. Cevert died on the spot.
Stewart, his driver’s title already secured, withdrew from what would have been his 100th Grand Prix as expected, “out of respect for Francois and the feelings of his countrymen.” Stewart, who had informed Team Principal Ken Tyrrell, back in April, of his decision to call it a day at the end of the season, announced his retirement a week later in London.
In an interview 45 years later, Stewart admitted that he was still haunted by Cevert’s death. In three and a half years under his tutelage, the young Frenchman, blessed with the complete sponsor package of good looks, charisma and humility, coupled with superb athleticism, courage and skill, had emerged as his protégé. In one of the very rare master/apprentice relationships in F1, Stewart had imparted all of his knowledge to the eager to learn Cevert, whom he felt was quite capable of eventually winning the Drivers Championship. The maestro’s hopes had been snuffed out in an instant of possible driver error.
Stewart did not suffer the post-racing career psychic death that Cevert had envisioned. Highly respected for his racing acumen, Stewart became a much sought after television broadcaster.
However, the former world champion’s post driving career will be best remembered for his contributions to the continuous upliftment of the safety standards in auto racing. At the inception of his nine years on the F1 circuit, safety measures and precautions were almost non-existent. Following a high speed crash at Spa-Francorchamps, in Belgium, in 1966, the Scotsman hired a private doctor to be always present at his races. He organized driver boycotts at circuits until barriers, run-off areas, medical facilities and fire support services were improved, while pushing for mandatory seat belt usage and full-face helmets for racing drivers. As an outspoken advocate, his concerns extended also to the pit crews and the fans in attendance.
Death has always been a taboo subject which everyone tends to circumvent during gatherings or general discussions, the exception being when a family member or a close friend passes on, and it inevitably has to form part of the agenda. Today, the omnipresent dark cloud of the pandemic, continuously hovering over daily life for the past year and a half, has seemingly sown the seeds for a mood of doom and gloom.
One’s thought process has to facilitate a constantly changing narrative; the need to flatten the curve, the importance of herd immunity, lockdowns, stages of re-opening, variants mutating, vaccines, conspiracy theories abounding from all directions, and debates about viruses. Then there are escalating numbers of daily infections in parts of India and the USA, where cremation sites and funeral homes, respectively, are now facing an uphill battle to deal with the subsequent rise in the death toll.
Into these extenuating circumstances, come the introduction of terms and conditions for access to government buildings, vaccine passports and varying requirements by each territory for international travel. This never ending swirl of uncertainty will already have prompted the question, where are we heading?
We seem to have found ourselves in a similar place as Jackie Stewart did in 1973, following Cevert’s untimely death. Despite several requests, Stewart stuck to his discussion to walk from F1 racing at the top of his game, at the ripe old age of 34. The Scot once related how he and his wife, Helen had sat up in bed one night counting how many friends had died in racing, noting, “We stopped counting when we got to 50.” The odds of continuing to race and surviving at that time were not heavily weighted in his favour. Cevert’s fatality was the second of the 1973 season, following that of Britain’s Roger Williamson at the Dutch Grand Prix in July. Six more of Stewart’s contemporaries would die on the track by September, 1978.
This pandemic has forced us all to stop and examine the way we have abused our planet. Unless we change our ways, and take corrective action swiftly, we will be the architects of our own psychic deaths.
