This time last year, the global motor sport community witnessed an immense tragedy at the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix. In a horror accident, Formula 2 driver and rising star Anthoine Hubert lost his life on the famed circuit after he was t-boned by another car. Twelve months on, Formula 1 paid tribute to Hubert by creating stickers for all Formula 1, F2 and F3 runners to attach to their cars for the 2020 Belgian Grand Prix. Formula 2 also decided to retire the #19, the number Hubert was using up until the accident to honour the 22-year-old.
More notably, this incident caused changes to the circuit, with tyre barriers at Turn Four altered to make the track section safer. This change continues the sad tradition and necessity of making sport safer after tragedy strikes, a result that comes with a huge price on its shoulders.
In it’s 70-year history, Formula 1 doesn’t discriminate who you are when you make a mistake. Many young drivers have lost their lives over the years, but so have experienced veterans, such as legend Ayrton Senna in 1994. Before Hubert’s death, the most recent death was Jules Bianchi. Bianchi suffered extensive head injuries during the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix and eventually lost his life, succumbing to those injuries nine months later in 2015. Bianchi had lost control of his car in bad weather and hit the back of a recovery tractor that was removing another car from the gravel trap.
Since Senna’s death in 1994, safety in Formula 1 has dramatically improved however new safety technologies are introduced because a tragedy has occurred. It is essentially one life taken to save many. The HALO head protection, introduced in 2018 and designed to prevent disasters such as Bianchi’s, was criticised heavily right up until it saved the life of Charles Leclerc at the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix. Therefore, Anthoine Hubert along with the many drivers who have also lost their lives in the pursuit of speed, are to thank for each life saved in this dangerous sport.
Still, it is a sad reality that lives are saved only after lives are lost.
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