CoopsII wrote:Hound55 wrote:I am lucky I grew up in the modern era of racing. I don't think I could have dealt with the amount of casualties in early racing.
Yeah me too and its frustrating when unintelligent watchers accuse of modern racing of being 'too safe'. As if we want a world where the likes of Hakkinen, Wendlinger, Button, Villenueve, both Schumachers, Alonso and others would've lost their lives in F1 alone. And they're just a handful of drivers I can remember having big accidents in the last twenty years.
I suppose that the problem is the rather strong generational split between those who came to the sport before and after the safety campaigns in the 1970's to make the sport safer. Before that, the sport effectively gloried in its adversarial, almost gladiatorial, image, one which many felt was reinforced by the rather insular nature of motorsport journalism at the time (where those attempting to push through changes were mocked and harassed by the specialist press, perhaps in reflection to the fact that they felt harassed by the increasingly critical attitude of the mainstream press).
The sport was, in a number of ways, cut off from the wider world until the 1970's, when the advent of television broadcasts meant that, all of a sudden, the wider world could see for themselves the consequences of a major accident - it was one thing for the death or serious injury of a driver to be off handedly referred to in a newspaper column by a journalist, and quite another when the viewer themselves could see a driver having to be hauled out of a car on a medial stretcher if he was lucky.
It took a lot of external pressure to force that change in mindset through, and quite a few figures weren't always happy about it when they had to pay the consequences, so, especially amongst a certain sect of the older part of the F1 fan base, that sense of resentment about the increasing safety measures and celebration of the adversarial nature of the sport still has a strong hold.
In fact, thinking about it, it could be argued that the increased commercialisation of the sport in the 1970's was one of the major factors in driving safety standards up - with the wider public becoming increasingly aware, and uncomfortable about, the bloody nature of the sport, that public pressure, no doubt coupled to pressure from the sponsors, probably helped some realise that things could not continue as they were.
But I do agree it wouldn't eliminate team orders 100%, but it would greatly reduce them. I should have said "it will all but eliminate team orders".
