Formula One pilots die young!!!

[Jeanburrasca81]

I think this is my first post in this forum...hi to all of you.
Well, I was just having a look at some interesting stats at http://www.forix.com and checked out the age the pilots died in average. I found out that 275 pilots died since there exists the Forlula One World Championship. But only 18 of them reached the age of 80 years. The eldest one was Dorino Serafini, he died last 3rd of June 2000. he reached 90 years, 11 months and 11 days...only pilot ever who was 90 years old. Even if most of the drivers didn't die during their activity and the average age a man reaches today is about 78 years, so many drivers die pretty young. Obviously in the 50s and 60 when many of them died the average age wasn't that high, but anyway the age of the drivers was far under the average age.
What do you think about this? Why do our loved drivers die so young?

Lol...and Serafini even smoked cigs...lol.

[TimD]

Hi there, and welcome to the Historic Racing forum.

You make a very interesting point there, and it's certainly worth looking at.

I wonder, though, how much of the statistical evidence is, as you point out, affected by the dangerous nature of our sport. And by the fact that the men who compete in motor sport also tend to enjoy other high-risk pursuits.

After all, David Purley lost his life in a stunt plane, Didier Pironi in an offshore powerboat.

And of course, the World Championship is only 51 seasons old. A driver who was 30 in the 1950 British GP will only just be coming up to his 80th birthday this year.

Certainly one thing that I love about motor sport is that there are many drivers still competing who would have been considered long over the hill many years ago, in any most other sports I can think of.

I mean, you seldom see 70-year old tennis players taking on professionals half their age, but Sir Stirling Moss and Sir Jack Brabham can still challenge and beat some very quick men in the racing they do. That's got to be good for the body, the mind and the spirit.

There are still a few pre-war drivers around, so if one looked at Grand Prix competition before the World Championship, the statistics would start to look more favourable. Manfred von Brauchitsch is, I believe, still with us, at the age of 95. In sports cars, Tom Delaney is still competing at the age of 90, in a car he first raced at Brooklands in 1928. Frank Lockhart is not far behind him.

Perhaps motor sport is a way of staying young after all.

[Peter Mallett]

You also get the unlucky ones. James Hunt, who had given up drinking and smoking died of a heart attack. What about Mike Hailwood? Not only had he got the fastest lap of the Isle of Man TT curcuit he was also a very quick F1 driver. Died whilst going out for fish 'n chips.

[Airhead]

What can you say about Mike the Bike? The greatest. Followed by Joey Dunlop.

Whats the chances of this happening? Makes smoking look good - don't it?

[Jeanburrasca81]

I'm sure if you look at the singular lives of the drivers you will get another impression. But the interesting point is that of 275 drivers only 18 were 80 years old when they died...and thats very bizzarre! I will try to look up some other statistical info and see if i find out other interesting data for this point.

And thank you for the warm welcome.

[yelwoci]

Originally posted by Peter Mallett
You also get the unlucky ones. James Hunt, who had given up drinking and smoking died of a heart attack. What about Mike Hailwood? Not only had he got the fastest lap of the Isle of Man TT curcuit he was also a very quick F1 driver. Died whilst going out for fish 'n chips.

Mmmmm, must of been a special chippy involving the 20 mile canter down the 'Hogback' with Walkers' SL

:-)
IanC

[TimD]

Uh, Ian, that would be Mike Hawthorn.

Mike Hailwood, and I believe, his daughter, were indeed killed in an accident on their local street. I think they were travelling in a Rover SD1 when a lorry u-turned in front of them, if my memory serves me correctly.

[Ray Bell]

I find it interesting that there are so many drivers from the pre-war period still alive in Western Australia compared to the Eastern States.

Ron Posselt and his riding mechanic, both competed in 1938/39, Smith, who built a Hillman Special for Albany in the same period (cost him a girlfriend!), Clem Dwyer - who has only just stopped running his racing motorcycles and whose debut was at Albany hillclimb in 1933 - is 86, his good friend Allan Tomlinson turns 85 in June, while their confrere Jack Nelson is 87 and ran at Lake Perkolilli in 1936... for that matter, so did Tomlinson, with Dwyer providing ballast standing on the running board and holding onto the die-cast doorhandles of the Ford on this dustbowl clay circle.

That's six of them in the west. This side we have John Crouch, raced from 1938, Bess Dentry was riding mechanic from 1929 with husband Barney, is now about 92 and is hospitalised (I believe), Peter Dale died a few months ago, he was a riding mechanic from 1929, raced later, and so did Reg Nutt, while it's two years or so since Alf Barrett died, so they are falling like flies, really.

But Ken McKinney's still there... 93 now, he was a riding mechanic for the 1928 Australian GP at Phillip Island, had trialled earlier in Sydney, raced an Austin 7 from January 1929 and retired to hunt foxes at the end of 1934. His daughter raced go-karts in the sixties without knowing her father had raced!

These guys are great to spend time with. Like George Reed, just turned 90, built the car that won the 1951 Aust GP, raced in the immediate pre-war days, or hillclimbed, anyway, and Mal Evans, 82, ran in the 1936 Woody Point 'high speed reliability trial'... they are so excited that people want to know about how they spent those long-ago weekends.

Tomlinson, of course, is the hero of them all. He won the 1939 Australian GP at Lobethal. Barrett had the lap record, but his Alfa was a much quicker car... Kleinig was almost as fast with the Hudson straight 8 in his thing, Saywell in the P3 not far behind, and he set fastest time for the event. But Tomlinson beat the handicappers and trounced the lot of them in the TA Special.

Today he talks of how he worked away at learning the circuit. They spent three weeks there before the race, trying it a corner at a time, out early each morning walking it, he and Dwyer, and using a standard TA loaned to them by the local dealers.

"It took a while to get it right," he told me recently, "but when you got it right, boy it was fun!"

Heard any modern drivers say anything like that?

Just considering what he said, the blind brows they took with wheels off the ground, the blind corners they took without backing off, it was incredible how good that circuit was for the cars of the day. To drive it today gives you an appreciation of how much racing has changed.

Everybody needs to see that circuit... if Motor Sport can say Bathurst is better than Spa, then Lobethal is ten times Spa. It's certainly eats Bathurst, it's really special.

But that's a bit OT, isn't it?

Of the post-war drivers who started late, there are many falling off the perch. Alec Mildren was 82 when he went, Bill Patterson (1961 Aust Champion) is now 82 and frail, David McKay is perky and only about 76, Reg Hunt isn't too well, either, Dick Bland died a few months ago...

Should think more of this...

[Ray Bell]

Wrong picture... this is the next one, on the best stretch of the Lobethal circuit. Tomlinson took this at around 125mph, without backing off. Note the camber on the exit... and the trees!

[Peter Mallett]

Originally posted by yelwoci


Mmmmm, must of been a special chippy involving the 20 mile canter down the 'Hogback' with Walkers' SL

:-)
IanC

Tim's quite right Ian. You are thinking of Mike Hawthawn, who died at the wheel of his Mk1 Jaguar, about four months after becoming Britian's first F1 world champion. He got into the "race" with Walker's SL on the Hogs Back because "he couldn't stand those German machines."

The story is even more bizarre because according to reports, he suffered from a severe liver (or kidney?) disease, which it is assumed would have taken his life within a few years anyway.

Incidently. David Purley was credited with the fastest decelleration ever survived by a human being. In 1977 his LEP left the track at Woodcote during GP practice and hit the wall coming to a dead stop in a very short distance. He broke most of the bones in his body but survived. It was this incident which took him away from motorsport and into stunt flying.

[Marc C]

Louis Gérard was centenarian when he died this year. He was the doyen of the GP drivers. He had a brilliant career alas broken off by WW2 and a unjustified 1-season exclusion after the fatal crash of Mazaud (in 1946).

[Peter Mallett]

And now Michele Alboreto whilst testing an Audi in preparation for Le Mans.

[Rob29]

10 ex world champion drivers are now deceased.Only Senna actually died in an F1 race.Fangio the first to die of old age.Farina & Hawthorn in road accidents.Graham Hill in a plane.Ascari in a sports car.Hunt & Hulme from heart attacks.Jimmy Clark in a F2 and of course Rindt in F1 practice.
More drivers seem to have died in private planes than road accidents.
Have yet to see details of Alboreto accident but seems ironic for this to happen on a new suposedly super safe circuit.

[Ray Bell]

Farina, if I got the story right, died in a road accident (as noted) on the way to the French GP of either 1965 or 1966... driving a Lotus Cortina.

It's salient to mention, I think, that Hulme's and Hunt's deaths were premature, in their early fifties...

At least Denny died in a race...

[Rob29]

Farina died in 1966.Hunt was only 45.Denny Hulme 59.

[Ray Bell]

Denny that old? I guess he had to be... he went to England to race in 1960... died about 1991 or so, wasn't it?

But he outlived James by a fair bit.. shows the benefit of not smoking, eh?

[Vitesse]

Oh Sh*t - if James was 45, I must be on the edge, as I'll hit 46 in 5 months! Mind you, I haven't given up drinking yet. On the other hand I don't keep budgies!
On the subject of Denny Hulme wasn't it typical of the man to park neatly at the side of the circuit while having a fatal heart attack?

[Peter Mallett]

Ouch, I've got two months to go to 46!!!

Brian Muir (although not a GP driver) died in very similar circumstances to Bruce, during a ETC race in the eighties.

[Ray Bell]

Are you sure?

Muiro was, of course, someone I knew well before he went to England. We used to go to his flat and so on, chat at meetings and all... it was a pleasure to see him again when he came out for Bathurst... was that '79?...

I thought he died in the paddock at a meeting?

And I'm sure you mean Denny... not Bruce.

[djb]

Hulme was driving a beemer at Bathhurst wasn't he when he had the heart attack? As you mentioned, Mr. Bell, what a way to go, while competing. I write this while realizing how it could xound quite flippant, someone's death is not something to put a quaint expression to, but despite saying that, still, what a way to go.

[Peter Mallett]

Well, I stand to be corrected but as I recall the reports read that Brian "Yogi" Muir died at the wheel of his car whilst racing. The car actually crashed into, rather than parked against, the barrier.
Yep, I do mean Dennny. It's the McLaren Connection.

[TimD]

Pity the poor historian...

The story as I understood it was that Brian Muir had been complaining of discomfort at the race meeting, but actually died in a road car after he had left the circuit that night.

I'd better go look at Autosport for that week.


We all have our allotted span of years. If I had to choose a time, I think BM "Rusty" Russ-Turner was blessed with a particularly poignant way to go. He raced the Tim Birkin Brooklands single-seat Bentley for many years in the 1960s and 1970s. He died of a heart attack while racing at a VSCC meeting, and the car, uncontrolled, gently left the circuit, and stopped in the catch fencing, with barely a mark on it.

I can think of worse ways to go about the moment of meeting my maker.

[Ray Bell]

I don't know if the coroner came to this conclusion or not, but Lex Davison had a heart attack as he swung through the kink onto the back straight at Sandown in February, 1965... the horse rails took care of the rest.

I've also heard that Mike Bergmann had a heart attack at Bathurst, but I have only heard it anecdotally way and only very recently.

Doesn't sound right to me, though, he was airborne when he went off...