"The first thing to strike you about Henry was the handshake."

Seriously, this is the sentence you want to use to open an article on a young racer who died after being struck by a tyre?

Let's leave aside that, given the time delay, the article now smacks of me-tooism after everyone else wrote a piece and Autosport realised they were being left behind: how do you have a writer put together the piece and think it was fine to open the feature thus, and then presumably have an editorial discussion and not have someone say "you know, maybe that first sentence could be changed, all things considered..."

Generally I don't see much point in making comment about editorial decisions, because it is what it is, but that choice just seems so clumsy as to be entirely absent in thought or consideration.

Reminds me of this.

So now it's become "The first thing that struck you about Henry was the handshake."

Given that there has been a change, however slight, to the first line and the title it's clear that there has been an editorial rethink, but it seems that you haven't quite got a handle on the point I was making: if so, allow me to make my point clearer still.

Think back to when the original news item was being drafted, and imagine trying to write the story without using a derivative of the word 'struck'. It's clearly not that easy: every news item on the site refers to the accident uses the word, which means that readers naturally equate 'struck' with 'serious accident'.

My point, therefore, is that usage of the word seems ill-advised in this case, particularly given that the feature is being written by someone who knew Surtees and wanted to present his personal memories: in the circumstances it would seem likely that the writer would want to reference the man, not the accident. And if that is the case, would it not have made more sense to write something along the lines of: "The first thing you noticed about Henry was his handshake"?

As I noted before, I generally see little point in referencing editorial decisions, because often they are about individual or collective style more than anything, and because the people involved can see these sorts of things as attacks rather than constructive criticism, as intended. It's just that, in this case, it seemed more than a little clunky, and considering it is a subject that has had such a profound affect on the sport and everyone involved in it at present I felt it was worth pointing out.