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All my heroes are passing on


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#1 Adrian Beese

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 19:19

I am beginning to feel very old (63), so many of my heroes have died in the past week.



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#2 GMiranda

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 19:20

Indeed, it has been hard ties on the sport, a lot of drivers and people related have been dying.



#3 Ray Bell

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 22:38

Yes, it's that time of life...

Typically we began following the sport in our teens, we watched as people in their late twenties and thirties battled it out on the circuits, they are ten to twenty years older than us.

So we have to treasure the memories... and be mindful of those who are still with us. They are not having an easy time, Jack Brabham was in bad shape for a few years leading up to his death, Frank Matich is struggling and has been for a decade or more, after a botched knee replacement operation.

You have to be heartened by the presence of Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney, still standing tall (well, perhaps not so for Stirling), and a number of others. Look at the positives, I guess.

#4 GMiranda

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 22:47

Yes, I started following F1 since 1994, I was only 5; so Imola had some quite shocking memories for a child. But I still kept watching races and then as a teen I began following other series, such as FIA-GT, WTCC, CART, WRC and so on. I have been looking for writing about the sport since my teens too, but only in later years I began planning more seriously and only this year I think I've achieved the right balance to start any project. And obviously when we like the past and writing on it, we think on speaking with the people that "were right there" and it's a double shock to hear these news: the man and the idol. And Ray Bell said it quite right: we have to care of those with us, and strength the memories of the departed ones



#5 Richard Jenkins

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 23:10

We are lucky that the likes of Brabham, Matich and Willams et al. made it or are in relative old age, unlike some of their luckless rivals.

#6 GMiranda

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 23:13

Yes, that's another way of looking into it.



#7 jj2728

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Posted 02 September 2014 - 00:48

Does make one feel a tad older.......(yours truly 59).....but so many wonderful memories of the sport I grew up with.



#8 Nick Planas

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Posted 03 September 2014 - 12:11

Very sad times, and a reminder of one's own mortality. I'm only 55 and already some of my old schoolfriends are long gone; when drivers like Jonathan Williams pass away it's a reminder of how the years seem to have flashed by.

 

On a lighter note, the thing that made me feel old recently was not that one of my sons-in-law is training to be a policeman, or my eldest daughter reaching 30, or being a grandfather, etc. It was going to the Silverstone Classic and watching the Historic Sports Car event which had the ex-Schumacher Mercedes in it. HISTORIC? Oh... erm, yes :well: