50 replies to this topic

[Max Torque]

In 1973, during the dutch GP, March driver Roger Williamson suffered a punctured tyre that sent his car out, causing it to flip upside down and catch fire. At that time, there was no one nearby with the necessary gear to help the driver get out from underneath the flaming vehicle. Only pilots were wearing uniforms that protected them from fire. Dave Purley, another driver passing by the spot of the accident, saw what was going on and pulled over, got out of his car and rushed to help his fellow driver. Sadly, he saw that he couldn't do it alone. He then started waving to the other passing drivers to stop and help him save Williamson.

NO ONE else did.
Roger Williamson burned to death. Dave Purley collapsed crying after seeing Williamson die like this in front of his eyes.

Niki Lauda (the star of the time) was heavily accused on this matter.

I read this the other day on an F1 magazine and, let me tell you, no other F1 story has shocked me more.

My question is this: Although highly unlikely, if a situation like this was to arise today, who do you think would actually sacrifice his race to help a fellow driver in mortal danger?
I asked this to myself and, although I don't know them so well as to judge correctly, I'm afraid that I thought that no one of the major drivers would do it. Maybe someone like Alesi I figured, but his would hardly be a sacrifice at this point.

I would like to hear your opinion on this matter.
Thank you.[p][Edited by Max Torque on 09-05-2000]

[Schumi Fan]

Hakkinen

Probably Frentzen, de la Rosa

[Shadow]

Senna stop his car to help a driver once (I can't remember on what race) the other car isn't on fire after the accident if I recall correctly. From the present drivers, maybe RB, DC or someone from the small teams (not a rookie!)

But I think this is more and more difficult to hapen!

[Jackman]

I wonder how Lauda felt about that after his crash?

I think Mika and DC would, maybe some of the older mid-fielders - hard to know really. I think they would all assume that the marshalls would sort out a problem, and they would only get out if they were involved or right there as it happened, and it was in an unmanned area (forest in Hockenheim, say).

[Max Torque]

I mentioned Lauda especially because of his own accident.

And here, I say assume that NO HELP can come in time.

[Ross Stonefeld]

depends on the situation..if the race is green and you see tons of marshalls, you keep going. If you're half way arouind the track, get a red flag and a few corners later see a horrendous accident, you might stop. But then again, why would you/ The marshalls are trained.

Schumacher got reprimanded for merely picking up Fisichella on the cool down lap at Hockenheim 97

Ross Stonefeld
Aztec International

[Max Torque]

Ross, I said ASSUME that no one can help at the certain time and the certain place. Just like it happened back then.

I know that in modern F1 there probably isn't such a possibility, but my question was hypothetical.

Like Jackman said, imagine it was in the Hockenheim forest, or something like that. That seems to be totally unmanned since a weirdo can hop in and walk on the circuit.

[MercMan]

Probably MH and RB. AZ if he was still racing. If it was a year ago I would probably add DC, but of late he seems to be shedding his good guy persona.

Regards

MercMan

[Todd]

Typical Max Torque level of accuracy. Niki Lauda was "the star of the time"?? Prior to the '73 Dutch GP, Niki had one points finish. He was 5th in Belgium in '73. Those are the only 2 points he scored prior to '74. Do you think there weren't any real stars back then? Ever hear of Emerson Fittipaldi or Jackie Stewart? How about Ronnie Peterson, Carlos Reutemann, or James Hunt? They were all more established than Niki Lauda at the time. This sort of post is an affront to real fans of the sport.

[Max Torque]

I'm SO SORRY TODD!!!!!
Please don't tell them to kick me out!! PLEASE!!!
I mentioned Lauda because of the accident he had and also because the article mentioned him as being the one who was accused the most.

I really can't understand where your hostility is coming from. If you didn't like the topic then ignore it. Posting to insult me... I don't understand it. Yes, I wasn't there at the time so I made the wrong remark as to Lauda's then status. This is "typical Max"? Sorry. I should keep my inaccurate mouth shut. [p][Edited by Max Torque on 09-05-2000]

[Thunder]

We are not in 73. No driver needs to do it. There are tons of people at race time unlike 70s. In such a case sacrifying race is not a question since they will stop the race as they did when maestro left us in 94.

[Max Torque]

Thunder, for one more time: It is a hypothetical question.
If you really can't comment on this, then imagine if the entire 2000 grid was there that day of '73.

Now that I think about it, this is the way I should have phrased my question: If our current drivers were there, who do you think would stop?

[fissijo]

If the car was on fire i doubt JV would help (i read in an interview that he has a phobia of fire)... Maybe RB and Hakkinen... possibly the crashers team-mate or friend etc...

I think it would depend on who had crashed...

Joei

[Ray Bell]

The truth is that life and death situations change many things, and maybe Jacques would overcome his phobia. But there are a few points we must clear up.
There is very little different in marshalling now compared to that era... to me, it's not so long ago... maybe the marshals of today have fireproof gear, but I'm sure the fire marshals of those days did too. They certainly did in Australia, even if it was only Proban.
The next issue is that it wasn't other drivers that Purley was PRIMARILY urging to come and help, but it was the bunch of marshals just across the track with their extinguishers!
This puts the whole thing into a much more disgusting light. And there was no red flag, so the race was going on, to respond to one thought above.
You know, when I saw the title to this thread, I immediately thought of the 1956 Italian GP and then this race. Purley must have had nightmares for years over not being able to save his friend.
But to go to the question, I do think Coulthard might stop, possibly Ralf and Alesi and Irvine and Herbert. Any others?
But today, the red flag would probably go out, anyway.

[JayWay]

What the hell is with Lauda. I read that he said he didn't help because his job is to race, that is what hes paid for, and he had a job to do. This is a guy who sacrafised a championship because he felt it was to dangerous to race in the rain at The "Ring". What a hypocrit! If this is the truth then I lost alot of respect for Niki!

[Ray Bell]

Lauda's refusal to race in the rain was at Mt Fuji, and it was just a couple of races after his near-fatal. The salient point is that it was AFTER, so perhaps he had a change of heart. When did that quote appear?

[daveturbo]

What a strange thread. The only way to answer is to pick drivers that you think are "nice" (or your favorite). The only clues that we have to the drivers personality is their media image, and this is contrived by the media to be as extreme as possible. It's also manipulated by the drivers and their managers. It's all an illusion. If you think Michael Shuey is less likely to stop than Alesi (for example) then it only shows that their control of your thoughts has worked!
DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE.

[boost]

I really think drivers who have experianced major(life threatening) shunts would help. A few are Alesi, Mika, MS.
My reasoning is because they know whats its like to wait for help in a confined cockpit while all hell breaks loose around them.

[Ray Bell]

Daveturbo is dead right about this... you'll note that I only picked one who might be in a challenging position in a race, or in with a shot at the title... the rest have little to lose. But it's still based on media image, naturally.

[Samurai]

daveturbo
Actions speak much louder than the "hype".

Though you seem to be trying to sell a point, I think you can get an idea who's not likely to sacrifice his race for another driver judging from his actions on the track and demeaner/comments off it.

As for who would be likely, I have the impression that Barrichello or Hakkinen would be likely to stop.

[Ray Bell]

Yes, I would say Rubens might too, he's another who's nearly been over the wall.

[JayWay]

Ray,

Still I have never heard Lauda regret his decision. It's been years since the incident and he has never said anything like "I now realise what a poor decision I made not to help him, and I feel guilty for his death." It's like he just doesn't care. Hes alive and thats all that matters, thats the way it comes across for me.

[Ray Bell]

But has he said anything on the matter, or just kept it to himself. Perhaps it was even more reasonable than that to his calculating Austrian mind and heart, that Williamson was beyond help anyway...
Or maybe he saw those marshals on the other side of the track and assumed they would take car of the matter.
I'm not setting out here to defend him, but we know not nearly enough to sit in judgement.
We can certainly judge Purley, however, for his bravery was great and his loyalty to his friend was admirable. He did win the George Cross, I think it was, for his actions.

[JayWay]

Why is it that I get the feeling that because hes an old time racer you are scared to critisize him? We know barely enough in 90% of the issues discussed here to pass judgment but we do everyday. Redfever informed me (in a public post) that Lauda said it was his job to race and not save lives and this is why he didn't stop.

Has Lauda made any effort to imrpove saftey in F1. When Stewart was almost killed he dedicated much of his life to improving F1 saftey, all I have seen Lauda do is sit around nit picking everything Ferrari does.

[daveturbo]

I agree that actions speak louder than the hype, if anything, that's my point. If a driver has shown himself to be ultra competitive on the track, does that mean he would not stop to help? You simply cannot say until it happens. Is a less competitive "nice" driver about to win his 1st race more likely to stop? It's totally impossible to say.
Is a bloke who speaks nicely and courteously on TV actually concerned enough to wreck his own race? It's only media image.
Is a calculating, dominant person speaking to the camera make you believe that he really has no emapthy with a fellow driver in trouble?
Samurai, I AM trying to sell a point: a drivers demeaner-comments off the track are almost irrelevant as a window to their personality. As for actions on the track, I cannot remember an incident with current drivers that gives even the slightest clue to this thread.

[JPMCrew]

I forgot the name of the Italian driver who helped save Lauda's life.

In any case, the story is that he and Lauda hated each other to death prior to Lauda's accident. When Lauda had the accident an his car caught fire, the italian driver pulled over and helped save Lauda's life. To this day, Niki Lauda has not even spoken to him. I'm not sure if the other guy is already dead or not, but it's pretty amazing that Lauda didn't even thank him after he recovered.

I've never liked Lauda since I read that story.

[Ray Bell]

Perhaps de Adamaich... why don't I look it up? No, it was Brett Lunger, Guy Edwards and Arturo Merzario who helped Lauda out.
If this is true, I see him as an arrogant person undeserving of any of the kind of loyalty displayed by Purley.
And I don't avoid saying anything against him because he was a star of the past or anything. I have simply never heard these things before.

[MattFoster]

I know that Harald Ertl was one of the drivers who stopped for Lauda. I don't know anything about the Italian driver that Lauda never spoke to again.

Ertl Died in a plane crash in 1982 I think. Maybe this is who JPMCrew is referring to?

Ray, to my knowledge de Adamich never raced F1 after his broken leg in the carnage that was the start of the 73 British GP. He was the only guy injured. He now does commentary on Italian TV


Cheers
Matt

[Ray Bell]

Coincidence again, Matt. I looked up the RCN report and got those three names, Ertl was in the crash, but not named as a rescuer... and the on the spot report came from Max... that's two he did!

[Samurai]

Dave
"As for actions on the track, I cannot remember an incident with current drivers that gives even the slightest clue to this thread."
How about Schumi ramming Damon Hill to steal the WDC or trying to kill JV's race at Jerez '97?? (Purposely causing an accident which always has the possibility to end in injury/tragedy).
Recently how about Schumi trying to park his terminal car in the middle of the track at the conjested start of the race to try to cause a red flag?? You think this is someone "who would sacrifice his race to help a fellow driver"?

[Keith Steele]

In my attempt at restoring my faith in humanity I would hope that every driver knowing they were the only one who could do something to save annother drivers life would give up 10 or 9 pts. to save a fellow humans life.

[daveturbo]

Samurai, I think you're slightly biased there. To claim that Schumi and Damon Hills famous collision was deliberately Schumis fault has been debated endlessly and the best anyone can say is that it was 50/50. So Schumi deliberately nudged JV. No-one was hurt or likely to be hurt. As for trying to cause a red flag, you have to use more than a little imagination for any chance of injury to have happened.
Schumi, I believe, has done more work on safety on behalf of the other drivers than anyone else. You could argue, using your imagination, that Schumi is the only driver that has saved lives out there!
All the drivers have made questionable moves at one time or another and that doesn't mean that none of them would stop to help.
You appear to me to have believed some media image fed to you about driver personalities. I believe that MS is as likely to help DC out of a life-threatening situation as DC is of helping him (even remembering what DC has done before)

[Gil Bouffard]

Harald Ertl was indeed involved in trying to rescue Lauda. I worked for Harald during his days in the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft, and we talked about the accident at the Nurburgring. He and Brett Lunger were trying to pull Lauda out by his shoulder straps.

Of today's drivers, I think Rubens wqould be the only one to stop.

About marshalling and track safety: I was at the 1000Km of the Nurburgring in 1981 shooting at the Karrusel when I noticed a black plume of smoke coming from down the hill. The guy I was traveling with and I jumped in his car and made our way to the scene.

We arrived to find Herbert Muller sitting in the Joest Porsche 908, burning. It was a pretty grisly sight. We asked some of the witnesses what had happened and they said, Muller had tried to pass a slower car on the left and drove into the back of the Bob Akin/Bobby Rahal abandoned Kremer 935K. At full speed!

The 935 had been pulled off on a grassy area to the left of the racing surface and had been there for a couple of laps.

The accident occurred between marshalling posts and the rescue squad from one post were there with their firefighting apparatus while the group from the other post had not driven down to help.

When I asked a polizei why they hadn't helped. He said that they could not drive against the race traffic, which is the direction that they would have had to drive.

This is a common problem at road courses. Of course when the track is over 14 miles long, it becomes a greater problem because it would have taken forever to get there.

Our witnesses said that Muller hit the stationary Porsche so hard that his helmet flew off. The other bad thing was that he had spent most of the weekend telling everyone that this was his last race.

After reviewing the facts of the accident, I concluded that Herbert Muller had misjudged everything. He was basically a touring car driver driving an open cockpit racing car. the touring car has a left hand steering wheel and the shifter is on the right.

The Porsche 908 is a right hand drive and the shifter is on the right side. Therefore, there was this whole half of racing car sticking out to the left of the driver. Muller had driven Ferraris in the past, but this was the first time in a long time that he was driving a fast car.

Gil Bouffard

[MattFoster]

Ertl was definately one of the rescuers with Lunger and Merzario.

Cheers
Matt

[JPMCrew]

Lauda was recued by Arturo Merzario, Guy Edwards, Harald Ertl and Brett Lunger. Arturo Merzario (he was Italian, right?) is the driver I was talking about.

I'm trying to remember were it was I read that story.

[Billy]

Originally posted by Max Torque
In 1973, during the dutch GP, March driver Roger Williamson suffered a punctured tyre that sent his car out, causing it to flip upside down and catch fire. At that time, there was no one nearby with the necessary gear to help the driver get out from underneath the flaming vehicle. Only pilots were wearing uniforms that protected them from fire. Dave Purley, another driver passing by the spot of the accident, saw what was going on and pulled over, got out of his car and rushed to help his fellow driver. Sadly, he saw that he couldn't do it alone. He then started waving to the other passing drivers to stop and help him save Williamson.

NO ONE else did.
Roger Williamson burned to death. Dave Purley collapsed crying after seeing Williamson die like this in front of his eyes.

Niki Lauda (the star of the time) was heavily accused on this matter.

In his autobiography Meine Story, Niki Lauda said

Zandvoort 1973: the tragic race where millions of TV viewers watched Roger Williamson slowly burn to death. So much has been said and written about that day that I would like to take a moment to clear up certain misconceptions.

It was said after the race that I was ruthless, that I didn't give a damn that another driver was burning to death. Roger wasn't just 'another driver', by the way, he was one of the nicest people around. I liked him as a person and I was close to his sponsor, Tom Wheatcroft, a gentle and intelligent man. Our friendship went back to Formula 3 days and our relationship was close, not just a casual Grand Prix familiarity.

To understand what transpired, the tragedy has to be examined from three entirely different perspectives.

First, what actually happened. It is lap 8. Williamson's car suddenly shoots off the track on a fast, but otherwise unproblematic stretch of the circuit. Subsequent investigations reveal marks on the concrete which suggest suspension trouble, but it could have just as easily have been a tyre defect; driver error can effectively be ruled out. The car smashes against the guard-rail, is hurled back across the track, somersaulting several times. It comes to rest upside down against the safety barrier opposite.

Second, what David Purley saw. Purley, Williamson's closest friend, is immediately behind him when it happens. He sees it all. He hits the brakes, drives up onto the grass verge, leaps out and dashes over to his friend's car. By this time it has caught fire, although the flames are not, as yet, all that alarming. Purley tries frantically to right Williamson's car, but he doesn't have the strength to do it on his own. Track marshals and firemen keep pulling him back instead of trying to help. Television clearly records how Purley repeatedly drags them over to the wreck, but is still left to tackle it alone. In vain. Anxious spectators try to climb the safety fence to help but are pushed back by the police. Drivers passing the start and finishing line signal to race officials, but the officials don't know what to make of it. There is no telephone hook-up, no signal to abort the race, nothing. Except the lone struggle of David Purley, live on television.

Third, what we drivers saw. The flames and smoke leave no room for doubt that there has been a serious shunt. But the driver is obviously clear of the wreck and is trying to put out the flames. In fact, it is Purley trying to save Williamson's life, but there is absolutely no way we can know this, because Purley's car is parked up on the grass out of our field of vision (perhaps shrouded by the smoke, it's difficult to recall).

When we discovered later what had really happened, we were all devastated. For as long as I live, I'll never forget the sight of Tom Wheatcroft's crumpled figure, tears streaming down his cheeks. What became apparent afterwards was the clear discrepancy between the drivers' perspective and that of the television public. Millions watching 'sport' on television had witnessed a degrading spectacle, where - with David Purley the sole exception - the contestants did absolutely nothing to save one of their own but, instead, piled on lap after lap, passing the scene of the tragedy three or four times without stopping.

We may often be regarded as cold-hearted, egotistical and calculating, but there isn't one driver among us who wouldn't do everything in his power to pull another driver clear of a burning wreck. In the case of Roger Williamson, however, all sorts of factors came together: woefully inadequate track marshals, cowardice, confusion, incompetent race administration, and drivers who totally misinterpreted the evidence of their own eyes.

Some ill-considered remarks I myself made immediately after the race have long been held against me. Now, so long after the event, I can only say that I did not intentionally appear to be cynical or arrogant. We were all extremely upset and, seconds later, were being mobbed and jostled by reporters. In such circumstances it is very easy to give some brusque reply to get rid of an unwelcome interrogator. I look back on Zandvoort 1973 as one of the darkest days of my professional career.

[Billy]

Niki Lauda's description of Nurburgring 1976

As soon as I had been discharged from hospital in Mannheim and brought back home to Salzburg, I was shown a film of the shunt taken by a fifteen-year-old boy with his 8-mm movie camera. It showed my Ferrari jerking right, crashing through the safety netting, slamming into the embankment and bouncing back onto the track. The whole incident must have taken place at or around 125mph. As the car rebounded onto the circuit, you could see the petrol tank flying through the air. The Ferrari was straddling the ideal line as Brett Lunger came through, smashing into it, and pushing it some hundred yards down the track. It burst into flames.

Other photographic evidence uncovered later shows how powerless the safety marshal was without fire-proof clothing. Also how other drivers - Guy Edwards, Brett Lunger, Harold Ertl - tried to rescue me. But my real saviour was Arturio Merzario, who plunged into the flames with total disregard for his own life and unbuckled my safety harness.

When I first saw the film, I obviously knew that that was me, that something was happening to me. But, somehow, I felt completely detached from it - it was a horrendous shunt that someone was involved in, but I couldn't relate what I was seeing to myself. I didn't remember. There was no correlation between the film and my present state; the driver on the screen was a total stranger. There it all was: jack-knife, impact, slide, flames. 'Look at that. God Almighty, look at that.'

[Billy]

Fire at the Ring article taken from Autosport magazine dated December 3 1998

BADGE OF COURAGE

Guy Edwards won the Queen's Gallantry Medal for pulling Niki Lauda from his blazing Ferrari at the Nurburgring in 1976. He has never been back to the infamous track - until now. By Tim Collings

Life was cheap in the good old days. Those sepia-printed afternoons of golden memories and scarlet bloodshed when Guy Edwards drove with James Hunt, Niki Lauda and the rest. Season after season they died at the wheel. Whole lists of them. Fatalities were so commonplace in Formula One of the 1960s and '70s that debates on driver safety were dismissed as a waste of energy.

Then along came Jackie Stewart and the whole thing changed. Life was worth something, after all. He injected ideas and standards which revolutionised the sport, turning it from a risky high-speed route to the graveyard into the modern, hi-tech, media-massaged coliseum it is today. Not completely safe, perhaps, but a lot more so.

Edwards, his trademark mane of fair hair still catching the wind, is a survivor. Like many who have earned from Bernie Ecclestone's circus, he lives in Monte Carlo. He has a good sponsorship business and is called in frequently as a consultant. He is known, liked and respected on both sides of the Atlantic. He is famous too. Not for his racing, nor for his undoubted business acumen. In the summer of 1976 he did something so brave and selfless that his actions were forever burned into the memories of those who witnessed them. For his courage he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal, presented in 1977 by Queen Elizabeth II.

What Edwards did was to save the life of Niki Lauda. With the help of Brett Lunger, Harald Ertl, who was Edwards' partner in the Hesketh team, and Arturo Merzario, he succeeded in hauling the Austrian world champion out of his blazing Ferrari at the Nurburgring. The film of the crash, the pictures of Lauda's flaming balaclava, the latter shots of his scarred face, his burnt head (always thereafter to be covered in a sponsored baseball cap), the story of him receiving the last rites in hospital and then recovering and racing again, all were secondary to the Edwards-inspired actions which captured the imagination.

Modestly, the Briton these days makes little show of his deeds that day, Sunday August 1, 1976, at the German Grand Prix. He carries memories, some scary and some satisfying, but rarely relives them. It happened in an age of brave men and bloody machines, when it was not correct to do anything other than retain a stiff upper lip.

To this day, the Austrian has not thanked his saviour personally for his assistance on that horrifying afternoon. Edwards is not bothered. They lived in a different way then. Lauda was a racer, not a man of feelings. Not a modern man. He was only interested in winning.

Earlier this autumn, however, when the modern F1 industry set up camp in the concrete-and-tarmac, wiremesh-fenced paddock of the modern Nurburgring, the Briton went back. It was his first return to the place where Adolf Hitler had wanted to demonstrate German supremacy in GP racing, his first revisiting of that corner of the Eifel mountains in which he had emerged from the pack of men in pursuit of fleeting glory to inspire a sense of pride in humanity that was shared everywhere.

Predictably he was unimpressed, at first, and largely unmoved. Then, on the empty Monday following the 1998 Luxembourg GP, he took his modest Ford hire car and his 14-year-old son, Sean, back up the road nearby, away from the current track which barely deserves association with its predecessor, to take another look at the Nordschleife, the remnants of the old, 14.19 mile Nurburgring. They did eight laps. It is no longer kept as it was in its pomp. Now, it is used to entertain and scare corporate parties, to enlighten visiting journalists and to give the paying public an insight into the kind of racing which existed before some of our contemporary heroes were born. Edwards could remember it all, but he wanted to take another look. He drove to the entrance with a mixture of curiosity and pride. There, as everywhere, an efficient jobsworth turned him away. The circuit was closed. The man had no idea who Edwards was.

"We hung around for a while and then an Austrian journalist who was there came along and talked to this chap. He said something which obviously worked and we were allowed in," said Edwards.

Recalling that late September day over lunch in London just a few weeks later, he moved through a whole range of emotions. As a father, he wanted his son to go there and see where it all happened. He wanted to go back, also, and touch his past, check again his memory, rediscover his feelings on the mortality of racing drivers in an age when most F1 followers refer to Imola '94 as the blackest weekend they can recall.

"It was," he said "a very quiet day. Very quiet indeed. And that was the first thing I felt. In 1976, it was a noisy, hot and terrible day." The small inferno of heat and sound from which Lauda was dragged could never be erased from his mind. "We drove in and went over Adenau Bridge, and up the hill towards Bergwerk to the place where it happened."

His voice remained calm and measured. His eyes flickered from distant stabs of old feelings, perhaps hidden for all of 22 years, back to the controlled, concentrated blue of an intelligent man talking and listening. Sean, too, he said, was quiet. "I remembered the place perfectly easily," said Edwards. "I remembered other things, too. The sheer unpredictability of racing there, at the 'Ring. And the tightening of the stomach."

A few days before the German GP of '76, Lauda had spoken out about the circuit. Criticising it for being dangerous and anachronistic, he said it was an outmoded death trap. "He wasn't wrong," said Edwards, whose own racing baptism there had been one of fire, and the death, just in front, of another driver.

He recalled his Hesketh being well of the pace set by Hunt and Lauda that summer. "He [Lauda] had done the only sub-seven-minute lap there in an F1 car," said Edwards. "Most of us were going round half a minute slower than that! It was such a long circuit."

There are other issues that have lived in his mind. "If it had not been a world champion in that car, would there have been such a fuss made afterwards?" he said. It is a question that has echoed down the years. The same was said after Imola '94, where Roland Ratzenberger died on Saturday and Ayrton Senna on Sunday. Senna, the brilliant driver who captured the dreams of a generation, would have been the first to understand, and agree, with those who have often since said that it is a shame so few memories of Ratzenberger are kept alive as fiercely as his.

Edwards talked too, of the agonies of David Purley as he "went bananas" trying to get Roger Williamson's car turned upright after his big blazing fatal accident at Zandvoort where "no one else stopped at all, they just kept on lapping. It took such a long time. Five, six, seven or eight minutes. I talked to David and he wasn't surprised. That's the way of it".

Why then, in this sport of dead emotions and win-or-bust, cold and ruthless pragmatism, did Edwards pull up and save Lauda's life? A man he barley knew who, even now, barely acknowledges his existence? "My first reaction was 'Oh, ****!' That kind of thing. I thought he was going to take me with him. His car clipped mine and I just missed an impact. I got through the whole thing and went off the track on to the grass. Then, when I stopped , I looked back and saw his Ferrari burning, about 100 metres back. He had gone into the curve, a left kink on the way up towards Bergwerk, but not gone through it. Instead, he had gone off, out of control, through the catch fencing and bounced off an earth bank and back on to the track.

"There he was. I could see him. I had time to get out of my car and run back and save him. It was a very difficult thing. Like the first time off a high diving board. Petrol fires are such awful things. This was a big one. The heat and the noise were incredible. It was not a pretty sight at all. I was running towards this fire and I was thinking - do I really want to be involved in this?

"The honest answer was 'no way'. But what could I do? Stop, and walk back? Holy hell, it was a mess. Then, for me, it was all action. There were so many things to be done. I was aware of others around me. But the flames were so thick, I couldn't see the little bastard. But I dived in and it was so hot and there was choking dust everywhere. I knew it was now or never and, with a desperate sense of urgency, and with help from some more drivers, feeling quite desperate, we tried again. We were banging against on another, pulling, cursing and just struggling. His shoulder straps pulled away in my hand and it was incredibly frustrating and the heat was just so physical. I got hold of an arm and a good grip on his body and the little sod came out with us all falling in a heap. We pulled him out like a cork from a bottle."

Edwards' actions, it must be remembered, came at a time when F1 cars were almost literally mobile death traps. The fuel tanks were alongside the driver, the men sitting, as if in a bath, surrounded by petrol. Edwards described the monocoque as "nothing more than an aluminium death tube". In Lauda's accident, on the apex of the 'kink', both tanks ruptured and one was ripped out.

Luck was with him, however. He was saved by a combination of events: Edwards' bravery, Lunger's collision with the Ferrari, and the actions of a marshal, with an extinguisher, and Merzario and Ertl, in fighting the fire. Without the extinguishers, Edwards, Lunger and Merzario might not have hauled Lauda clear.

If Lauda owed his life to any one single factor, it was the two hand held extinguishers", said Edwards. He stressed, too, that it needed four people to pull him free, not one or two, and that, without all four men and the two extinguishers, it would all have been in vain. "I could see the fire was blackening his balaclava and burning his face and I remember thinking that we had only a few more seconds or it would be too late for him," he explained. They pulled him down the track. Then, the car was enveloped in flames. The Briton, in another moment of mad or inspired courage, ran and hauled the errant tank of petrol away from the blaze.

"As I stood there afterwards, others arrived. Chris Amon came and stopped and looked at it all and retired on the spot. Hunt and Clay Regazzoni, in a fiercely animated conversation, were there. Life went on. The normality of it jarred on me. No one understood how close Lauda had come to death. There and then, I lost my commitment to GP racing. It wasn't worth it. I determined to see the season out and, after strapping up my right wrist which was sprained when my car hit Lauda's, took part in the restarted race. I finished."

At the time, 138 drivers had died racing at the Nurburgring. It was the last GP on the old circuit. Scarred, but alive, Lauda returned to fight for the title. At the final race in Japan, he retired because of the atrocious conditions. Hunt was champion. Edwards won a medal.

"Now, the Nurburgring is a very peaceful kind of place," said Edwards, "We made a day of it. It was closed to the public and very quiet. It makes you think of the risks. The risk is part of the game. It is the same for a matador. The same for everyone in racing, whatever they think. For me it is about risk management now. It was then really. Look at Jackie [Stewart] and Alain Prost. I am a great fan of safe racing and reducing the risks.

"On that day, really, I had no choice. I was in the middle of it. But going back to the 'Ring this year, I felt most emotional when I remembered the first crash I saw there: a big Porsche, and the driver - Hans Lyno - being killed in the fire. I was right there and I sat in shock by the side of the track. I was younger. That upset me more, I think, when I went back, than it did to remember the Lauda accident."

[MattFoster]

Excellent posts Billy. I hope that clears Niki's name.

cheers
Matt

[Ray Bell]

Thanks, Billy, that added a lot to the thread. And it showed that the urgency of the moment might overtake any cold heart, leading to a kind of heroism they never knew they could display.
Anyone.

[hhffan]

I think any driver today would stop if they saw a fellow drivers car on fire with no marshalls nearby.

For anyone of you to make a judgment like "none of them would stop except for Rubens" is utterly ridiculous.

The are car racers not poor excuses for human beings and I think all of them have a far greater appreciation for danger and death than any of you do......racing is one thing, stopping for a human being whose life is threatened is on another plain and just like most of us I am sure they would all stop to lend a hand to save a life.

As racers who constantly risk their life I am sure they value life a hell of a lot more than any of us do!

[magic]

the lauda-quote was:
"i'm paid for driving, not stopping"

[Ray Bell]

So has Lauda gone to the trouble of writing a lot of diatribe about it all?

[Arnaldo]

Back in 1992, when I was in Hong Kong, I saw a car crash on the elevated road at Kowloon East. The bonnet was open and the car was on fire. I waved down a Post Office truck and asked the driver for his fire extinguisher, and he said he was not prepared to lend it to me because he would be held accountable for the extinguisher being used on another vehicle. Another motorist handed me a bottle of water, and surprisingly I was able to put the fire out with it. Unfortunately, the driver died from the impact later on. I only tell this story to show that some people will not help anyone in distress, preferring not to be involved.

[Ray Bell]

Human life is a fragile thing at times, human nature totally unpredictable. So this thread's a waste of space...

[Huw Jenjin]

I would like to think that every driver today would stop to help if he thought it was safe to do so. I am not so sure that was the case with Lauda, Williamson and Regazonni, as the drivers on the scene were immediately confronted with the situation.
in the case of Lauda, the drivers were on the scene because they themselves had been stopped by Laudas accident.
Being strapped in a racing car at racing speeds demands huge concentration, and most drivers will be totally detached from the reality standing still around them.
Our view about the value of human life is very different than it was twenty five years ago. There was still an element of the stiff upper lip, carry on regardless war mentality in motor sport even in the seventies, but more so in the fifties and sixies. Some person dying was just not such a big issue then, part of the "game". Today, it is quite unnacceptable for young minds. The total bewilderment after Ratzenbergers accident is evidence of this.

[Williams]

Sid Watkins once said that Senna would always stop if a very serious accident had occured someplace on the track. Senna always seemed to be interested in the procedures of rescuing a driver, and on one occassion had reached a car before the medical team, and was already applying the correct procedures when they arrived (carefully removing helmet, holding driver's head at the correct angle, etc).

Watkins also said that many drivers simply won't stop or go near an accident, because they need to keep the whole concept of an accident as far away from their minds as possible. GV, for example, said that he would do anything to avoid looking at an accident, because he couldn't afford to imbed the sight of one into his conciousness and still be able to do his job.

[Billy]

Williams,

Sid Watkins said that Senna first learned these techniques when Martin Donnelly had his accident at Jerez 1990.

I didn't know at the time that Senna, who was circulating when the accident occurred, had stopped at the scene and had been standing beside me while we worked on Donnelly. I suppose it was about twenty minutes after the accident that Donnelly started to respond to commands and to speak. To my astonishment -- and this serves to show the genetic structure of a Grand Prix driver's brain -- he was preoccupied with what sort of a lap time he had done. He was clearly confused and kept repeating lap times.
..
Practice resumed and Senna, despite his presence at the accident scene, had gone out and did the fastest lap.
..
The next morning the news was still good and I was waiting at the pit exit for Saturday morning practice to start when Senna had come to see me. Leaning against the pit wall, he told me that he had watched the resuscitation and in his serious style questioned me about the technicalites involved. He had noticed that the airway had gone in, apparently wrongly, upside down, and then had been rotated and wanted to know the anatomical reason for doing this. I showed him the kit and he was intrigued about the trick, and he also asked why I had put my finger in Martin's mouth before getting the airway in. I told him this was to find a possible gap in his teeth. One of the things that flashed through my mind in May 1994 at Senna's accident at Imola was our conversation at Jerez, for I was following the same drill.
..
Erik Comas did a repeat performance of the rotating corkscrew at Spa in August 1992 and was concussed, had to be extricated by the spinal team and could not race. Senna was the first person to the accident and when I got there he gave me Comas's helmet and told me had held Comas's neck to retain it in a good position, and also made sure that Erik's airway had been OK. Senna was a good pupil.

After Ronnie Peterson's accident at Monza 1978, Gilles Villeneuve said

I know there's danger -- but it's not in the front of my mind. It's in the back. I didn't want to walk too close to Ronnie's accident. I didn't know at the time if he was dead or alive, but there was a bunch of people around and everything was taken care of. I always try to avoid looking too closely at this kind of thing in case it will hurt me psychologically and I'll start thinking about it after that. It's my job not to think of that so I try to avoid everything. Even if I had known he was dead I don't think it would have changed a thing in my driving. It may sound cruel and heartless to people when they hear me say that. But it's part of the job and I accept the fact that one of these days I will hurt myself very, very much. I don't think of dying, but I accept the fact that it's part of the job.

[Damop]

It is a somewhat silly concept though, given the safety measures at tracks. It is hard to suppose such a situation, and we don't know enough about the drivers true personalities to make such a decision.

[Lamont]

Excellent research, excellent posts. Thanks for that Billy.