The Ugly Side Of Motorsport

Motorsport is a beautiful sport and well liked. Most men love motor racing, betting on different participants is also very popular, not to mention the sponsors who are spending small fortunes on sponsoring different teams and drivers. I can understand that even though it's more and more like a huge business and less about the sport itself but that's not what I want to talk about today.

Some drivers are lucky and manage to finish their professional driver career without any major accidents, others are less lucky and are implicated in pretty ugly accidents, and others are very unlucky.

Last Sunday Takuma Sato had an ugly accident but he was lucky to get out of it without any serious health problems. Takuma Sato is a 42 year old Japanese professional racing driver currently racing in the IndyCar. You may know him from Formula one as he competed in Formula One from 2002 to 2008 for Jordan, BAR and Super Aguri teams. He only scored one single podium in 2004 at the United States Grand Prix. Formula one is a very taugh competition, you may get a chance to enter but only the best can stay. He's better in IndyCar as he has four wins, eleven podiums and nine poles.

There were four drives implicated in the crash, these were Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi, James Hinchcliffe and Takuma Sato. Sato ended up with his car upside down and in fire. It's a miracle he got out safe as not many do in a situation like this. At that speed to hit the wall can be fatal, not to mention the fire.

I used to watch Formula One, where the start is always eventful as everyone wants to get in front to lead the race but only one can. There are races where a few cars are out in the first lap but that is not always the case. There are Formula One tracks that are very narrow, usually those that are not really built for the race (Monaco for example) where the race is not so exiting. Other tracks on the other hand are offering many possibilities for drivers to get ahead and sometimes half of the drivers are out before they can finish the race.

Looking at the statistics, Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the most dangerous circuit as there were seven fatalities between 1953 and 1959. Then comes Nürburgring circuit with five fatalities that happened between 1954 and 1969 and United Kingdom Silverstone Circuit with four fatalities between 1960 and 2014. These fatalities happened a long time ago when safety measures were very different from what they have now but the last one at Silverstone. Jules Bianchi had an accident and died nine month after due to his head injuries.

These statistics are only referring to race drivers and accidents happened during different races but let's not forget that there were fatalities during test drivings as well.