What we can learn from the death of Anthoine Hubert

Following the tragic death of French F2 driver Anthoine Hubert last week at Spa during the Feature Race the FIA has begun an investigation into the causes of the incident.

Motor racing is inherently dangerous, although this is something that many of us forget. Driver deaths used to be a regular occurrance back in the 50’s and 60’s. One of the most imfamous incidents occurred at the 1955 24 hours of Le Mans at the Circuit de la Sarthe in France where a crash sent debris flying into the crowd and killed 83 spectators, French driver Pierre Bouillin and injured another 180 spectators. Since then there has been a much bigger focus on driver and spectator safety.

Throughout the last few decades there has been a significant improvement in the safety in racing, though driver deaths continue to occur, albeit very infrequently. Dr Sid Watkins played a central role in advocating for major improvements in safety over the past 40 years, even more so following the death of his close friend, and F1 great, Ayrton Senna in 1994. Watkin’s legacy still lives on with the work done through the Institute for Motor Sport Safety, which he led as President from its creation in 2005 until his retirement in 2011. Dr. Watkins died in 2012 at the age of 84.

Even with all of the improvements into the safety of drivers and spectators over the past several decades there are still deaths within motor racing. In the past 5 years there have been several high profile deaths including Jules Bianci in 2014 at the Japanese Grand Prix, Justin Wilson at the Indycar race at Pocono Raceway in 2015 and now Anthoine Hubert at the 2019 Belgian F2 Feature race.

Each death has had lessons learned and improvements have been implements as a result. The Halo was implemented as a direct result of Jules Bianchi’s death and significant improvements to catch fencing at oval tracks as a result of Justin Wilson’s death.

The outcomes of the investigation into what caused the incident in Belgium last week will be learned over the next several weeks and months and changes will be made. We must never forget that these drivers are putting their lives at risk every time they get into the cockpit and go racing and we must all never stop trying to improve the safety of racing.

Rest in peace, Anthoine. You will never be forgotten.