Regular readers of these pages know that I am not a fan of modern racing, but one thing that does please me is that we no longer have fatalities as a matter of course. Motor racing is dangerous we are told, but nobody wants unnecessary loss of life.
I was reading an old issue of Motor Sport magazine the other day, from May 1956, and I was stunned by some of the journalism. In the absence of Denis Jenkinson who would have been on his annual extended trip to Continental Europe, race reports were often compiled by editor Bill Boddy, an opinionated and forthright man. This is his opening paragraph for a report on the Easter Goodwood meeting -
"In spring sunshine the BARC had a crowd of over 60,000 for its Easter Goodwood meeting. The big race of the afternoon was the Richmond Formula 1 race which produced a magnificent ding-dong battle between Hawthorn (BRM) Scott-Brown (Connaught) and Moss (Maserati)....................Moss set a new lap record........Salvadori had a good day, winning two races in two different Cooper-Climax cars.......Bueb won the F3 Earl of March trophy.
The caterers set a new standard, using radio inter-com, to call up supplies, and amongst the celebrities present were the Duke of Kent (Sunbeam Rapier), the Earl of Essendon (2.4 Jaguar), the Duke of Richmond & Gordon (Jensen 541) and Earl Howe in a Mercedes-Benz 300SL tastefully finished in his well-known colours. Several class lap records fell. Unfortunately two drivers were killed when flung from their cars.-WB."
I've left out a bit of the reporting, but you get the gist.
So we get a synopsis of the events, a mention of the caterers, a list of VIPs and their transport, and then at the end a little footnote about two drivers whose families wouldn't be seeing them arrive home. How times change - two deaths at one meeting these days would result in lurid headlines about "Thousands of spectators watch in horror as daredevil racers plunge to their deaths". Of course, society was different too. The end of the war had only been 9 years previously, and attitudes towards death and mortality hadn't really changed much. Just keep a stiff upper lip and all that, these things happen.
How would Motor Sport magazine react today if this happened at a modern race meeting? Reading Boddy's report had me sitting back in my chair in astonishment.
