Imagine an 11-year window of time when you lose 57 – repeat 57 – friends and colleagues, often watching them die in horrific circumstances doing exactly what you do, weekend after weekend.



To be a racing driver between 1963 and 1973 was to accept not the possibility, but the probability of death. If an F1 driver was to race for five years or more, he would be more likely to lose his life on the track than to survive and retire.



What the cold statistics don't record is the hush that used to descend over the pit lane when an ambulance appeared… the sense of foreboding that spread through this small community when a plume of black smoke rose on the other side of the circuit… the unimaginably brutal way people died… how it felt to be a driver continuing a race, speeding by and catching a glimpse of a crumpled car or the body of a friend… the agony of a devastated wife… the fear in the eyes of other wives as they wondered if it might be their turn next.



Hardly a day goes by when I don't think of those who died during that period, particularly my closest friends Jimmy Clark, Jochen Rindt and François Cevert. The sense of loss is always there, lingering just below the surface.