#Writer’s #Blog: #RIPJules, the #Human Cost of #Competition

You are seeing the face of a dead man. A man who passed away just over a day ago after suffering for nine months from a head injury from a crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. He was only 25, younger than me. Younger than my little brother, even. His is the first racing death in an F1 Grand Prix since the great Ayrton Senna was lost 21 years ago. His potential was already apparent, but we will never know what he might have achieved if he had been given more time.

I don’t typically write about Formula 1 racing, or racing in general, even though it is a passion of mine. Cars are characters in my novels, not just modes of transport. They illustrate the rebellious nature of the protagonists, their nonconformity, and their willingness to push harder and faster than those around them. I’ve been in love with cars since I was a young boy. I’ve been a fervent follower of F1 for nearly a decade now. One of my single greatest regrets is not getting to see Senna when he raced in Phoenix, even if it was a lousy circuit. I was just a boy at the time, sitting in Sunday school, listening to the sound of the Formula 1 cars only a few miles distant, their exhaust notes echoing off the scorching concrete.

So where does a science fiction writer who rambles about cyberpunk get off suddenly tossing the death of a promising young F1 driver into the mix? I’d like to say the answer is technology, but it’s actually quite the opposite. The answer is the humanity.

Simply put, racing is a dangerous sport. People have tried to argue that racing drivers are not athletes. An excellent article agreed with them, stating that no, they were not athletes. They were more than athletes. When looking at contact sports such as football, American football (handegg), rugby, etc., we see highly trained, highly paid athletes colliding with one another at human speeds. And while it’s true there is an issue with head injuries, none of that compares with what a professional racing driver puts on the line every time he climbs into the cockpit. A racing driver is not betting his career or his fortune. He’s not wagering his stats or his championship hopes. He is flat out, 100% putting his own life on the line. The gamble in F1, in Indy, in WEC, is not about winning, it’s about staying alive.

The thing people tend to forget, as humans are wont to, is that so much forethought, engineering, and wisdom goes into designing safe race cars that we suddenly think the driver is encased in something straight out of Death Proof. You can’t argue with physics, though. No matter how well designed a race car may be, how strong the carbon fiber, how structurally reinforced the roll cage, physics will win out in the end. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

But time after time we see incredible crashes, and then watch the driver casually get out of the car and walk away as if he was taking a simple jaunt through the park. Meanwhile the car is scattered over a quarter of a mile, parts and fluids having flown off in all directions. Each part that leaves the car takes energy with it. Like a shock absorber, the longer the car can go tumbling and bouncing down the course, the more energy is lost and the less severe the impact transferred to the driver. Thus, we see cars that look like hell and drivers that look fine.

With the approach of self-driving cars, the use of drones in warfare, and an increasing reliance on robots, much of the human element is being removed from daily activities. In many ways this is a good thing. Humans, for all that they are capable of, are just as capable of making a mistake. Technology can be an amazing solution to our problems, but it quickly becomes a crutch. In the death of the young Jules Bianchi we are faced with the stark reality that machines are fallible, designs are flawed, and accidents can and will happen. My heart goes out to Jules’ family. The entire motorsports world is reeling, but this is not the last time it will happen. There may come a day when you see robots and machines handling all of our difficult, dangerous, and dirty tasks, but you will never see anything but a human piloting a racecar around a circuit. Without that risk, without life and death balanced on the scales, racing becomes just an exercise in technical development, and puts us one step further away from our roots as living, breathing creatures. We salute the brave men and women who race, compete, and win. We recognize that for them, racing is everything. Even if nobody was watching, they would be there, risking it all just to push that little bit further, to dip one toe over the edge. On the other side is death, and by brushing against it, we find out just how much we are alive.

Forza Jules.


A.C. Harrison is the author of "Jupiter Symphony,” a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk thrill ride.
Like what you see here? Spread the word and support indie authors! Follow me on Facebook or Twitter. Find me on Smashwords and Kindlemojo.