Criteria
As insensitive as it may seem at first sight, the wide range
of circumstances involving racing events that resulted in fatalities made necessary
the establishment of criteria that would justify – or not – the inclusion
of a given accident in the scope of this work.
The core criterion hereafter adopted for listing within the Motorsport Memorial
is that only fatalities resulted from the practice of motorsport activities
are considered. Deaths resulting from other circumstances, such as natural causes,
illness, road accident, airplane accident, violence, suicide or any other cause
are included in our special chapter Lest
We Forget.
Examples of racing luminaries mentioned at Lest
We Forget are Mike Hawthorn, Mike Hailwood (victims of road accidents),
José Carlos Pace, Alan Kulwicki (air plane accidents), Georges Boillot, Robert
Benoist (killed, respectively, during First and Second World War), Willy Mairesse
and Louis “John Winter” Krages (suicides).
Additionally, by “practice of motorsport” it is understood the engagement
– either active or passive - in some sort of competitive and officially
sanctioned racing meeting, or in preparatory activities directed towards engagement
in such racing meetings.
According to this definition, deaths in private tests have been included, provided
that these aimed the setting of vehicle, driver or team to a competitive, officially
organized event. For example, the accidents that claimed the lives of Bruce
McLaren and Bertrand Fabi in private tests are aligned with this edit –
thence, they are listed.
Note that private tests organized in public, open roads (an activity considered
acceptable decades ago; drivers such as Jean Bugatti and Attilio Marinoni perished
in accidents under these circumstances) are included - if, again, such tests
had the purpose of tuning vehicle, driver or team to an official competition
of some sort.
On the other hand, accidents that do not fulfill these requirements, and therefore
do not qualify to analysis are:
- those incurred at illegal “races”, either in public roads or within
circuits;
- those incurred during "track days", where motorists are allowed
to drive their cars in racing circuits – unless the accident occurred during
a competitive and officially sanctioned activity.
Officially sanctioned speed record trials are considered by this study as an
organized motorsport activity. As such, fatal accidents occurred under these
situations are listed.
Some final words are needed regarding fatalities caused by medical conditions.
In these circumstances, the decision whether to study it or not was based on
the role played by the victim.
Cases where the deceased was an active participant (a driver, co-driver, navigator,
riding mechanic, rider, sidecar pilot, sidecar passenger or similar) are considered
part of the study, provided that it occurred during the practice of motorsport
or shortly thereafter, and that there are reasonable information to conclude
that practice of motorsport activities was a significant contributing factor
to death. Therefore, the deaths of Dennis Hulme during the 1992 Bathurst 1000
and of Jorge Recalde at the Rally Villa Dolores in 2001 (both victims of heart
attacks) – are within the scope of this survey.
If, instead, the victim was a passive participant (spectator, marshal, mechanic,
team member, track official, photographer, journalist, firefighter, policeman,
by-stander, by-passers or other) that succumbed to a certain medical condition,
its passing is not included – even if the death took place during the racing
event, and whatever the sort of this event.