F1 Fanatic

Watching the evening news, I caught I story about an idiot footballer here in Australia. Darren Lockyer is a member of a the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team, and after a very heavy hit in his last game, he has a fractured eye socket. The Broncos are about to play a do-or-die game that could see them through to the finals, and Lockyer is determined to play. However, for the past three days, just about every doctor in the country has said Lockyer should not play – if he takes another hit, it could cost him his eyesight. Lockyer, however, insists on playing, thinking he knows better than two hundred thousand medical opinions. When the doctors advised him to wear headgear to protect his face, he refused. In a sport full of morons and thugs, Lockyer has always struck me as a moronic thug.

But it did get me thinking: when, if ever, has a driver done something despite absolutely everyone up and down the paddock thinking that it is the dumbest thing he could have done? The only example I could think of would be if Sergio Perez had raced in Canada this year despite feeling dizzy and feeling the after-effects of his Monaco crash. Anyone else?

PM, I raise your Darren Lockyer and give you Brendan Fevola..

Surely one of the stupidest men to have ever walked the face of the Earth..

Prisoner Monkeys, I’m guessing by your mention of Lockyer that you’re in the NRL media saturation zone (also known as QLD or NSW). Which one is it.

Hi, from QLD.

Too many enemies? :p

I know everybody in motoGP gets injured and rides on regardless, but I remember one in particular where I believe it was Lorenzo who had broken or fractured both ankles. He was at the Bugatti round soon after and the commentators winced whenever he went across a gravel trap and had to lift his legs clear to make sure he didn’t put any pressure on his ankles while bouncing across.

I can’t think of anything in particular in F1, although I suspect that Lauda racing with blood seeping through his bandages wasn’t considered wise by doctors at the time.

Here’s a few suggestions:

Mark Webber hiding an injury from his team last year.

Nelson Piquet Jr.’s deliberate crash.

Montoya announcing his switch to NASCAR before the end of the season, and promptly getting fired.

F1 drivers are generally a sensible bunch, but even so I bet there are a few more.

How about Villenueve and Zonta having a bet who could take Eau Rouge flat out in 1999.
Both had massive accidents trying it.

If there was a driver in a Lockyer-esque situation in F1, Gary Hartstein would simply say “you’re not driving”. Driving in contravention of such an order from him would be a breach of the driver’s Superlicence, so they wouldn’t be driving in F1 again whether they came to harm in the race or not. The teams know this and would prevent their driver from having the car in order to protect their ability to compete for them in the future.

There have been a few occasions where drivers have competed when they probably shouldn’t have done, by successfully hiding the true extent of their injuries from whichever doctor was on duty at the time. This does not mean, however, that they get to compete – Martin Brundle crashed in qualifying at Monaco in 1984 and tried to go back out on track despite concussion (Martin estimated later he was about 30% conscious at the time). When Ken Tyrrell heard him ask, “Which way do I turn at the end of the pit lane?”, he stopped the car and insisted Martin cease attempting to qualify.

The other one I remember well was when Giancarlo Fisichella fractured his knee in a testing accident close to the start of the season. Normally, this would be enough to be barred from competing for a while, but somehow the truth got hidden for several months, aided and abetted by the team. This in itself would count as pretty inadvisable, but crashing heavily in the second race of the season – when the knee was presumably still healing and caution would have been the order of the day – takes the matter into “idiocy” territory…

Well if you want an example of drivers being complete, erm, non-idiots, then Perez this year in Canada, after his shunt at Monaco. He had the honesty to admit that he didn’t feel up to driving – let de la Rosa take his place and sit out the weekend. I have a lot of respect for him after that, I could imagine that a lot of drivers would have been tempted to just grin and bear it just for the sake racing.