FORMULA One motor racing is such an institution that it's tempting to forget it wasn't always the well-oiled machine it is today. No one knows that better than one of the sport's pioneers - former F1 champion Jackie Stewart.

After all, the three-time world champion (1969, 1971 and 1973) remembers when there were no doctors or medics track-side. And once when he crashed, his friends had to pull him out of the wreck. In fact, the only doctor around at the time was a gynaecologist - who got the job because he was a motorsports fan.

Thankfully, things are a lot different now, with F1 having evolved into a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar operation with every detail from track design to car technology and safety taken care of.

Stewart, 68, is happy that while the event itself has evolved, it has stayed true to its heart - to develop ever-faster cars and test the limits of human endurance driving them.

"No sport has the technology investment that motorsports has," says Stewart, who was brought into town by F1 sponsor Royal Bank of Scotland to drum up some buzz for the Singapore leg.

"It has always been the Star Wars of the automotive industry, and if you think back to the 20s and 30s, it was Star Wars then too," Stewart adds.

"But the people - the animals - are still of the same kind," he points out. "They have always had the same mentality - whether it was Fangio or Clark, Senna and Prost, or Alonso and Hamilton. These people are all the same, and so are the mechanics and engineers."

It's very much a case of man and machine - once you create the perfect machine, who will be the one to master it?

So, no matter how dependent F1 becomes on computers, Stewart feels drivers will always remain central to a team's chances of winning.

"No matter what technology has been created, when the lights go out on the gantry, that one man behind the wheel is responsible for the delivery of a team's success or failure," he says. "You're spending between US$300 million and US$500 million a year on two prima donna race drivers, but they determine everything."

It has always been one thing for Singaporeans to watch F1 on television and see some other city host it, but now it is coming here, safety issues have become a priority, since our track will be in the city, and each car will be hurtling along loaded with high-octane racing fuel.

Stewart says F1 remains a dangerous sport but is as safe as we can make it. He should know, since many attribute the safety of the sport today to his tireless efforts over the years to trumpet the cause.

"I've lost 57 friends and acquaintances over the years that my wife and I have counted, and we must have missed a few," he says. "Most of them unnecessarily, whether it was because the tracks were unsafe or the equipment and medical facilities were pathetic.

"That's changed and that's important. It has been almost 14 years since we lost the life of a racing driver in Formula One.
That's an immense record. When you think of the failures, whether it's Enron, rogue traders, or air crashes or bus crashes, motorsports has been amazingly well-structured for risk management.

"But it can snap like that. I don't like saying it, because it's almost begging for something to happen. We don't want that. I say in my autobiography that I hope and pray that the modern racing driver never knows what it feels like to go through what I went through in my era."

Stewart then makes a prediction ominous in its certainty. "Make no mistake - there's going to be another accident." He's not hoping for a disaster, but rather making the point that there's no such thing as perfect safety, especially at the speeds F1 cars reach.

"When the human frame sustains the kind of impact you see in a Formula One accident, it's not a car accident but more like an aircraft accident," he says. "If the brain gets shocked in a particular way, it gets detached from the skull. We're lucky that so much has been done in the field of safety, but we're lucky so far that the impacts haven't happened at the wrong moments. We're only a hair's breadth away from that."

So no matter how safe F1 gets, Stewart feels that we're in no danger of having too little of it in the sport. And even he has to admit that this element of risk draws the spectators.

"That's part of the mystique of Formula One because the cars are so fast and the sound is exhilarating, and loved now as much by women as men, young and old," he says.

This article was first published in The Business Times on Mar 28, 2008.