Trapped in his British Racing Motors car for almost 25 minutes as fuel from the ruptured tanks soaked his overalls, Jackie Stewart had plenty of time to think about the lax safety measures in Formula One after spinning into a ditch during the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix.
With no organized safety crews or mandated rescue equipment on site, Stewart's quick-thinking teammate Graham Hill and another racer, Bob Bondurant, arrived on the scene, borrowed tools from a spectator and extricated the injured racer before the car burst into flames.
"It was ridiculous," said Stewart, a three-time Formula One world champion who was knighted in 2001 for "services to motor racing." Stewart was speaking in Toronto last week as part of a book tour for his autobiography, Winning is Not Enough.
"Back then, they were all amateurs looking after safety and it wasn't good."
After recovering from the 1966 accident — he suffered a broken collarbone, cracked ribs and internal bruising — the sophomore F1 driver embarked on a personal campaign to bring professionalism to trackside safety. But the fight against the lack of standard procedures, adequate rescue equipment and properly trained personnel at most F1 venues in the 1960s — the chief medical officer at one circuit was a gynecologist — put him on a collision course with the powers that be in the sport.
"I never thought I was being paid for the risks; I thought I was being paid for my skills, but it was not a popular pastime to criticize the safety in the sport in those days," he said.
"Most of my friends died when I was racing and because of that I worked very hard to turn motor racing safety into something that today is probably the best example of risk management in the world."
After taking the 1969, 1971, and 1973 world championships on the strength of 27 victories in 99 grand prix starts, Stewart quit F1 before the final race of the 1973 season at Watkins Glen, N.Y., following the death of close friend François Cevert in a practice crash for the U.S. Grand Prix.
Thirty-five years after stepping out of the cockpit, the racing legend has turned his attention to improving the way the sport is governed, especially in the wake of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile's (FIA) handling of the spy scandal that rocked F1 during the 2007 season.
"This is a very heavily capital-invested sport and presently the president of the FIA is not paid and therefore he is part-time and an amateur. How can you have that in a governing body of a sport that has so much power that it can inflict $100-million fines in a court that's almost run by the president?" he asked.
"This could never happen in a normal business or legal structure and I think we have to change the infrastructure of the governing body.
"They have to headhunt a captain of industry and pay him accordingly to be an executive director or president who is not part-time and not an amateur."
The FIA's World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) fined the McLaren team $100-million (U.S.) after its chief designer was caught with a confidential Ferrari technical document, which the court concluded the team used in an attempt to gain an advantage.
Weeks later, Renault left the WMSC unscathed after a case involving a former McLaren employee who loaded data from his old employer onto the French outfit's computer system after taking a job with the team. But in the Renault case, the FIA declined to impose a penalty because it ruled the information in question turned out to be of no use to the team.
"To put a $100-million fine on McLaren when it yet hasn't been absolutely been proven that the transfer of information occurred is quite bizarre," said Stewart, who turns 69 in June. "And any other court of law would have found the Renault decision difficult to justify."
Stewart suggested that the FIA made a poor ruling in the McLaren case and then found itself in a position where it could not impose a similar penalty on Renault despite the similar circumstances. A $100-million fine would have seen Renault withdraw from the sport, which Stewart insisted, "F1 couldn't afford."
While he gave up driving after only nine F1 seasons, Stewart remained a central figure in the paddock through consulting for Ford Motor Co., commenting from the broadcast booth, and starting his eponymous grand prix team in 1997. He is now the global ambassador for Williams F1 title sponsor, the Royal Bank of Scotland.
As happened four decades ago, Stewart's outspoken opposition to the FIA's actions have not gone unnoticed by the sport's governing body. In a comment that shocked many, its president, Max Mosley, responded by calling Stewart "a certified halfwit."
"I thought it was totally inappropriate from a man in his position as president of the governing body of a major sporting organization to even think of speaking in a manner such as that," said Stewart.
"If the president of the International Olympic Committee said something like that about a gold medal winner, I think he would have lost his job."
