Atlas F1

Free Spirits and Acceptable Risk

by Roger Horton, England

So it has finally been done. At 09:45 GMT on Saturday the 21st of March 1999, the 180-foot-high Breitling Orbiter, crewed by Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard and British pilot Brian Jones, passed over the 9 degree west longitude line to become the first manned hot-air balloon to successfully circumnavigate the globe. They travelled over 26 thousand miles and the journey took some 19 days.

Now the congratulations can begin. Man has conquered yet another challenge. One that despite the use of modern technology has proved to be especially difficult. Man against the elements can sometimes be a pretty unequal struggle and often the elements extract a terrible price.

They succeeded where many others had failed, most notably the high-profile British businessman and adventurer Richard Branson and his two partners, whose many attempts showed that despite money and bravery, lady luck still has a part to play.

Not long after Branson and his crew had abandoned their attempt, some three months ago now, choosing to ditch into the ocean off Honolulu having lost the all important jet stream, some 115 boats were setting off on the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race. By a strange twist of fate it seems that the same winds that had abandoned Branson, now chose to visit the waters off Eastern Australia with a vengeance. The result was the retirement from the race of 70 out of the 115 entrants, six yachts were sunk with some 50 sailors having to be plucked from the sea. Tragically, six lives were lost.

Soon of course, all the questions started and most of the questions started with why. But sometimes the difficult questions have no easy answers. Just what compels these men, all having survived brushes with death once before, again to risk all in a hot air balloon some five miles above the earth for the sake of being "first". Is it the same challenge that motivated those hundreds of sailors to race their rivals in an offshore yacht race? When, though, the conditions became so horrendous that mere survival was the overriding priority, over 40 yachts that could, sailed on to the finish. Why?

Perhaps a quote from Bertrand Piccard goes some way to answering the question. "Human beings always wish to do more, to discover more, to achieve more," he is reported to have said after crossing his own personal finishing line - mission accomplished.

In motor racing in general - and in Formula One in particular - there has always been a debate about just what level of risk is acceptable. In the fifties and sixties racing drivers were viewed as adventurers as well. Provided that no spectators were hurt, they could be left alone to "dice with death" to their hearts content. So they diced and died in such high percentages that sometimes you could look back at a grid line-up of some five years before and half of the faces were missing...

Many perhaps feel that the pendulum has now in fact swung too far in the other direction and that today's racing is too safe. That drivers encased in their F1 survival cells, surrounded by gravel traps and run-off areas, take to many liberties with each other on the track. Confident that the price of an accident is worth the risk.


There is still, though, the element of the unknown. The moments leading up to the start of a Grand Prix are still full of drama and tension. The cars take their places on the grid surrounded by the mechanics, engineers and the inevitable hangers-on. The klaxon jolts the nerves and signals the relentless movement of the clock towards 2pm.

There is nothing else in sport quite like the start of a Formula One Grand Prix.

The combination of noise and movement, the frantic jostling for position, is over in just seconds as the cars start the race. Disappearing from sight and sound around the first corner, to leave the grid strangely silent and empty, with only the smell of burning rubber and the long black streaks of wheel spin lines, as evidence of their presence.

Soon of course the cars will re-appear to continue their race to nowhere. For the likes of Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen, the race is much shorter than for Piccard and Jones and so different in all respects. Except that both the balloonist and the racing driver will have experienced an isolation that comes from doing something which separates them from the rest of us. That despite all the precautions and science dedicated to their safety, they will have run the gauntlet of risk and hopefully survived.

So we should salute the free spirit that is so alive in the likes of Branson, Per Lindstrand, Fosset, Piccard and Jones in the air. Whilst respecting the bravery of yachtsmen who constantly challenge the power of the sea. These men, together with others, who follow challenges which place themselves at risk, keep alive the notion that these dangerous "past times" still have a place in our well ordered world.

How typical then, that Breitling Orbiter's flight director Alan Noble was quoted as saying just after his successful mission was accomplished, that the next step would be to stage an around-the-world balloon race!

Somehow, I think that Schumacher, Hakkinen and the rest would understand that...


Roger Horton© 1999 Atlas Formula One Journal.
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