F1Weekly Podcast # 1068
Play Podcast: 11-05-24f1weekly1068.mp3
Nasir and the host are reminded why they love Formula 1 ® with Max’s drive from 17th in pouring rain! Motorsports Mondial loaded with Brazilian GP history, the appetizer this week an interview with Dallas Cowboys cheerleader “Jada” and our bonus, a conversation with former F1 driver and current F1 FIA steward Derek Warwick.
Derek Warwick
Regarded as the best British racing driver never to win a Grand Prix, Warwick has seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows – from winning at Le Mans to seeing his younger brother killed in the sport he still loves.
“When drivers were killed – I’ve actually held two of them in my arms not as they were dying, but they died afterwards – to be able to race the next day you’ve got to be a certain sort of person,” says Warwick as he remembers the ’10 or 12′ drivers the sport lost during a Formula One career that spanned 12 years.
Putting them in ‘the safe’ in the back of his mind was the only way he was able to get back on the track after a fatality says Warwick, who drove for Toleman, Renault, Arrows and Lotus in an F1 career that began in 1981.
“You can’t just jump in a car and drive again, you’ve got to put them in this box in order to to be able to forget them,” he continues.
“Especially Paul. I’d put him so deep in my safe that on a Sunday night when I’d normally let the tragedy out, I couldn’t remember him.”
Paul was Warwick’s 22-year-old younger brother who was killed in a crash at Oulton Park while racing in the 1991 British Formula 3000 championship.
It led to a family meeting and his mother eventually persuading the family that Derek should carry on – beginning with some testing for Jaguar a week or two later.
“I went and it was tough the first day, I had a big accident the end of the first day in this secret test at about 220 miles an hour and the rear dampers broke and spun off,” he recalls.
“I just went to the hotel and cried, and about four or five o’clock in the morning I just looked in the mirror and said ‘Derek, what are you going to do?
You’ve either got to pack your bag, go to the airport, go home and finish motor racing here and now because obviously you can’t do it’.
“‘Or you’ve got to put Paul back there in the safe and get out there and do it, and that’s what I decided and I went out there and broke the lap record and the rest is history.”
Derek Warwick and Eddie Cheever testing Jaguar.