Felipe Massa Gets Lucky

During Saturday qualifying for this year's Hungarian GP, Brazilian Felipe Massa got clouted in the helmet by a suspension bit that had fallen off another competitor's car. It knocked the little guy silly, and he ended up going head on into a barrier at 150 MPH+. As soon as I saw this happen, I was reminded of a driver not many people remember these days, Alan Stacey, and how much luckier Felipe was than Alan.

Massa looks like he's going to be OK. Ferrari will be short one driver for a while, but considering how bad it could have been, the diminutive Brazilian got off pretty light. What happened was a spring off of Rubens Barichello's Brawn came off and went bouncing down the road. It smashed into Massa's helmet at around 160 miles an hour, and put a gash in his left eyebrow, and fractured his skull. It could have been much worse. The spring weighed in at 0.8 kilos, and had it struck Massa a little more this way or that, he would have lost an eye, or probably suffered extreme brain damage.

Alan Stacey on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. Stacey was an up and coming English driver in the early 1960s. Quiet, but could tell a joke, he also managed to race quite well while having to deal with a wooden leg. In 1960 he was paired with the great Jimmy Clark, driving for Lotus and the amazing Coin Chapman.

Heading up the hill out of the fearsome Eau Rouge corner, Stacey had the astonishingly bad luck to get hit in the face by a bird in nearly the same spot as Massa got tagged by a nearly 2 pound steel spring. Stacey was essentially knocked silly, and his featherweight Lotus barreled off the road at unabated speed, smashed into an embankment, and caught fire. The impact with the bank probably killed him.

To make matters worse, a few laps earlier, fellow Brit and another young up and comer, Chris Bristow went off at the same corner and was killed in his Cooper, and less than 24 hours before that, Stirling Moss went off at the same spot in the same kind of Lotus and came away with broken legs, three broken ribs, and a broken nose.

Meanwhile, the race went on. Jimmy Clark, who was destined for greatness, pulled into the pits after finishing fifth in his first GP on the continent. Chapman, Jimmy's mentor, friend and confidant was seen to walk up to the young Scot and say: "Great drive Jimmy, you came in Fifth. Alan's dead."

At that precise moment, now-famous racing photographer and friend of Jimmy Clark, Jesse Alexander came walking up to congratulate his good friend after finishing so high.

"Hey Jimmy!" shouted Jesse. And without thinking, Jimmy simply turned, still dealing with the news of Stacy's death. Click went the shutter.

Later, Jesse Alexander said that he did not know of the death of either Stacey or Bristow, or even worse, that Chapman had just informed Jimmy of the tragic events. He did go on to say that he felt that his now iconic image of Jim Clark was the best photo he ever took.

If anything, the events around both Massa's and Stacey's chillingly similar accidents show not only how much safety has improved over the past 40+ years, but just how much dumb luck plays into this game.

And right about now, knowing what I know, and even though Felipe Massa is in an Hungarian ICU in an induced coma with a nasty cut, a fractured skull and a concussed brain, I'd say he got off pretty damn lucky.

A note on sources.Normally at this point some credit is due to where I get the photos from, but simple links and line items won't do. The shots of Felipe Massa are from the message boards on SpeedTV, and if you want to go into the deep end of how and why this happened, you should check them out. The Stacey shots are from Wikipedia, and more importantly, the Jesse Alexander shot of Jimmy Clark is from his website. I highly recommend that if you have any wall space available, you should go by and see what Mr. Alexander has to offer. His photos and prints from racing in the 1950s – 1970s are all pretty remarkable and artfully done, and you could do a lot worse than throw a few dollars or Euros or whatever his way.