Jules Bianchi died two weeks shy of his 26th birthday, having suffered catastrophic injuries in a crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Bianchi had been a leading light of Ferrari\u2019s junior driver programme and was hotly tipped to arrive at the Scuderia in the mid-2010s. But, tragically, the French driver\u2019s life was cut short due to a crash he suffered at Suzuka in 2014.<\/p>\n
Graeme Lowdon remembers Jules Bianchi<\/p>\n
Jules Bianchi\u2019s accident occurred in the 2014 edition of the Japanese Grand Prix, on what was a miserably wet day in the Mie Prefecture.<\/p>\n
Heavy rain and poor visibility had been caused by the arrival of Typhoon Phanfone, and, in the closing stages of the race, F1\u2019s safety vulnerabilities were exposed when Bianchi ran off the road at high speed and suffered life-threatening injuries upon colliding with a track recovery vehicle in the gravel trap removing another car.<\/p>\n
Bianchi suffered a diffuse axonal brain injury and never recovered consciousness before he tragically passed away in the hospital on July 17th, 2015. He was just 25 years old.<\/p>\n
The French driver, who hailed from Nice, was the godfather of current Ferrari star Charles Leclerc; had fate not been so cruel, it\u2019s likely both would have ended up as rivals at the sharp end of the F1 grid in recent years.<\/p>\n
Bianchi\u2019s path appeared certain that he would have ended up at Ferrari. He had been the first recruit of the Driver Academy and had been putting in the hard yards with the Scuderia behind the scenes, working as a test and reserve driver alongside his Marussia F1 team race duties.<\/p>\n
Just weeks before his accident, Bianchi had tested for Ferrari at Silverstone after getting the call-up to replace Kimi Raikkonen, who had had a hard hit during the Grand Prix. Bianchi had finished with the quickest time of the day in the truculent F14-T, and he was strongly linked with stepping up into the Italian team upon its next available vacancy; whether that be for the departing Fernando Alonso, or if Raikkonen was replaced.<\/p>\n
But Ferrari was Bianchi\u2019s future in late 2014, when he headed off to Japan. His present was at the beleaguered Marussia team, a small underdog squad struggling for survival at the time. The former Virgin F1 team had changed hands after 2011, becoming the F1 arm of a small, and now defunct, Russian automaker.<\/p>\n
Bianchi had scored a points finish in Monaco in May 2014, with his ninth-place classification enough to move the team into ninth in the Constructors\u2019 standings ahead of Caterham; the difference in the prize money would make all the difference in the team surviving into 2015 as finances were so tight in the vastly different commercial environment that existed in a pre-Liberty Media age.<\/p>\n
Graeme Lowdon was the CEO of Manor Motorsport, which operated the Marussia F1 team, working closely alongside team boss John Booth, when Bianchi suffered his accident.<\/p>\n
Lowdon is set to return to F1 full-time next year as he\u2019s been appointed as Cadillac F1 team boss, and the British businessman\u2019s time is highly in demand as preparations continue apace for his team\u2019s pending arrival in the sport. But Lowdon graciously gave of some of that time to sit down with PlanetF1.com over the British Grand Prix weekend, visibly getting lost in the events of a decade ago as our conversation turns away from the here and now to discuss the sad final months of Bianchi\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never watched it back, never watched the TV coverage back. It\u2019s strange the things you remember,\u201d Lowdon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember it was way darker in real life than it appeared on TV, like way darker.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conditions were much worse than it looked. I remember the fact that there was no medical helicopter. I remember driving to the hospital. We couldn\u2019t get into the medical centre at the circuit, which is not unusual, actually. And I\u2019m not a doctor, so I\u2019m not essential.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember driving to the hospital and taking a phone call from Bernie [Ecclestone, former F1 chairman], because he wasn\u2019t there that weekend, but he wanted to make it super clear very quickly, whatever we needed, we would have.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was helpful. At the time, I was having a lot of discussions with Bernie about the team as well, because we were trying to find new investments. We could see that there were issues on the horizon with the sponsorship from Russia and what have you.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this instance, it was a complete switch in the discussion, a normal discussion about structuring a team or whatever. Instead, it was, you know, \u2018What do you need?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d read before, actually, that, when Bernie ran teams, I think he was highly affected by some of the incidents that happened with his own team. It occurred to me that you\u2019re talking to a guy who\u2019s been through something like this before, and they know what\u2019s important and not important.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really remember that, and I remember a lot about what happened at the hospital. It\u2019s difficult and\u2026 we still had a Formula 1 team to run as well. It was a back-to-back race with Sochi, and we\u2019re going there as a Russian-owned team, so the pressure was on in so many ways. So yeah, it was a big challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nine months between Bianchi\u2019s crash and his eventual passing saw him initially remain in hospital in Japan but, with Bianchi coming out of his coma and breathing unaided, albeit still unconscious, in late November 2014, he was repatriated to a hospital in his hometown in Nice.<\/p>\n
There he remained until the end, with Lowdon visiting his bedside when he could.<\/p>\n
How did those months weigh on his shoulders?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the fact that you\u2019ve got a teammate in hospital somewhere. You think about them. Not all the time, but something is there all the time, for sure,\u201d he said, visibly getting lost in the memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were trying to rescue the team as well. We were trying to do our own sort of survival thing on a business point of view. So there was a lot happening at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were really encouraged when Jules got Medi-vaced back to Nice, so he got out of Japan and into a hospital in Nice, and so that made it much easier to go and visit.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that I\u2019m thankful for, I guess, is one particular visit. I went down there, I used to fly down on an easyJet. You couldn\u2019t get down and back in a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019d fly down, stay over, go visit him or whatever, and then head home.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn this occasion, I met Jules\u2019 dad [Philippe] in the hospital. I remember having a long conversation with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to say anything about his condition, because that\u2019s very much for the family, but what I would do is just go and sit and talk to him about what we were doing as a team, in the hope that, in some small way, it might help, or whatever\u2026 You don\u2019t know in these situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I remember talking to him about the fact that we were racing in 2015, I would have told him what was going on in the last race, or whatever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I went home, it takes a bit of a while to get all the way back to Northumberland. I got all the way back, and I hadn\u2019t been back long when I got a call from John to say that Jules had passed away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always thankful for that particular visit, I at least had sat and said what was happening with the team. You build a bond in the team. There were people in the team who were much closer to Jules than I was.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you run a team, you don\u2019t tend to get too close to the drivers for all sorts of various reasons. But I think everyone in the team has a bond with, not just the drivers, but also other team members.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout the years, we\u2019ve run teams. We\u2019ve had other people who got hurt in places or whatever. You care for these people because they run your team. So it does have an impact, for sure. As you look around this paddock, there are still people wearing the wristbands that we gave to everybody in 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s at this point that Lowdon revealed a slightly faded red plastic bracelet on his right wrist. It\u2019s engraved with some markings from the happiest day of the Marussia\/Bianchi partnership, and Lowdon explains it\u2019s never left his wrist in the decade since.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not the only one here,\u201d he said of the tribute item.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see a bunch of people in the paddock who have got these. Monaco 2015, Jules was in the hospital in Nice, so literally just a few miles away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the whole team turning up in Monaco, and the team survived because of the points that Jules had had such a major contribution in scoring. So we thought, \u2018What should we do? \u2018<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew the team was going to be thinking about him. He\u2019s not that far away, but it\u2019s not practical for everyone to go there. In the end, we decided we would just issue everyone in the team a wristband, and it just says \u2018Monaco, 2014, P8, JB17.\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it was P9 in the classification, but that was due to the strange ruleset at the time; on the road, it was P8. We gave everyone this, and it meant that, if you\u2019re a mechanic and you\u2019re working on the car, you don\u2019t have to do a big gesture or whatever.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can look at your wrist and say, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re remembering him\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew that, if Jules knew what was happening, he\u2019d want the team to be successful going forward and all the rest of it, and wouldn\u2019t want everyone to be thinking about stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis gave everyone the opportunity to, whenever they want, just have that little reminder that, you know, he\u2019s still in our thoughts. He\u2019s not far away; we\u2019re racing partly for him. He\u2019s made this possible as well through his contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Bianchi\u2019s death \u2014 the last F1 driver death to have been caused by a crash on track during a Grand Prix weekend \u2014 the sport has evolved considerably. The explosion of F1\u2019s popularity, as Liberty Media has embraced social media and modern entertainment platforms, has resulted in the teams becoming highly profitable and valuable ventures.<\/p>\n
Even the smallest teams are now big businesses and had Marussia\/Manor survived beyond 2016, the year of Haas\u2019 arrival on the grid, it\u2019s entirely possible the outfit could be a very different proposition nowadays.<\/p>\n
The changes on the commercial front have coincided with a big evolution in the sport\u2019s fandom. Embracing a younger and more diverse audience, there are a lot of new fans since the days Bianchi raced, fans who might not be aware of the extent of his potential and the character of the man.<\/p>\n
I asked Lowdon what those fans need to know about Bianchi.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a bloody good race driver, a really, really, top-class race driver, an exceptional talent in my mind,\u201d Lowdon replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember he brought Charles Leclerc along to a race, Charles would have been really young at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said to me and John Booth, who I ran the team with, \u2018John, this is Charlie. He\u2019s going to be so good. He\u2019s going to be way better than me,\u2019 and all this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Charles went to Ferrari, it was really nice to see, because you kind of thought that that\u2019s the continuation in some way of Jules.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember when Jules was racing in Monaco in 2014, he made that move around Rascasse, and it was so cool. Everyone in the team, after that race, got the aerial picture signed by Jules, and it\u2019s a super cool thing to have.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen watching Charles at that race when he was in the Ferrari, and he made two almost identical moves like that, I couldn\u2019t believe it!<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a real goosebump moment. The first time it worked, but the second time, if I remember rightly, it didn\u2019t work!<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember thinking Jules up there looking down watching this, and that he\u2019d take his cap off for the first one, and then give him some stick for the second one, for making a mistake!\u201d<\/p>\n
Bianchi\u2019s death played a large role in the FIA hastening its quest to research and introduce a cockpit protection system for drivers, leading to the creation of the Halo device that has since directly contributed to the prevention of serious injuries, and perhaps worse, of several drivers across F1 and its junior categories.<\/p>\n
While Bianchi himself may not have been saved by such a device, Lowdon said Bianchi\u2019s contribution to modern F1 simply cannot be overlooked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key thing for me is that people don\u2019t forget Jules,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people talk about who\u2019s made Formula 1 what it is. The reality is that there are an awful lot of people who have all contributed in lots of different ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Jules is one of those people who played a big part, actually, in F1. You see that from the safety changes that were made afterwards, but the fans were definitely robbed of a significantly bigger part that I think he was set to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we should definitely not forget him. That\u2019s why everyone wears these. That\u2019s why we commemorate.\u201d<\/p>\n