BBC TV recently re-ran a documentary, 'Formula One, The Killer Years.' It was a salutary reminder of just how unnecessarily dangerous the sport once was. Before the Singapore GP there was a one minute silence in memory of Prof. Sid Watkins who did so much to improve medical facilities.

Sid personally recruited medical teams for each race and he could do that on his reputation as one of the world's leading neurosurgeons. His contribution was largely unseen and unknown, which is how it should be. When things in an area such as medical care are going well, you don't notice. We only go to the doctor when something appears not to be right.

Drivers used to die unnecessarily. Take the case of F1 driver and twice winner at Le Mans, Ivor Bueb. Ivor crashed in a Formula Two race at Clermont-Ferrand in 1959 and died of a ruptured spleen. Nobody should die of a ruptured spleen, but Ivor spoke no French, the medical staff spoke no English and French medical care was not then as it is today.

Louis Stanley, who inherited control of BRM through his wife, first set up a mobile medical unit to travel to Grands Prix in 1967. By today's standards it was primitive, but it was a start. More than a start, it was a breakthrough. Drivers used to joke that you had to chose the country you were in to have the big crash, look at poor Ivor Bueb, who was attended by nuns.

The best bonesetters were in Indianapolis and Northampton. Indianapolis for clear reasons, Northampton General because it is close to Silverstone. It was gallows humour, but it was true. The hospitals attract top surgeons because they get interesting cases and surgeons like to be challenged.

Jackie Stewart was the man who cried that the emperor has no clothes. It is difficult to appreciate today how controversial Jackie was. He went so far as to have his cars fitted with safety harnesses, though such were common in Indycar.

Jackie won 27 Grand Prix from 99 starts, 1965-73, he is one of the most successful drivers in history. He had nothing to prove and his bravery as a driver was never in doubt. After Jim Clark, died, Jackie was top of the tree, yet he was criticised and, I am sorry to say, his most voracious critic was my mentor, Denis Jenkinson.

A generation separated Jenks and me, he had been adult during WWII. He had a different attitude to risk and even to death. War does that to people.

George Abecassis, co-founder of HWM, was noted as a fearless driver. During WWII he flew 57 missions in unarmed Halifax and Lancaster bombers, parachuting SOE agents into Occupied Europe. George once told me that nothing beat that for an adrenaline rush.

Racing drivers were seen as somehow the inheritors of the spirit of wartime fighter pilots and danger was part of their life. A popular journalist phrase of the time was 'dicing with death'.

I have spoken to a fair number of drivers from the 1950s and some are proud of the fact that they competed in a dangerous age. They have the advantage of having survived which must colour their perspective. Every driver had a dark suit and a black tie in his wardrobe and some attended fifty funerals of fellow competitors.