Motorsport is dangerous. It says so on the back of every ticket and every pass. Yet it’s so easy to forget that.

Such is a racing driver’s skill and talent that they make taming a 1000bhp monster look like a casual Sunday drive to the shops. It isn’t. Today we were dealt with a very grave reminder of the dark side of the sport we love.

Anthoine Hubert was, for all intents and purposes, mighty quick. The reigning GP3 champion nonetheless. He was on the very fringes of Formula One; his boyhood dream.

A sterling rookie campaign in Formula Two and a slot in Renault’s young driver academy meant Anthoine was making all the right moves and all the right noises. All at the tender age of 22.

It’s funny. We follow this circus all around the world; track to track, country to country. We rock up, do some racing, pack away and set off somewhere else to do it all over again.

That’s what Anthoine loved to do. That’s what he lived for. And that’s what he died doing.

It’s easy to forget that, despite the cars getting oh so much faster, safety in our sport has improved ten fold along with it. To the point where we forget that these unthinkable days could ever possibly come to pass.

I won’t have it that motor racing is not a sport and I certainly won’t have it that racing drivers are not athletes.

They are living, breathing, superheroes. There isn’t anything about them, nor what they do, that isn’t gargantuan or titanic. They understand the risks involved if they want to live their dreams and they accept those risks in order to do so.

We become so engrossed in the drama, the spectacle and the intrigue that we forget that sitting in those cars, behind those crash helmets, are human beings just like you and I.

But that’s why we do it. We thrive on the speed, the unpredictability and the excitement. Without any of that, we’re just shadows of our true selves.

Anthoine was the epitome of the shining future of motor racing. Fast, voracious and undeniably talented. Today we lost someone truly special, someone who represented everything that was great and grand about motorsport.

These dark days are gut-wrenching; you feel sick and lost and confused. You can’t fathom what your eyes are reading and what your brain is telling you.

You tell yourself it’s not possible, it can never happen. It is and it does.

Take every chance you get, every moment you have. Own them. Make them yours. Who cares if you screw up along the way, you are a human being. We are all human beings.

Life is not guaranteed. You make of it what you want, it is yours to live. Anthoine lived his in the only way he knew how; very, very quickly and on the very limits of humanity itself.

Tomorrow we go racing with heavy hearts and tears in our eyes. But we also go with our heads held high. Because we love this sport and Anthoine loved it too. So we go racing and we put on a show he would be proud of.

Repose en paix, Anthoine.

 

Feature image courtesy of F1.com