Hoping and praying for months was in vain. Jules Bianchi didn’t get 25 years old. A racing driver, a Formula 1 pilot that quite a few had predicted a promising career. One from the Ferrari smithy.
A few days before fate had taken a horrific turn, he still had to answer questions about a possible future with Scuderia. “Of course,” he said confidently at the time, but by no means arrogant: “It would be a logical step for me.”
It turned out differently. The accident in Suzuka a few days after these statements on October 5, 2014. Koma, fight against death. Bianchi lost him. On July 17, 2015, he died in a hospital in his hometown Nice. The memory remains.
Bianchi would have ended up in a top team and had become a racing winner, Daniel Ricciardo wrote in a long contribution on Twitter. The Australian Formula 1 driver knew Bianchi. They drove together as a teenager kart and became friends. Just as Bianchi was not only a godfather of the current Ferrari-Jungstar Charles Leclerc, but also a close, good friend. “Somehow it is as if Charles would do what Jules would have done. It’s like Charles was the late version of Jules,” said Ricciardo.
Bianchi would probably have earned a cockpit at Ferrari even more than he, said Leclerc recently. He was “pretty sure” that Bianchi would have shown more than himself.
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Bianchi was admitted to Ferrari’s “Driver Academy” in 2009. After an engagement as a replacement driver at Force India 2012, the southern Franzose became a regular pilot in the motorsport king class. Marussia, a Russian team with drives by Ferrari. Still a backbencher.
Bianchi achieved a small sensation with the mercilessly inferior car in May 2014 at the classic in Monte Carlo. Where more about the driver than on all other routes, he drove up to ninth place and got two points. “It was just wonderful,” said Bianchi back then.
A good four months later, he was torn from his wonderful world in the worst way. It was a gray day, rain, so strong that the race in Suzuka in Japanese had to be started behind the Safety Car. In the 41st round, the then Formula 1 driver Adrian Sutil came off the route. When the Gräfelfinger’s car hung on a salvage crane, Bianchi also slipped seven from the track in front of curve – and raced under the crane.
The impact of the impact with 126 kilometers per hour was almost unimaginable: As was the result of an interim report by the International Automobile Association FIA, Bianchi crashed into the recess crane with his head with 254 g – the 254 -time weight of the head with a helmet. “It is as if you had dropped the car on the floor from a height of 48 meters. Without crumple zone,” Fia security expert Andy Mellor said at the time to the specialist magazine “Auto Motor und Sport”.
Even if hardly anyone first knew what had happened and how Bianchi was doing – with every moment in the paddock the horror, the shock and the fear of the life of the pilot were more noticeable. It was all the more tragic that the family was not confronted with the horror of motorsport for the first time.
The tragic attachment of the Bianchi family for motorsport
Bianchi’s grandfather Mauro had an accident at the Le Mans 24-hour race and suffered serious fire injuries. His brother Lucien – Jules’ Großonkel – won the classic at the time, but died a year later during test drives in Le Mans. Jules Bianchi, born on August 3, 1989, could not hold all of this from a career in Formula 1. “He was a very down -to -earth, warm young person. I think he still had a big path in front of him,” once recalled Sebastian Vettel at the French.
Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and many other pilots came in July 2015 to the funeral of her former colleague a few days before Hungary’s Grand Prix. Where there will also be driven next weekend. The fact that the cars are equipped with the Halo cockpit shelter was one of the consequences of the accident. Bianchi’s start number 17 is no longer awarded.
“He will remain a champion forever in our hearts,” said Ferrari test driver Jean-Éric Vergne at the funeral service in the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate in Bianchi’s place of birth. Bianchi’s helmet was on the coffin. “The death of Jules is deeply unfair,” said the priest and ended the ceremony with an emotional call: “Jules could never climb a Formula 1 podium, so I ask you to applaud him now.”