It had been more than a decade—eleven years precisely—since Formula 1, or any of its feeder series, lost a driver's life on track. Before this clean streak that spanned over a decade, the longest prior stretch without fatality was six years. And there was even once a haunting time when two consecutive seasons claimed two consecutive lives, both coincidentally during the Singapore Grand Prix.
The last death, as we all know, was Ladislas Duval, eleven years ago at the Canadian Grand Prix. We also know that the then-famed Île Notre-Dame Circuit was renamed in his honour—a tragic, bittersweet gesture that sealed the memory in finality.
After Duval's crash at the chicane that swept over St. Lawrence—disturbingly snapping his spine in the aftermath of a brutal somersault—everyone believed that nothing of that nature would ever occur again.
