Jules Bianchi

Painful demise shakes F1 key players in heartfelt tributes

18:28, 17 Jul

Updated: 19:55, 17 Jul

bySamson Ero

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Jules Bianchi’s passing, Charles Leclerc and Graeme Lowdon have penned an emotional tribute to the former F1 driver. The former Marussia F1 driver passed away just two weeks shy of what would have been his 26th birthday.

Bianchi, who was then racing for Marussia, suffered a freak accident during the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka in 2014. The French driver, who had taken Leclerc as his godson, crashed into a recovery vehicle at the rain-affected Mie Prefecture event in Japan.

While Bianchi was swiftly attended to by the Formula 1 safety team and subsequently rushed to the hospital, the 25-year-old had suffered a diffuse axonal brain injury, which left him unconscious — a state from which he sadly never recovered.

Paying tribute to the former F1 driver, Leclerc, in a letter on Formula 1’s official website, detailed how much he looked up to Bianchi and shared a few of his fondest memories.

“I looked up to him, so to be racing with him, with my older brother, with his younger brother, and many, many other professional karting drivers at the time was incredible. We had so much fun. We would hang out and wait for the karting track to close to the public so we could get on. Then we’d go crazy on track for hours and hours.”

“These are probably the most special memories I have. Jules was the most competitive person I've ever met, and I feel like I have that competitiveness in me because of Jules. When we were doing some races in karting, there was that competitiveness, but also in the most stupid things we did at home, there was exactly the same competitiveness. He would get so frustrated when he lost anything!”

Graeme Lowdon pays tribute to Jules Bianchi

Graeme Lowdon paid tribute to former F1 driver Jules Bianchi

The Scuderia Ferrari driver was not the only individual who took out time to recall memories of the late Bianchi, as former Manor Motorsports team CEO Graeme Lowdon also reflected on moments with the Nice native. The 60-year-old motorsports executive recounted his reaction to the incident in an interview with Planet F1.

“I never watched it back, never watched the TV coverage back. It’s strange the things you remember,” Lowdon said.

“I remember it was way darker in real life than it appeared on TV, like way darker. The conditions were much worse than they looked. I remember the fact that there was no medical helicopter. I remember driving to the hospital. We couldn’t get into the medical centre at the circuit, which is not unusual, actually. And I’m not a doctor, so I’m not essential.”

Sadly, eight months following the crash, Bianchi passed away at a local hospital in Nice. His crash in Japan ushered in another era of safety in Formula 1 with the introduction of the cockpit protection device, the Halo, into the sport.