Jules Bianchi, a memory as vivid as sorrow

Ten years already. How quickly they passed through the constantly bustling world of Formula 1. How long they must have seemed to everyone close to Jules Bianchi, to his parents, to his family. It is above all of them that we think today, at a time of remembrance which, whatever its virtues, is a duty.

This first weekend of October 2014 marked all those who experienced it. Surreal, controversial and dramatic.

Surreal because it began with a sporting earthquake when Sebastian Vettel announced he was leaving Red Bull for Ferrari and Fernando Alonso turned his back on the Scuderia to move closer to McLaren.

Controversial because Red Bull had decided, not without sparking great debate, to launch free testing at the wheel of a Toro Rosso into the deep end of a driver who had just celebrated his 17th birthday. A certain Max Verstappen…

Finally, dramatic because the typhoon announced on Wednesday in the Suzuka region would lead to Dantesque racing circumstances and, ultimately, the accident which would cost Jules Bianchi his life.

He was 25 years old and, as they naively say, had his life ahead of him. Designated as the French driver that a new generation was waiting for, he was looked at differently: firstly because he was covered by Ferrari, then and above all because his talent had already struck people’s minds.

A few months earlier, there was this muscular overtaking of Kamui Kobayashi, which would probably not leave today’s commissioners without reaction! And so he had lifted his very modest Marussia into the points, in ninth place in the Monaco Grand Prix. An authentic feat, without overusing the term as it is sometimes too common in modern sport.

A year and a half earlier, the Niçois had won a seat in Formula 1 when he thought his chance had passed, having been overtaken at Force India by Adrian Sutil in 2013.

The perversity of history would have the German witness first-hand the Suzuka tragedy on October 5, 2014. Leaving the track in the rain at the wheel of his Sauber, the team that Jules Bianchi was about to join, he was behind the safety rail when the crane truck intervened under which the Frenchman was going to be buried a few moments later.

First aid, anxiety, and unbearable waiting. A tragedy for all, while Formula 1 and its entire environment perhaps believed, wrongly, to have finished with the specter of Ayrton Senna’s death twenty years earlier. Plunged into a coma, Jules Bianchi did not wake up until his death on July 17, 2015, a month before his 26th birthday. No one could have survived a blow to the head measured at 254 g.

To affirm without a shadow of a doubt that Jules Bianchi would sooner or later take over at Ferrari, and that he would one day have been crowned world champion, is subjectively easy and would almost be an insult to him. And affirm the opposite too. On the other hand, one thing is certain: Charles Leclerc, of whom he was the sporting godfather, keeps the story alive.

There was Jules Bianchi the sportsman, brilliant throughout his career until his accession to Formula 1, professional and conscientious with a permanent desire to correct his weaknesses, remarkable at the wheel for the mastery that he seemed to exude while he was driving one of the worst cars on the grid.

There was Jules Bianchi the man, who is still remembered today for his kindness coupled with a keen sense of humor, two character traits which did not diminish his steely determination.

Tears flowed when it was time to write “Ciao Jules” ; eyes reddened when Sebastian Vettel paid him a memorable tribute, in French in the text, by winning at the wheel of a Ferrari a few days after his death; anger rose to accompany that of a father who hunted for the truth without ever really obtaining it.

For everything he left us and which still inspires us today, for everything that the security of his successors owes to him, Forza Jules !