SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND ESTONE

Forty years ago, Stefan Bellof set a Nürburgring-Nordschleife record that stood for 35 years. Sadly, this daredevil attitude and breathtaking speed cost him his life following an unnecessary accident

- Braam Peens

Time”, claimed David Bowie, “[is] one of the most complex expressions. Memory made manifest. It’s something that straddles past and future without ever quite being present, or rather, it at first seems indifferent to the present You’re aware of a deeper existence, maybe a temporary reassurance that indeed there is no beginning and no end.”

On 28 May 1983, Stefan Bellof made time stand still. Just 827 days later, his debt with the devil fell due.

The greatest tragedy surrounding Bellof is perhaps not the Faustian nature of his relationship with fate that personified his Icarus-like character. In hindsight, it is that proper guidance from his peers could have saved him from his daring self when indicators of his impending demise were flashing with deafening urgency.

Glory, though, shouted the loudest.

At a sodden Monaco in 1984, the BBC’s James Hunt exclaimed: I think we are watching the arrival of Ayrton Senna. A truly outstanding talent in Grand Prix racing.”

Yet there was one left unmentioned by Hunt. One who qualified on the last row, in the only non-turbo car on the grid that gave away 150 kW to his competitors. One who had ascended the order as if blessed with twice as much power underfoot.

Braking impossibly late and creating his own overtaking spots, which others deemed verboten. Into the Loews hairpin, the fast lefthander before the swimming pool even passing the Ferrari of René Arnoux whose contract he’d eventually pocket for 1986) on the pavement around Mirabeau. Nothing but the truncated cessation owed to the woeful conditions stood between Stefan Bellof and the vanquishment of the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix.