The F1 race 'lined with human guard rails': 1970 Mexican Grand Prix

The Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix has a more extended history than you might think. It’s now in its third stint on the calendar, and all races have been at the same Magdalena Mixhuca park venue in Mexico City. It’s even had only fairly limited track layout revisions along the way.

Mexico made its bow in 1963 – or 1962 if you include a non-championship race – in a then-rare F1 venture outside Western Europe. Quickly it became as a popular season-ending event. That was until 1970.

It was already a tumultuous F1 season, most associated with Jochen Rindt’s unique posthumous drivers’ title which was confirmed in the previous round. And come Mexico’s race day it was clear that there would not be a happy downbeat finale either. Because, as that year’s Autocourse put it, this race was “lined with human guard rails”.

Andrew Marriott took up the story in his Motor Sport magazine report. “The event had really caught the imagination of Mexico City and with a population of eight million close at hand a good crowd was expected,” he explained. “But the organising committee never envisaged that over 200,000 people would pack into the Autodromo.”

And the fevered enthusiasm had a jeopardous manifestation. “Every Mexican wanted to get a better view than his neighbour and that meant watching from the roadside,” Marriott continued.

“Thousands disregarded the restrictions of the spectator areas as they smashed down fences and crowded onto the safety banks. Some of the braver ones even took up positions sitting on the Armco barrier.”

Some spectators had ventured on the wrong side of safety fences in the two previous Mexico races as well, but on nothing like this scale.

Local hero Pedro Rodríguez plus Jackie Stewart and others toured the circuit imploring the crowd to move back, but with limited effect. Indeed impatient spectators had also thrown bottles onto the circuit, meaning glass had to be swept away too.

“I just remember a lot of excitement and the great noise the crowd made,” Emerson Fittipaldi told Motor Sport years later. “It was really an intense atmosphere. We did our best to try to communicate with them and we made some difference, but not so much, as you can probably see from photographs.”

The obvious thing to do in this situation may have appeared to have packed up and gone home, but a large-scale riot among the restless massed ranks was feared if the race was called off. So, reluctantly and belatedly, all got on with it.

“In the circumstances it was the only decision but, nevertheless, a brave one,” Marriott continued. “The slightest mistake could spell major disaster and every man knew it.

“So close were the spectators to the track that a spin could have wiped out 20 or more while an accident similar to the fiery incident between [Jackie] Oliver and [Jacky] Ickx at Jarama [at the Spanish Grand Prix] earlier this year could have meant the death of 200 people.