Death will return to formula one

(GMM) Death will again knock on formula one's door, triple world champion Niki Lauda warned on Sunday.

The great Austrian still wears the scars from his near-fatal fiery accident in 1976, and he insists that – only a decade or so ago – Robert Kubica would have certainly been crushed "like an accordion" in his car in Montreal last week.

Indeed, in the days after Kubica's 200kph-plus impact, calls are being made for flatter run-off at the Canadian circuit and a higher and re-profiled retaining wall separating the two sides of the Casino hairpin.

Lauda, though, praised today's safety standards in formula one but warned that the prospect of death will never be banished from the paddock.

"The fact that thirteen years have passed with nothing happening is just enormous luck," he told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.