Time & Perspective Quote by Jackie Stewart

Stewart is doing something rarer than a victory lap: he’s deliberately handing the trophy to someone else. The first sentence is a blunt reframing of motorsport’s blood-soaked mythology. Safety doesn’t “evolve” on its own; it has to be fought for, argued into rulebooks, funded, and enforced against a culture that treats danger as entertainment. By calling it “leadership,” Stewart makes safety a prestige category, not a bureaucratic nuisance.

Then comes the deft ego-management. “I started off the movement” signals credibility and reminds you he paid the early reputational cost, pushing against promoters, teams, even fans who mistook risk for authenticity. But he immediately undercuts the self-congratulation with an explicit transfer of authority: Sid Watkins is the one who “has done more” and “has led it.” That pivot is the real point. Stewart is distinguishing between moral ignition and institutional change, between a star’s megaphone and a professional’s day-to-day leverage.

The 20-to-30-year timeframe is doing quiet work, too. It acknowledges that safety is a long campaign, not a PR burst after a tragedy. Watkins, as a professor and medical figure inside the sport, represents technocratic competence: data, trauma care, track standards, procedures that survive beyond any one driver’s celebrity. Stewart’s praise also functions as pressure. By canonizing Watkins, he’s telling the sport what leadership should look like: persistent, expert, and unglamorous. In a world that sells speed, Stewart is insisting the most heroic legacy is making fewer funerals.