Doha was fun! Not as much fun as Istanbul two years ago, but still fun. Hopefully you've had a chance to skim through the overviews of the two day Medicine in Motorsport conference, held as part of the FIA AGM last December which I posted a while ago, so you know roughly what was discussed. Certainly the social program at Istanbul was a lot better, but this time I met a lot more people and really interesting people. It's really clear that there are a bunch of really smart individuals who work hard to make advances in the provision of medical and rescue services at motorsport events across the world, be they circuit based, rally or off-road; sprints or endurance.

One of the biggest things to come out of the summit, not by design of the summit, but rather as a result of a group of people getting together and having the motivation to make things happen, is the establishment of a network of motorsport physicians that reaches around the globe facilitating open discussion, debate and the opportunity to combine research and idea generating resources. More on this on a later post.


There were, thankfully, some unplanned social gatherings during the week, usually at the conference hotel bar and restaurant in the evenings and one of these led to the chance to sit down with the masterful Professor Hugh Scully, who's list of motorsport medical achievements would take up the rest of this post, and the delightful, humble and deep thinking Professor Rob Seal (who made me promise to correct my error in proclaiming him to be the Canadian Grand Prix Chief Medical Officer; a role which falls to Dr Jaques Brochard. Rob is the Medical Director for the Canadian Motorsports Response Team at the Canadian GP, but is also the CMO for a variety of other events, including World Rally Cross at the Canadian circuit).


We sat in the Mykonos Restaurant for this recording and yes, we did have a bottle of wine and a beer or two on the go, but the main impairment to sound quality was the occasionally blustery coastal wind, the other table guests and the fact that in the background, the hotel was adding on a completely new wing, complete with jackhammers and scaffolding. So it was a bit of a challenge to clean up the audio and while it might sound a little digitised in spots, it is definitely listenable. We chatted for over an hour, so even after the post recording editing, I've still split it into two parts.


Part I covers a bit of the history of medicine in motorsport and then moves on to circuit craft and medical crew recruitment and retention. Part II, which I'll upload a little later, moves on to framing motorsport medicine as a pre-hospital practice, the place of research and data and the role of competitors in assisting their own rescue.

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Take care

Here's the podcast: