As a kid I always remember Jackie Stewart leading the race from start to finish. He was a great driver although by his own admission probably not as good as Jim Clark.
However, In my opinion his piety got the better of him when it came to safety. Do we really want to make every activity 'risk free'?
The inherent danger is part of the attraction.
In his day it was almost akin to becoming a kamikaze pilot. Racing drivers were expendable commodities and when one was killed they just put another one in the car without a second thought. Colin Chapman had a reputation of being pretty heartless about it, although the death of Clark affected him as everyone was in awe of him. Clark was the Senna of the 60,s.
Things had to change, and Stewart was a brave man to take on all the vested interest to do it. It did imo go too far though.
This was never clearer than during the Schumacher era when he regularily pulled cynical brutal moves on people which might well have got him and them killed previously, and should have had no place in open wheel racing. He seemed to think it wasn't possible to get hurt and had no respect for anyones safety imo.