Bernie Ecclestone insists Formula One is as safe as it has ever been, but admits the sport will always carry an element of danger.
On Friday night Jules Bianchi died from injuries he sustained at last year's Japanese Grand Prix; the first driver to die as a result of an F1 accident since Ayrton Senna in 1994. Ecclestone said there is an element of danger that cannot be removed from F1, but that driver safety is currently at its highest level ever.
"If you were to choose to have an accident today in anything, you'd choose a Formula One [car] because it's probably the safest it's ever been," he told BBC radio. "What actually happened to Jules was just very, very, very unfortunate."
He added: "Of course it's dangerous. They have 20 races a year, so you see how many accidents there are. We do our best, or always have done our best, for driver safety."
Bianchi's head injuries were sustained when he lost control of his car in wet conditions and collided with a recovery vehicle.
"The tractor should never have been there," Ecclestone added. "We've done an awful lot of work to make sure that if a car does go off and hits something, they hit the tyre barriers or whatever, then it's all okay.
"Hitting that thing [the tractor], it wouldn't make any difference if you'd hit it with a saloon car...if you'd hit it with a tank you'd have had problems."
Ecclestone says F1 will press ahead with plans to make the cars up to six seconds a lap faster by 2017.
"That's what they've been complaining about recently that perhaps we've got too safe and too clinical," he told Sky Sports in a separate interview.
And he believes that is what Bianchi would have wanted: "Yes, exactly, he wouldn't be complaining, no, no, no.
"We make it as safe as it is possible but obviously these guys driving as quick as they are... it's safe but not safe."