Tragic F1 deaths

June 3, 2006 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

Found via a post in the LiveJournal Formula1 community, the “F1 Perished Heroes” video hosted on YouTube. [Warning: the video shows graphic footage of fatal accidents.]

It’s pretty sad – I’m glad there’s not a race this weekend or I might not be in the mood to watch. It’s so frustrating watching accidents which today would be survivable … but then I guess that shows that motor racing has learned from these tragic events.

The list of “F1 Perished Heroes”:

Onofre Marimon, German GP, 1954
Luigi Musso, French GP, 1958
Peter Collins, German GP, 1958
Stuart Lewis-Evans, Moroccan GP, 1958
Christ Bristow & Alan Stacey, Belgian GP, 1960
Wolfgang Von Trips and 12 spectators, Italian GP, 1961
Carel de Godin Beaufort, German GP, 1964
John Taylor, German GP, 1966
Lorenzo Bandini, Monaco GP, 1967
The video shows hit clipping the harbour wall and bursting into flames – there’s a black and white photo of him dead in the burned out shell of the car.
Jo Schlesser, French GP, 1968
Piers Courage, Dutch GP, 1970
Jochen Rindt, Italian GP, 1970
Roger Williamson, Dutch GP, 1973
This is one of the saddest clips. I remember seeing this before; Williamson’s March hit the barrier, rolled and burst into flames. David Purley stops his car and runs across the road to help. Williamson’s car is upside down, on fire, and Purley is trying to push it over. There are no marshals – no yellow flags and no fire extinguishers! When a couple of them finally wander over, they just seem to stand and watch. Purley takes the fire extinguisher from one of them and tries to put the fire out himself, to no avail, and then goes back to trying to right the car. (I’m prepared to believe the marshals thought he was the driver and was trying to deal with his own car, rather than them not caring about the trapped & dying Williamson. Also, the marshals had no protective clothing, so they’d be endangering themselves if they tried to help turn a burning car. Even so…!) One of the marshals tries to lead Purley away but he returns to Williamson’s car and continues trying to turn it over, despite clearly being very tired by now. Without any yellow flags to instruct them, some drivers choose to slow down and move off-line to avoid the accident; some don’t. Eventually a fire engine arrives and the blaze is extinguished quite quickly … but all too late for Roger Williamson. A really sad and avoidable tragedy.
Francois Cevert, US GP, 1973
Helmuth Koinigg, US GP, 1974
Mark Donohue, Austrian GP, 1975
Tom Pryce and Jansen Van Vuuren, South African GP 1977
This must be one of the weirdest accidents in Formula One. Jansen Van Vuuren was a 19 year old marshal; he and another marshal ran across the Kyalami circuit to attend a car that had pulled off (Renzo Zorzi’s Shadow); one marshal made it across but Van Vuuren was hit by Tom Pryce’s car. From the Wikipedia entry: “Pryce however could not avoid Van Vuuren, hitting him at high speed and killing the marshal instantly. The impact seemed to have only minimum influence on Pryce’s car, only slightly damaging its front wing. However, the fire extinguisher Van Vuuren was carrying struck Pryce on the head, killing Pryce instantly. Pryce’s car continued down the straight track, gradually slowing down and verging to the right. Jacques Laffite, who was unsure what was going on, moved alongside as the two cars approached Crowthorne, at that point Pryce’s car skidded off the barriers, back on the track again, where it hit Laffite’s Ligier, taking Laffite out of the race but not injuring him. As to Van Vuuren, the injuries to his body were extremely severe. [He] was identified only by exclusion, after the race director gathered all of his colleagues. The impact was so severe it ripped Pryce’s helmet off.” !!
Ronnie Peterson, Italian GP, 1978
The video footage is a little misleading, I think – it shows Peterson being pulled from his blazing Lotus. Apparently “Though trapped, Hunt, Regazzoni and Depailler managed to free him from the wreck before Peterson received more than minor burns. He was dragged free and laid in the middle of the track fully conscious, his severe leg injuries obvious to all (Hunt later said he stopped Peterson from looking at his legs to spare him further distress). Scandalously, it took 20 minutes before the Italian circuit dispatched medical help to the scene. At the time, there was more concern for the Italian Brambilla (who as a matter of fact was born in Monza), who had been hit on the head by a flying wheel and was slumped comatose in his car (he later recovered and drove on in F1 until 1980). Peterson’s life was not, however, seen to be in any danger. The injured drivers were taken to hospital in Milan and, after a major cleanup job, the race was restarted (for those with undamaged or spare cars at least). At the hospital, Peterson’s X-rays showed he had 17 fractures in one leg and 3 in the other. After discussion with Ronnie himself, the surgeons decided to operate to stabilise the bones. Unfortunately, during the night, bone marrow from the fractures had got into Peterson’s bloodstream forming fat globules on his major organs including lungs, liver, and brain. By daybreak he was in full renal failure and was declared dead a few hours later. The cause of death was given as fat embolism. The tragedy was that Peterson’s life would most likely have been saved had he received medical attention immediately after his accident.”
Gilles Villeneuve, Belgian GP, 1982
Although the TV camera was watching Jochen Mass in the car ahead of Villeneuve, you can just about see him hit the rear of Mass, causing his Ferrari to flip; Villeneuve was ejected from the car, still strapped to his seat(!) and thrown across the track, into the far wall!
Riccardo Paletti, Canadian GP, 1982
I hadn’t seen this incident before so at first I couldn’t see how the start line shunt could have killed him – the safety teams were there attending to him, but then the fire erupted. The car would have been fully fuelled, so it was quite a fireball. Again, from Wikipedia: “When he qualified for the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday, June 13, 1982, it was the first time Paletti started in a full line up. At the start, the lights took an unusual long time to turn to green. During this time, Didier Pironi, who had pole position, stalled the engine of his Ferrari. When the lights switched to green, the other cars swerved across the track, trying to squeeze past the stationary car from Pironi. Unfortunately, Raul Boesel just clipped the back left of the Ferrari, spinning his March into the path of Eliseo Salazar and Jochen Mass. Salazar, Boesel and Mass suffered minor impacts but it looked as if everyone had passed the Ferrari without serious consequences. But Riccardo Paletti could not react in time and slammed into the rear of the stranded Ferrari at 180km/h, catapulting it into the path of Geoff Lees. Several other cars were instant retirees. Paletti sustained heavy chest injuries and was lying unconscious in his car, wedged against the steering wheel. Didier Pironi and Sid Watkins, the FIA’s head doctor, were on the scene in a matter of seconds to stabilize and assist Paletti. As Watkins climbed over the wreckage of the Osella, the petrol that had leaked from the fully loaded car’s ruptured fuel tank ignited, enveloping the car in wall of fire. The heavy fire was quickly extinguished but by then the critically injured Paletti was without a pulse. He was cut from his wrecked car and rushed to hospital, where he died soon after arriving. It is however a testament to the quality of Formula One’s medical team and protective clothing that despite the fire he suffered no burns. As a tribute to the young Italian, the racetrack at Varano de’ Melegari (Parma), Italy is now called the Autodromo Riccardo Paletti.”
Roland Ratzenberger, San Marino GP, 1994
It’s unfortunate that Senna’s death was the day after Ratzenberger’s and will forever overshadow this event. The footage doesn’t clearly show him leaving the circuit or impacting the wall, but it’s obvious as the camera zooms in on the still spinning car that he is unconscious, if not already dead, as his head flops around. Apparently he ploughed “into a wall at the Villeneuve corner at over 300 km/h after a front wing failure, apparently caused by an off-track excursion on the previous lap. A time he had achieved earlier in the session would have been sufficient to give him a place on the grid. The force of the head-on impact was enough to break his neck.”
Ayrton Senna, San Marino GP, 1994
Still the subject of some debate (just the part about his death is longer than any other driver’s entire entry in Wikipedia!), Senna appears to head straight on at Tamburello instead of taking the left turn. “Telemetry shows he left the track at 193 mph and although he managed to slow his car to 135 mph in less than two seconds, his car struck the concrete barrier.” The overhead footage shows his head slumped over and him not moving, just a fraction of a second after the impact. Professor Sid Watkins (world-renowned neurosurgeon and head of the Formula One on-track medical team) performed a tracheotomy on Senna at the side of the track; he said: “[Senna] looked serene. I raised his eyelids and it was clear from his pupils that he had a massive brain injury.” “There is ongoing debate as to why Senna was not declared dead at the track. Under Italian law when a person dies at a sporting event, that death must be investigated, causing the sporting event to be cancelled.”

It’s interesting to note that Ratzenberger did die at the circuit, in qualifying the previous day, and therefore the race should have been cancelled as per Italian law; it wasn’t and Senna died in the race. A spectator was also hit by a wheel after an accident involving Pedro Lamy and J. J. Lehto. “Had the meeting been cancelled, Sagis – the organisation which administers the Imola circuit – stood to lose an estimated US$6.5 million.” [Quotes taken from Wikipedia entry.]

Aside from how sad it all is, it’s interesting to see the huge improvements in safety, and especially the immediate post-incident response, even between the 1982 incident (Villeneuve in Belgium and Paletti in Canada) and 1994 (Ratzenberger & Senna in San Marino).

Tags: f1

Comments

4 Comments on Tragic F1 deaths

paul on Sat, 3rd Jun 2006 12:20 pm

There are photos of the Williamson accident @ http://www.planet-cutie.co.uk/zandvoort/

Cuzzy Walton on Sun, 3rd Jun 2007 11:54 pm

Do you have any photos, footage of Jochen Rindts accident at Monza on the 5th of Sept 1970.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards.
Cuzzy Walton.

paul on Sat, 9th Jun 2007 9:35 am

I don’t but a quick Google search turned up a video with links to some photos.

Daren Richardson on Fri, 14th Mar 2008 7:54 am

Reply to Cuzzy Watson re: Jochen Rindt

I had a look on youtube and typed in “Jochen Rindt crash”
and quite a few pictures of his crash appeared.
No way he was going to survive that one unfortunately.
Lucky the marshall who’s seen running away, wasn’t any closer to him.
His car’s brakes failed causing him to crash and spin several times.

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!