Blasting out of the chicane, he was catching a slower car hand over fist. Derek Daly was circulating some seven or eight seconds slower than the car with the prancing horse insignia. The Williams pulled off the racing line; its Irish driver had seen the rapidly approaching Ferrari and was now courteously moving over to allow the faster car past. At least that is how it looked from the cockpit of the number 28 car …
A Formula 1 racing car turned aeroplane, the 126C2 soared into the cheerless German skies. Didier’s fate now lay in the lap of higher powers. The Ferrari climbed higher, 30 metres up, above the forests of pine that typify this part of the circuit. ‘It’s over,’ thought Didier. The accident he had feared for so long, the accident he had been warning about for so long, had been avoiding even longer, had finally arrived.
Daly had not been alone on the circuit at the moment the Ferrari had arrived on his tail. An idling Alain Prost had been in front of the British car. The Irishman had actually not even seen the red car bearing down upon him. Derek had simply been trying to pass the Renault. Didier had assumed the Irish driver was simply being polite, observing F1 etiquette. Here then was a scenario with all the hallmarks of a misunderstanding. The Williams moved to the right. A wall of thick spray now presented itself. Trusting in himself and his God, Didier accelerated hard into the mist. It happened instantaneously, a single second no more, the contact between the cars’ tyres – Ferrari front and Renault back – and then the springboard effect as the red car launched into orbit. A ghostly spectre, the Renault had materialised out of nowhere. Nothing to be done. Time stood still. In the cockpit of his car, Didier closed his eyes and waited for the end.
Crashing to earth, the Ferrari performed a series of sickening somersaults. Alain Prost, meanwhile, could only watch in horror: ‘I felt a violent shock; I saw a car pass me overhead, as if taking off. A real bullet that flew 30 metres into the sky.’ Whereas Gilles had been flung out of his chariot after the harnesses had snapped, Didier was spared a similar fate. His safety belt held firm, at least part of it. As it tumbled along the saturated tarmac, the 126C2 disintegrated into pieces like a broken biscuit. The accursed car eventually came to rest 300 metres from the point of impact. An air crash scene. Surely, nobody could survive an accident of this violence.
Nelson Piquet quickly arrived on the scene, then Mansell and Cheever. Rain was now mercilessly bucketing down upon the actors below. It was a little before 10.30am. In the mangled wreckage, the pilot moved his head, which in itself seemed hard to believe. ‘Get me out of here!’ Didier screamed first in French and then English. With 190 litres of fuel on board, the risk of fire was all too real. Perhaps the words of the Paul Ricard sage echoed through his mind: ‘You will never become world champion … You will die in an accident by fire …’ Upon removing his friend’s helmet, the Brazilian recoiled. The blonde, freckled face he knew so well had drained of colour, and now, as blood oozed from his nose, resembled something grotesque, alien. ‘Get me out of here!’ Nelson glanced at the remains of the car. What he saw next made his blood run cold: a bone protruding from a bloody gash on the leg of his friend. Thankfully, the emergency services swiftly arrived on the scene. Dazed, Nelson drifted away. Having vacated his smashed Renault, and unable to stomach the sight of his colleague’s suffering, Alain Prost headed straight back to the garages.
Didier had sustained a catalogue of injuries: multiple fractures to both legs including the tibia and fibula bones in the right ankle as well as to the humerus bone in his left arm. His nose had also been broken. On top of which he had suffered severe bruising to the head (hematoma). Blood loss was profound. Worryingly, the pilot’s system had also gone into shock, a common reaction to major trauma and a potentially fatal situation if not treated immediately. Early reports of a brain injury thankfully proved to be nothing more than the product of speculation.
Her heart thumping, Veronique ran along the track. She had to get to Didier; she had to. The Ferrari pit had received news of the incident the moment it had happened. As she approached the scene of the crash, the actress spied the wreckage and the debris strewn hundreds of yards around the track. Oh my Didier! My love! Stopping her in her tracks, the stewards blocked the distraught girl’s path to her lover. She fought. She screamed. However, there was nothing to be done. The emergency services were already on the scene. Shaken to her core, the sobbing young woman allowed herself to be ushered back to the pits.
In the remains of his cockpit, Didier remained conscious. Deep in shock, he watched the chaos around him unfold in monochrome vision. It was as if he was watching a black and white movie – a movie from hell. When a member of the medical corps mentioned the need for amputation, he snapped out of his stupor:
‘No! Please! Don’t take my legs!’ begged Didier.
Meanwhile, Professor Sid Watkins, F1’s official doctor, arrived. Before him a mess of human bone and tissue. It did not look good, but the doc promised the hysterical driver he would do all that he could to save his legs. Heavily sedated, Didier would drift in and out of consciousness over the next hour.
When Marco Piccinini arrived on the scene, one look told him a great career had ended. The dream was over. A deeply religious man, Marco tried to make sense of the carnage before him. It was not easy. Why? Why should this happen, and happen now? Life was unfathomable, that much he accepted. It was also unfair, brutally so.
Back in the Ferrari pit Veronique was inconsolable. The lovers had spent a matter of weeks together, just a handful of summer days in which to discover the essence of one another. Now, the man she had fallen so deeply in love with, the man in whom she had discerned so many hidden depths, that same man lay mangled on the hard, grey bitumen of a German racetrack, doctors struggling to save his life, torrential rain mocking his agony. It was unjust, intolerable, senseless. It was life.
After 25 minutes, the rescuers freed the pilot from his prison. Nearby a helicopter waited to fly him to the nearby University of Heidelberg hospital, which just happened to be Germany’s leading centre for road traffic trauma. Later he would say he had felt no pain, not until his stretcher knocked inadvertently into the copter’s door causing him to cry out. Up into the dark, grey sky the helicopter went leaving a scene of utter desolation on the ground below.
Michele Alboreto returned to the Tyrrell garage fighting back tears. He and Didier had always got along well since they had appeared on Italian TV together. An emotional, sensitive man, Michele had seen enough. All he could think about was getting over to the hospital. So when burly team boss Ken Tyrrell ordered him back on track, Michele let his boss know his feelings in no uncertain terms:
‘I have a friend in hospital right now! And you ask me to get in the car! You are not serious!’
‘You must get in the car straight away, to get over the shock,’ reasoned Tyrrell, who had seen more than his fair share of motor racing tragedies over the years.
‘No! I can’t. I’m shocked by what has happened and by the insecurity of these cars,’ replied a visibly shaken driver. ‘I just want to know how Pironi is.’
‘At least do a few laps …’
‘No. You drive if you want.’ With that, Michele headed off in the direction of Heidelberg.
Ligier driver Eddie Cheever wept in the team motorhome. Arriving within seconds of the crash, Didier’s old rival from European Formula 2 had witnessed the aftermath in all its grisly horror. ‘I saw Pironi’s right foot,’ choked the American. ‘It didn’t seem to belong to either leg.’ Jacques Laffite was also despondent. When Guy Ligier invited his drivers to reacquaint themselves with their car, Jacques responded by offering his overalls to his boss.
At Heidelberg a medical team led by consultant surgeon Dr Mischowski awaited the helicopter. At 11.30am, the stricken driver was transferred to the operating theatre after blood and respiratory functions had been checked. The priority was saving the right leg. Before entering theatre, Didier caught sight of Piccinini who, along with Veronique, Alboreto, Lauda and Cheever, haunte
d the hospital corridors. During the next hours, conflicting reports of the intervention would emerge. Initially, it seemed likely that at least one leg – the right – would require amputation.
‘Marco, please be careful how you tell my mother,’ whispered Didier as the medical team prepared him for surgery. ‘She has a bad heart, and the shock …’
Didier had crashed exactly 13 weeks to the very day since Villeneuve’s fatal accident at Zolder.
One thousand kilometres south of Heidelberg, the Pironi-Dolhem clan were entertaining part of their extended Italian family in the St Tropez villa. Noon and the party stood around the pool basking in the Mediterranean sunshine. Leaving her guests, Imelda returned indoors to answer the telephone.
‘Mrs Pironi! It’s Marco.’
‘Marco? Oh, how are you Marco?’
‘Didier has had a big accident. He has broken both legs. He is in hospital, but he is OK. Mrs Pironi?’
Imelda’s eyes had fallen on the TV screen where a programme had been interrupted by a news flash: ‘Champion injured at Hockenheim.’ Face contorted, ghostly, eyes closed and blood flowing from his nostrils, notwithstanding, mother recognised son immediately. Imelda watched the screen aghast. Didier! My Didier!
‘Marco! You are not telling me the truth!’
‘Madame, I swear to you! It was Didier who asked me to warn you.’
An hour later, an anxious family party took off from Nice in a private jet put at their disposal by a family friend. The group, which included Catherine and her brother, arrived at the hospital early that evening fearing the worst. Dr Mischowski’s team had just finished a gruelling five-and-a-half-hour operation to save the right leg. In the recovery room Veronique tenderly watched over her lover, an angel of mercy. At this stage, it was difficult to tell whether the operation had been a success. If the attempt to reconnect the vital arteries and stimulate blood flow to the limb failed, the threat of amputation would not only become probable but unavoidable.
Meanwhile the party from Nice had arrived. When Piccinini gently suggested that girlfriend make way for wife, Veronique broke down. The thought of leaving her man in this, his hour of need, was unbearable to her. After some persuasion, she left the fallen hero moments before the official Mrs Pironi and Imelda entered dressed in the sterile white hospital-issue gowns and masks. The risk of infection was high and would be for several days. Gangrene was just one of many potential hazards.
‘Mum …’
‘He is calm, relaxed, almost smiling,’ records Imelda. ‘His eyelids, round black eyes, bring out the blue of his eyeballs. He’s hot, shirtless, muscular, tanned, blonde hair as in battle. It is reassuring.’
After aunt Ilva and ‘uncle’ Louis and José had looked in, Marco showed Catherine into the room. Didier looked serenely at the woman with whom he had exchanged wedding vows just months before. His clear blue eyes welling up, he addressed himself to his wife: ‘You see, the good Lord has punished me!’ Catherine burst into tears. The woman who had once so dazzled him understood the meaning well, even if those around did not. Piccinini escorted her out of the room. Didier intimated that he did not wish to see his wife again. The young woman would leave her superstar racer and shortly after fall into the arms of another superstar, Alain Delon, for whom she had carried a torch since meeting the actor at the age of 18. Didier and Catherine were over, at least officially …
Professor Mischowski ushered the family, minus Mrs Pironi, into his office:
‘Didier’s legs are crushed,’ announced the surgeon gravely. ‘The right poses a very big problem in terms of circulation – the veins are cut. In a first response, I re-connected as I could. A piece of tibia in his right leg is missing. I intend to re-operate tonight.’ At this point, the name of another surgeon cropped up. As the world’s leading authority in orthopaedic surgical techniques, Paris-based Dr Emile Letournel seemed an obvious choice to seek counsel from at this point. Mischowski agreed. Holidaying in Barcarès in the south of France, Emmanuel agreed to help all he could. The eminent surgeons spent some time discussing the Pironi case and all its many complications via telephone. Letournel promised also to come to Heidelberg himself in a few days. It was just past 11pm when Mischowski finally removed his surgical apparel for the final time that day. In the intensive care unit, the patient was sleeping soundly. The doctor had done all he could.
By morning the prognosis looked better. To the delight of Imelda and Veronique, who arrived later that Sunday afternoon, Didier greeted them with a smile.
‘Look! My toes!’ Didier seemed almost delirious with joy to find his foot still attached to his leg. Since the moment of the accident, he had feared losing at least one of his lower limbs, maybe both. Under the circumstances, his euphoria was understandable. However, his ordeal was not over yet. The possibility of infection was high. Added to which, there was the very sinister risk of a necrosis developing, the condition that results in death of tissue which has been starved of blood supply. Didier was not out of the woods yet, not by a long way. Nonetheless, Mischowski struck an optimistic note on the morning after:
‘Pironi passed a fairly quiet night,’ announced the doctor, ‘and there are encouraging signs, because he moved the toes of his right foot, a clear sign that the circulation is good.’
Although it seemed a world away and hardly important, Patrick Tambay had just won the German Grand Prix and now, along with several other drivers, anxiously awaited news at the hospital. ‘There is no Prost,’ remarks Imelda.
Under such tragic circumstances it would be normal practice for a team to withdraw its cars as a mark of respect. Didier had however insisted that Patrick be allowed to start the race. With four races of the season left to run, Ferrari’s new recruit might just be able to take enough points away from the likes of Watson or Rosberg to enable his team leader to cling on to his world championship lead. It was a long shot. It was Didier’s best and only shot. By winning in Germany, Patrick had suggested he might be able to do just as much: protect his team-mate’s championship.
Five days after the accident, on 12 August Dr Mischowski entered the room in high spirits, bottle of champagne in hand. ‘We’ve won! We’ve won! It’s moving!’ Circulation had resumed its usual course. Thanks to the swift actions of Sid Watkins on that foul Hockenheim morning, and later the skill of the Heidelberg medical team, the pilot’s legs had been saved. The family celebrated with a gala dinner. Didier immediately declared his intention to return to Formula 1.
Twenty-three
A love of infinite spaces
For Veronique Jannot the weekend of 7–8 August seemed hallucinatory, a bad dream from which she must surely wake. It broke her heart to see Didier lying in bed beneath a multitude of drips and pipes. She wanted to be strong, for his sake. It was not easy. In the days following the crash, when the threat of amputation had still hung heavily in the air, the actress never once left her hero’s side. The Heidelberg staff even erected a temporary bed to enable her to do just that. She had arrived in Germany a young, carefree girl, madly in love, stood on the brink of a great adventure. Days later, those hopes and dreams had been shattered beyond all recognition.
On 13 August, Professor Letournel arrived at the clinic having flown in from Perpignan in the private plane belonging to Didier’s good friend, McLaren part-owner Mansour Ojeh. Glasses resting on his forehead, he inspected the patient’s wounds at length. It was an anxious time for Didier and Veronique. They waited patiently for the verdict of this kindly and jovial man. Eventually, the professor declared himself satisfied.
‘Next week you come to Choisy. Then I will operate! With what has already been done, I think I can keep the mobility of your ankles.’
A ray of hope. Didier was overjoyed. With his ankles restored there would be nothing to prevent him returning to his former life, the life that had been so cruelly ripped away from him so recently. And Formula 1? Perhaps. The young lovers dared to hope.
True to his word, almost two weeks after first arriv
ing at the Heidelberg clinic, an air ambulance transferred Didier to the Clinique Porte de la Choisy in central Paris, the hospital where Emile occupied the position of head of the department for orthopaedic surgery. Didier was installed on the sixth floor of the hospital in room 626, the room he would call home for the next three and a half months. Letournel ordered a bed too for Veronique. This little room overlooking the southern edge of central Paris, claustrophobic, anodyne, mundane, became the couple’s world, both a sanctuary and a prison. On late summer afternoons, the hum of traffic from the nearby Boulevard Périphérique – the four-lane highway that encircles central Paris – would filter up into the room. On such afternoons, hot and languid, the couple longed to fly. Oh how they longed to fly.
Thus began a doctor–patient relationship that the professor would readily confess gave him many a sleepless night that summer of 1982 and beyond. Didier’s was a tricky case, one of the most complex he had yet encountered in his long and distinguished career. Although he had broken both legs, the right presented a particular problem. Added to the multiple fractures and the constant battle against infection from pseudomonas – a virulent microbe – Letournel and his team faced an even greater problem, one that would test even the celebrated surgeon’s skills to the limit: 17cm of bone was missing from the right tibia (shinbone), lost somewhere on the Hockenheim circuit. Understanding the complex mechanisms of the human skeletal system and its inter-relationships, in order to get Didier mobile again, the doctor knew he had a single option. The Papineau technique is a process whereby the bone is gradually built back up, piece by little piece. Over time, the body knits these bone fragments into a new tibia. In order to facilitate this painstaking process, a fixator or metal rod is used to preserve the length of leg during the healing process.
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