As president of the GPDA, he was still very much involved with the evolution of Formula 1 safety. One of his commitments involved visiting circuits around the world such as that proposed by Fuengirola in Spain, checking and advising on safety provision. Back in October, then newly crowned champion Keke Rosberg had visited Choisy in company with Jean-Marie Balestre whereupon Didier had congratulated the Finnish driver on his achievement. The three men had gone on to talk at length about the sport’s safety issues. Although too late to help his own case, Didier derived great satisfaction from changes to the F1 regulations in 1983, not least the banning of skirts. The man who had campaigned so tirelessly to improve the safety of his sport was the same one upon whom its full wrath had fallen. The irony was not lost on him.
A journey to Stuttgart in April to collect a new Mercedes afforded an opportunity to express his gratitude to the team who had saved his legs that catastrophic August day in ’82. Driving back from the factory he realised he was within reach of Heidelberg. A whim, a chance to exorcise some ghosts, Didier soon found himself at the clinic car park. Oddly, his recollections of the hospital did not pertain to his own confinement 12 months previously, but rather to those when he had attended the aftermath of Depailler’s fatal crash in 1980.
Professor Mischowski was delighted and shocked to see his former patient hobbling into his office on crutches. The two men renewed a friendship born in adversity.
‘For me your two ankles were locked for life,’ confessed the doctor. ‘There was no question of you ever driving again, just the hope that maybe you would one day walk.’ Didier was happy to have proved the oracle wrong. The doctor inspected the limbs he had come to know so intimately the previous summer. Letournel had worked wonders, he had to admit. The doctor declared himself ‘flabbergasted’.
‘By the way, how did you get here today?’ asked the professor as the two men parted. ‘Why,’ replied Didier with a broad grin, ‘I drove …’ Mischowski refused to believe him. It was a joke, surely.
‘This is the day I think,’ declared Didier, ‘that I celebrated my true resurrection.’
This habit of popping up unexpectedly manifested itself once again when Didier ventured to Vienna one day to meet the young girl whose letter had touched him so deeply in his Choisy sickroom. ‘There was a knock on the door one afternoon,’ recalls the girl, now in her fifties and still resident in the Austrian capital. ‘I opened the door and there was Didier Pironi smiling back at me! I could not believe it! I think he thought I was going to leave him standing there on the doorstep! Thankfully, my mother and father invited him into our home. I was completely stunned. He limped into the house on his crutch and later showed us the scars on his leg, explaining about all his operations. We had tea together. It was a day I will never forget!’
Throughout 1983, he was back and forth from room 626. More grafts. More pain. In early June, from the now familiar surroundings of his Choisy sickroom, he watched Yannick Noah triumph in the French Open tennis final. Any hopes of a quick return to Formula 1 were fading fast. Later that summer he learned of an accident involving Phillipe Paoli, a promising young driver who had himself won the Pilot-Elf competition in 1981. The young man had sustained a catalogue of injuries in a race at Albi. By all accounts doctors at the local hospital had just about given up hope of him ever walking again when a phone call arrived from Paris:
‘You aren’t going nowhere in Albi hospital – would you like to join me here in Paris where my friend Professor Letournel works magic?’ Phillipe agreed. The two men went back a long way.
‘We met in 1972 for the Pilot-Elf final in Paul Ricard,’ recalls Paoli. ‘I was only 12, but I remember perfectly this beautiful sunny day and this young blonde guy who easily won the contest on the 3.3km circuit.’ After Jean-Pierre Jarier had flown him to Paris, 24 hours later, the injured driver was lying on the Choisy operating table. There, the professor indeed worked his magic on the driver’s knee, leg and vertebrae, thus enabling him to compete in the final rounds of the European and French F3 championships.
‘I left the hospital way before Didier,’ continues Phillipe, ‘then I purchased a nice Montblanc fountain pen as a gift for what he did for me, and got it engraved on the pin part “Didier Pironi”. A few years later, as he was talking business with my father, he mentioned that his house had been broken into and everything had been stolen. Then he said I don’t give a damn for what they took, the only thing that pisses me off, is that they took Phillipe’s pen.’
Summer 1983, and Paris was wilting under a heatwave. Didier would spend six long weeks in his old room that August stripped to the waist, lean, tanned, blonde, a picture of health and virility. Indeed, had it not been for the heavy bandaging of his right leg and the ever present fixator, you would never have known the dark recesses he had only recently visited. It was a delicate stage of his recuperation. If these latest grafts held, it would represent a major landmark on the road to recovery: he would, for the first time in 12 months, be able to place his full weight on to the cursed right foot. From here, the aim was to resume jogging and tennis. By the end of the year, he hoped to be functioning something approximating to ‘normal’. Moreover, there was always Ferrari’s promise to furnish him with a car upon his recovery. The thought consoled him through some dark days, a glint of hope at the end of a long, dark tunnel. In fact, admission to Choisy that summer had been his idea and his alone, a way of driving his recuperation forward.
Sport-Auto magazine encountered an exhilarated Didier brimming with hope following this pivotal moment in his treatment: ‘I saw my first X-rays. They are great! My bones really look like bones. Nevertheless, this graft, very delicate, requires doubling of daily irrigation.’ The report notes Didier’s ‘eyes shining with confidence’.
On 7 August, exactly one year to the day since his accident, he reappeared in the Formula 1 paddock to spectate at the German Grand Prix, hobbling on his crutches, but otherwise his usual serene self. No, he shrugged, time and place were merely a matter of coincidence. It was the first time he had been fit enough to attend a Grand Prix. He spent the day conducting interview after interview, answering the sort of questions the BBC’s Grand Prix programme put to him: would he be returning to F1 and if so, when? Escaping the media’s attention, he managed to lunch with old rivals Arnoux and Jabouille. Perhaps he really believed Formula 1 was getting closer. If so, he would be sorely disappointed. Far from coming to an end, his convalescence was just beginning. Indeed, not until January of 1986 would he finally be able to walk without crutches.
One winter evening Didier returned to the clinic where bad news awaited: the August transplant had failed for a third time. Even Didier’s optimism failed him momentarily. Waiting to drive him home, Imelda notes how it was the first and only time that he almost gave in to despair. ‘Jaw clenched’, Didier sunk into the passenger seat, throwing his crutches into the back of the vehicle:
‘He looks me in the eye. I see in the headlights the shine of tears in his eyes: “Mom, what will I become?” This pathetic moment lasted only the space of a flash. He sits up, grabs the steering wheel angrily and says, “Let’s go! We will spend the weekend in Magny-Cours!” And he began to whistle.’
Realisation was sinking in. His convalescence was clearly going to last a lot longer than he had anticipated. Perhaps for the first time he began to question his own self-belief, the certitude that had kept him going this past year. Was his Formula 1 career now over? Anger and frustration exhausted, it was only natural perhaps to view the ordeal as part of some wider purpose or as part of a grander scheme. Why else destroy a dream so wilfully? Why else destroy a trajectory so perfect? Didier began alluding to a new-found sense of perception and enlightenment. He spoke of turning defeat into victory.
‘I feel more serene, more modest too. My relationships with others have gained in depth. I am more focused on them. Small everyday matters are less important.’ He went on to articulate in Cine Revue how the accident had been the catalyst for
a deeper appreciation of the universe and his place therein: ‘To some extent, my accident made me realise I brought something to the public! At the hospital, I was surprised to receive daily hundreds of very sincere letters. Driving very fast in a racing car is not necessarily a very noble aim. Bring something into someone’s life, be an example for the handicapped or those who doubt or cease to hope, that’s something wonderful.’49
‘Brave’ and ‘courageous’ were words often used in conjunction with this quest for self-fulfilment, terms which Didier would invariably scoff at. In August of 1982 he had faced a stark choice: a quick fix or a long and painful rehabilitation. While the former would have been the easier option, the result would have removed the possibility of the ankle ever being strong enough to pilot an F1 car. Didier had chosen the long and painful road – purposely so.
The desire to return to competition burned as strong as ever. Rumours of a guest appearance at the Nürburgring champions’ race scheduled in May of 1984 proved to be just that: rumours. Mercedes had been very keen for Didier to join in the fun, driving one of their iconic 190E saloons against Senna, Prost, Lauda et al, but the right leg was still not anywhere near full operating capacity. Reluctantly, Didier declined the invitation. In the event, he watched from the sidelines. That year he would become a familiar sight in the garages of F1, a somewhat tragic figure propped up on crutches, forever on the fringes, so close but so far from the world he craved to be part of again.
‘My goal,’ he maintained, ‘has remained the one announced as soon as I knew that I could walk normally: I want to drive in Formula 1. I'm doing the impossible to achieve this goal which has become the only one in my life.’50
Do what they might, this mercurial family could seemingly not avoid misfortune. Entertaining a group of friends one evening that included the photographer Emmanuel Zurini, Didier answered a telephone call. ‘I was cooking pasta for 12 fellows at his beautiful house close to Rambouillet,’ recalls Zurini, ‘when the telephone rang announcing that his mother and aunt [José’s mother] had had a big car crash on the way to their south French residence. His reaction was, “I leave you this place Manou – please take care of our guests. I go south by car.” It was 10pm!’
Imelda and Ilva had been driving from Toulon to St Tropez when they had been involved in a serious road traffic accident. For the second time in recent history, the younger of the sisters escaped serious injury. Ilva was not so lucky. The accident had occurred near the small, private airport of Le Mole, some ten minutes from their ultimate destination. José, Imelda and Didier had lost a beloved mother, sister and aunt respectively.
Around this time – summer 1984 – he had become reacquainted with Catherine Goux, the petite young woman he had known during his earlier racing days. In the time that had passed since their last contact, both partners had never stopped believing that one day they would resume their relationship. The years in between had merely been an interim, a period of separation to sow wild seeds, to grow emotionally and spiritually, to ultimately enhance the moment of reunion. The couple moved to ‘Souvigny’, a rambling property located in the forest of Rambouillet, accessible only to those of an adventurous nature. Here they created their own version of paradise. Dinner parties such as the one Zurini attended were a common occurrence in this fairy-tale setting. Establishing a Japanese garden allowed the couple to indulge their love of exotic plants while upon the estate’s ornamental lake a noble knight rowed and wooed his lady. They had waited a long while for this – a decade and more. The Souvigny pleasure dome allowed them to satiate a deep physical desire, a craving for one another that had been held in abeyance for a decade.
By her own admission, Catherine had been a ‘zombie’ when Didier suddenly reappeared in her life one day in June 1984. Plagued by illness, she had withered away latterly. A telephone chat that went on for hours brought the star cross’d lovers together again. Didier took ‘the woman of his life’ to the Tong Yen, where he taught her how to eat again, spoon feeding the gaunt young woman with infinite patience. Vitality restored, it would soon be Catherine feeding Didier. Later on, she would sometimes ask him to wait five minutes while she got ready, to which he, anxious to be off, would always joke: ‘I’ve been waiting 30 years, no more!’
The couple’s thoughts turned to family. Catherine already had a son from a precious relationship whom Didier readily adopted, and he had always treated José’s three children as if his own. Nonetheless, at 32 years of age the time he thought was ripe to have a family of his own. Easier said than done. The reunited lovers were about to embark on yet another long and difficult quest.
Twenty-five
Limbo
Formula 1 in the mid-eighties had become the domain of just one man: Alain Prost. Didier’s old sparring partner had risen to the top of the F1 tree, winning Grands Prix as he pleased. Didier had no choice but to watch his old adversary close in on the ambition he himself had so dearly cherished: the honour of becoming France’s first Formula 1 world champion. If Didier envied his old rival his success, he never showed it. That it was Prost’s Renault that had acted as launch-pad to his red rocket that foul Hockenheim morning, was just another example of the perverse kind of coincidences that had dogged him throughout his life. Thinking back to that grim morning, one or two people wondered why his compatriot had even been out on circuit in the first place.
‘What the hell was he [Prost] doing out there going so bloody slowly anyway?’ growled one driver. ‘He had no right to be on that track.’ What-ifs. Whys. Wherefores. Yet more: had the Renault been displaying its rear hazard light as required? Later, Didier would allude to a distinct impression that the Renault had dramatically slowed in the moments before contact … If his reaction to his countryman’s run of success was something less than ecstatic he was, after all, only human.
In the meantime, he got his kicks in the usual way: bikes, cars, boats and planes. Professor Letournel and Francine, by now great friends, accepted an invitation to Souvigny that year. Emile was more than a little disconcerted to see the full range of his charge’s ‘toys’. As spring 1985 dawned, Didier might have been walking again, but the professor was acutely aware of the precariousness of his patient’s condition.
‘With Didier the notion of risk was not the same as for an ordinary patient,’ recalls Francine. ‘We were in our room one morning when suddenly we heard the noise of a motorcycle. Professor Letournel rushed to the window. Didier was not riding a motorcycle, oh no. He was not on two wheels, but on a quad bike! He was rearing up in front of the window on both rear wheels!’
Being physician to Didier Pironi was not an easy job. Quad bikes aside, there were always those powerboats. After experiencing Didier’s boat for himself at that year’s Monaco GP, a white-faced Professor Letournel prohibited his patient from piloting the boat in a standing position. The prof – more accurately his legs – had felt the ‘shock’ when accompanying his patient for a spin on Masha. As he stood tentatively behind the pilot observing his dexterity, the boat bumping, banging and bouncing from one wave to another, the doctor experienced first-hand the bruising after-effects produced by these vessels. Such consistently rigid impacts could hardly help his friend’s rehabilitation. Subsequently, Didier had a seat adapted to allow him to pilot in a reclining position. Returning to St Tropez harbour, patient and doctor found the harbour had just closed. Large gates blocked their access to the dock. Pas de problem! Emile and Francine watched in disbelief as Didier scrambled over the 2.5-metre-high gates in order to procure the keys.
The quayside at Cogolin had become somewhat of a second home since the Hockenheim crash. Hiring and selling high-end powerboats to the rich and famous, the market into which Didier and José had tapped was a lucrative one. By 1985, Euronautique employed over 40 people. The company had recently moved to a new site in Canoubiers just east of St Tropez, providing 5,000 square metres of workshop in two hangars for a maximum capacity of 300 boats. Despite run-ins with screen legend Brigitte Bardot who
complained that the expansion of the company would spoil the area’s peace and tranquillity, and whose famous La Madrague villa stood close by, the company was going from strength to strength.
Less contentious pursuits included playing pool with old friends such as Jean-Louis Schlesser up at the villa or tending the lavish gardens of its terraces. He had also carved out somewhat of a niche test-driving commercial cars. During January, Didier clocked up 60 miles driving a Saab 900 turbo around the icy streets of Paris. In a typically concise report written for L’Equipe, while he was less than enthusiastic about the vehicle’s handling, its four-cylinder, two-litre engine made a more favourable impression on the ex-Grand Prix star: ‘The flexibility and low-end torque is remarkable, the available power is worthy of the best modern sports cars and has nothing to envy from Mercedes’ 2.3-litre, 16-valve model.’51 Life was busier than ever. Had he so wished he could have settled for a life of comfort, road-testing cars, running his various enterprises and after dipping his toe as an F1 commentator/pundit, perhaps developing a media career.
But no, he had only one goal: to win the Formula 1 world championship; to exorcise the ghost of Saturday, 7 August 1982.
With this aim in mind, in late summer ’85 he stepped back into a Formula 1 cockpit for the first time since that fateful day. Didier sampled a 1982 Williams – ironically the car in which Rosberg had ‘stolen’ his title – at a private Parisian circuit belonging to the entrepreneur and classic car collector Jack Setton. A watershed moment. He came away from the top-secret test with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he had set a new circuit record, beating times set by drivers such as Tambay and Cheever, cause for great optimism. In doing so, however, he could hardly ignore the stiffness and pain from his right leg and ankle. Clearly, he still had the speed. Nevertheless, would his compromised right limb allow him to operate at maximum capacity ever again? Almost three years after Hockenheim, his recovery was still not yet complete. As reality checks go, it was a sobering moment.
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