F1's Guardian Angel, the lives saved and lost

Part Two, the lives saved and lost:

I'd like to take you back to the 1989 San Marino GP. Gergard Berger had just had an epic crash at the infamous Tamburello corner and is left unconscious. This is the same corner where Senna would have his fatal accident 5 years later. As Berger approached the corner, pretty much flat out, a mechanical malfunction leaves him heading straigth towards the wall and out of control. The Ferrari hit, hard, into the concrete wall and spun around "like a whirlwind of bent metal" before finally coming to a rest at the corner's exit. And bursts in fire. Even though it seems like an eternity, the fire marshals quickly blazed the engulfed cockpit after only burning for 23 seconds. Enter Dr. Sid Watkins, aka the Guardian Angel, exactly 27 seconds after the accident and despite of the fire heat still present, he works feverishly to revive the driver, whilst he was soaked with fuel gushing out of the Ferrari's fractured tanks. Berger recalled: "When I woke up, Sid was sitting on my chest, still trying to intubate me. He had saved me."

Just a year later during qualifying for the Spanish GP, Martin Donnelly's crash was so horrific that the fully seatbelted driver was thrown from the wreckage and was lying on the track. His Lotus teammate Derek Warwick summed it up best. For Martin Donnelly to have survived that accident was an act of God." Donnelly's Lotus had hit the barrier head on, the front of the car shattered, and he was thrown down the track, with only the seat attached to him. Nothing esle. The car was elsewhere, all over the place in fact. Sid rushes to Donnelly and finds his face blue with lack of oxygen. The doctor forces an airway down his nose, gently removes his crushed helmet, then carefully intubates Donnelly and gets him breathing again. He would later induce a coma lasting 14 days to ensure he remained still. "Sid most definately saved Martin's life," said Sir Frank Williams, who was also under Sid's care after he broke his neck in 1986.

It was legendary driver Sir Jackie Steward who initiated change in safety in F1. In 1970 he started bringing his own physician to races after he experienced a water-shed moment in 1966. He had a violent crash at Spa that left him unconscious. Seeing the severity of the crash, fellow-driver Graham Hill stopped and removed Stewart's fuel-soaked uniform including underwear, left him under the care of three nuns while he ran for help. When Stewart came to, he found himself surrounded by cigarette smoking spectators which were oblivious to the dangerous situation with fuel everywhere. "We were killing ourselves at the rate of one a month when I finally decided to quit [in 1973]," Stewart noted. "What that meant to an individual driver was that after five years in the sport, you had a two-out-of-three chance of being killed. 

Ronnie's Lotus

The accident that brought about the most changes was the one that killed Ronnie Peterson at the start of the 1978 Italian GP. Back then, the use of a medical car had not yet been introduced and Sid would follow the race from Race Control. At about three o'clock, the flag was dropped to start the race while some cars were still rolling into position. The first-lap melee occurred on approach to the Variente Goodyear. It was caused by Ricardo Patrese's Arrows touching James Hunt's McLaren, which spun into the swedish driver Ronnie Peterson's Lotus sending him spinning as well. Peterson goes nose first into a barrier on the right-hand side of the track, crushing the front of the car. Vittorio Brambrilla, who started from the back of the grid, tried to avoid the accident but his Surtees plows into Peterson's Lotus. The Lotus bursts into fames, in similar fashion as Niki Lauda's horrific accident two years earlier.



Ronnie is seen here raising his head.

A young Eddie Cheever, who was in the grandstands at Spa and saw this all happen, and recalls: "what happened next was a complete comedy of errors." Instead of the firemen, it was Hunt who finally rushed in and pulled Peterson out of the fire. To complicate the rescue further, the carabinieri had formed a human blockade to keep everyone else out of the area. They acted with force and prevented even Sid Watkins from getting to the accident. Unfortunately, this along with a further delay of 18 minutes for the ambulance to arrive surely cost Ronnie his life. 

Sid explained that delays in treating accident patients, can allow fat embolisms to travel from the wound to the heart and/or brain. "If that happens, it's game, set, and match," Watkins said. Furthermore, he pointed out that the possibility of this happening was augmented by the Italian surgeon who's first priority was a long operation to set Ronnie's 27 leg fractures, a stressful procedure for a trauma patient to tolerate. Later that night, as a result, of a piece of bone-marrow clogging an artery, resulting in his death.

He was conscious and aware.

"Ronnie did not have fatal injuries - or injuries that should have been life-threatening," Andretti charged. "He obviously, seriously, had an incredible amount of leg damage, and he had shock. But to die of an embolism in this day and age, it's unheard of. That's a Stone Age situation. And it absolutely had to have been the way he had been treated, in the hands of whoever had the responsibility at Monza at that time and in the hospital later that was caring for Ronnie. It was such a shame. I think if any positive can come out of a negative, it was the fact everybody realized after that, someone has to be absolutely in charge in situations like that. Probably an event like that made a big difference. Under Professor Watkins's care, Ronnie would have survived."

Sir Frank Williams

Sid is best remembered for his saves, as in lives. Besides Donnelly, Williams, and Berger, Didier Pironi is most often mentioned, not always in the best way.

It was pouring in the closing stages of the 1982 German GP qualifying session and Pironi has just secured pole. However, he kept practicing in the rain and had a very bad accident. Sid worked for 30 minutes in appalling conditions to save Pironi's life, while the driver kept begging Sid not to have his legs amputated. And so did Sid. Some called it a miraculous recovery. Pironi, who only criticized his rescuers died five years later racing powerboats.

Sir Jackie Steward commenting on Sid and Mika. " Sid saved Mika Häkkinen's life - twice! He jump-started Mika two times, right there on the track." During the 1995 Australian GP Häkkinen flipped his car and appeared lifeless when Sid arrived. Sid performed a tracheotomy right there on the spot after he got Häkkinen heart restarted once, but it stopped again due to lack of air. Schumacher on that situation, "Sid just took the right decision which in the end saved Mika's life. I can only speak positively about him."

Schumacher, Brawn, and Watkins

Micheal Schumacher was no stranger to the doctor either, for in 1999, he suffered a huge crash in which he shattered a leg. Others owe their lives, limbs, and or careers to Sid's expert and timely treatment include Nelson Piquet, Olivier Panis, Karl Wendlinger, Pierluigi Martini, J.J. Lehto, Christian Fittipaldi, Jos Verstappen, Luciano Burti.

There are those that the doctor didn't have a chance to save, drivers like Peterson, Paletti, and Gilles Villeneuve. The latter suffered a broken neck from the violent crash. It is said that his socks and shoes left him because of it.

And then, there is the one that would haunt him the most. The loss of his good friend Ayrton Senna.

This will be featured in part three, the final part of these series on Sid Watkins.

Sources: motorsportretro.com, atlasf1.com,

Pictures courtesy of: f1-grandprix.com and atlasf1.com.