Flashback: Nelson Piquet escapes Tamburello F1 crash
Thirty years on from Ayrton Senna’s death in the San Marino GP, Maurice Hamilton recalls an earlier incident at the Tamburello wall
Much is written in the pages of this month’s magazine about Ayrton Senna’s fatal accident at Imola and the set of circumstances that contrived against him. A further irony is that other drivers had more severe impacts with the same wall at Tamburello and escaped serious injury. This picture captures a case in point.
On the first day of practice for the 1987 San Marino Grand Prix, Nelson Piquet’s Williams–Honda suddenly swapped ends at 180mph and sent him into the wall sideways on with such force that two perfect black imprints were left on the white concrete.
Had Piquet gone in backwards, or head-on, the Brazilian might have suffered more than the concussion that would rule him out for the rest of the weekend. When Nelson turned up at the track the following day, Professor Sid Watkins pointed his ever-present cigar at Piquet’s shoeless left foot. “Either your foot is so sore you can’t wear a shoe, in which case you’re not fit to drive,” said F1’s legendary medical delegate. “Or you forgot to put the shoe on. In which case, that bang on the head was worse than we thought and you’re definitely not fit to drive.”
Meanwhile, Williams was left to work out what had gone wrong. The left-rear wheel rim had been reduced to tiny fragments; the upright and hub torn apart by the impact. The remains had been shovelled into the cockpit and the car dumped in the paddock moments before the picture was taken.
In it, Nigel Mansell, right, talks to Patrick Head in what amounts to a public exposure of the torment facing a driver and engineer in the absence of any obvious reason for the crash. Piquet (by this stage in the medical centre to the left of the picture) could remember nothing. In the background, the urgent sound of cars continuing to practise upped the ante even further.
Mansell spent the rest of Friday running at reduced pace. The suspicion was that a tyre had failed – but they couldn’t be sure. Goodyear, as a precaution, flew in a new batch of rubber for Saturday. All anyone knew for certain was that it had been a massive accident. (Piquet would later reveal that he endured headaches and double vision for the remainder of 1987, but said nothing for fear of being prevented from completing a season that would ultimately bring his third world title.)
Mansell would put any doubts behind him by qualifying on the front row – pipped to pole by Senna in a Lotus-Honda – and dominating the race. He took Tamburello flat out 59 times.