by Tom Rubython
Video tapes show that Hunt was forced into Peterson’s Lotus and then launched airborne, pushing the Lotus 78 at high speed into the barriers. Hunt’s McLaren was then hit by other spinning cars.
The 78 was the wrong car for a frontal impact accident. In fact, the chassis was very vulnerable to a frontal impact. It was made of aluminium honeycomb with fuel tanks in the side extensions, unlike in the 79 where they were mounted behind the driver. Worse still, the 78 suffered from fuel pick-up problems and had been modified with the installation of a fuel catch tank in the cockpit footwell. The catch tank exploded in the impact and created a fireball as it impacted with Peterson’s feet, pushing the chassis metal and pedals into his legs.
The Lotus had too much momentum as Brambilla’s Surtees ran straight into it, pushing it back the other way and catching seven other cars in the chaos. It had all happened in an instant, and the Lotus ricocheted back onto the circuit before coming to a halt in the middle of the track. When the cars eventually stopped, Peterson was trapped in the burning Lotus and Italian driver Brambilla was unconscious.
Hunt was straight out of his car and on top of the Lotus, struggling to get Peterson out of the car. A policeman grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames quickly before marshals took over.
Twisted metal and pedals were trapping Peterson in the car, and Patrick Depailler kicked the steering wheel out of the way as Hunt tried to lift the driver. Hunt said: “I tried to pull Ronnie clear but found one of his legs trapped between the steering wheel and what remained of the chassis. Flames and smoke enveloped the whole car again but the marshal flattened them and, with additional assistance from Clay [Regazzoni], we managed to wrench the steering wheel clear. I picked up Ronnie by the epaulettes of his uniform and dragged him clear of the car.”
Hunt put the Swede down on the tarmac and sat with him, looking round for any signs of a doctor. Brambilla was laid down beside him unconscious. The Italian’s injuries looked far more serious than those of Peterson.
Hunt stayed with Peterson and talked to him, avoiding looking at his injuries. Peterson propped himself up on his elbows but his legs were covered. Hunt said: “I was reassuring Ronnie, but I knew that his injuries must be pretty severe as there was nothing left to the front end of the car.”
The amount of time it took for doctors to attend to Peterson was inexplicable. The Italian police were being overzealous and stopping everyone, including the doctors, from reaching the injured drivers. This included Professor Sid Watkins, the recently appointed Formula One doctor, who was stationed at the race control building, a five-minute walk from the medical centre. When the accident happened, Watkins had immediately set off on foot to help, but was stopped by the police. They had formed a barrier across the track and were letting no one through. Watkins didn’t have the authority to pass through, and was helpless in the hands of the Italians.
Assuming Italian doctors were on hand, and having no idea as to the severity of the injuries, Watkins assumed he was not needed and began the walk back to the medical centre, where the injured drivers were to be taken.
The Monza medical centre was located at the back of the paddock. The medical facilities were quite good by the standards of the day. The centre was run by six doctors trained in anaesthesia and trauma care. There were five ambulances and two mobile intensive care units around the circuit, staffed by more doctors and nurses.
There was also a helicopter ready to take any injured drivers to the Ospedale Maggiore Hospital at Niguardia, which was ten minutes away by air. Watkins reached the medical centre at the same time as the ambulance containing Peterson. But the injured drivers had been let down by the circuit; 18 minutes had passed between Hunt’s removal of Peterson from his Lotus and the arrival of the ambulance at the crash scene.
A disconsolate Hunt walked back to the pits and whacked a policeman who wanted his autograph. With so many of the teams’ cars involved, all the mechanics were waiting anxiously for news of their drivers. Rex Hart remembers: “I was in the pits, where we’d gone after leaving the starting grid. They’d done the warming up lap and come onto the grid. The cars went, but then we heard the noise and knew something was going on. A great cloud of smoke went up and, a minute or so later, someone came along and said Ronnie was involved in it. The news then filtered through slowly.”
Journalists questioned Hunt about what happened and straightaway he blamed Ricardo Patrese, insisting that his Arrows had hit his car, saying: “Patrese, with nowhere to go, without warning, barged over on me, pushing me into Ronnie. In the ensuing sandwich, my car flew up in the air and slid sideways down the middle of the track. Behind me, all hell broke loose.” Shock was beginning to set in from what he had seen, and Hunt didn’t want to go to the Marlboro motorhome. Seeking some peace and quiet, he went to the Wolf team motorhome.
The paddock and media centre were in a chaotic state. The journalists present were already hailing Hunt as a hero who had saved Peterson’s life. That annoyed Hunt intensely, as he told them in the Monza paddock: “Don’t make a big hero thing out of this. I happened to be one of the first on the scene. I was dressed in a fireproof driving suit, so I didn’t have to do anything brave.” But they persisted and he became incensed, saying later: “They had spent the whole season knocking me, and then all of a sudden they were quite unjustifiably acclaiming me as a hero, which I found very embarrassing. When you’re down, they kick you and then they kick you again. When you’re up, they go right over the top.”
Back at the medical centre, it was mayhem. Watkins remembers: “There was a huge crowd of tifosi outside the security rails of the centre and spilling over the access roads. Ronnie was quite conscious and rational but both his legs were badly smashed, and he had some superficial burns on the shoulder and chest. We got several intravenous infusions up into the arm veins and his blood pressure was surprisingly normal. The medical team were busy splinting the leg fractures, many of which appeared to be technically compound. Ronnie was talking sensibly. He was very anxious that I should come to the hospital as soon as I could, and that I promised. In fact, he said: ‘Please don’t leave me, Prof.’”
But Watkins was committed to helping all the injured drivers. Brambilla, who had been hit by a wheel, had a severe head injury. At the time, it looked far more serious than it was. He was suffering from left-side paralysis of his limbs, but was stable. Brambilla would go on to make a full recovery. Hans- Joachim Stuck, who had briefly been knocked out after being hit by another tyre, also had a severe headache and was told he should not join the restart.
Peterson was eventually taken to a waiting helicopter on a stretcher, where crowds of tifosi pushed and shoved to touch the injured driver. As Peterson was stretchered to the helicopter, he was fully conscious and resting upright on his elbows, talking to people. Ake Strandberg, who saw him into the helicopter, said: “He was still in his race overalls and you could tell one leg was crushed. Ronnie told me: ‘It really hurts’, and that was the last thing he said to me.” Reine Wisell, a fellow Swede, also spoke to Peterson. He was calm and sanguine, recalls Wisell, saying: “It’s shit about the legs but they fixed up Graham Hill, so they must be able to fix me. I’ll be ready for next year.”
Rex Hart recovered Peterson’s helmet and gloves from the medical centre, and said: “We had his gloves and helmet back immediately after they’d taken him away. There were virtually no burn marks on them.” Staffan Svenby took Peterson’s Rolls-Royce Corniche and drove to the hospital, arriving shortly after the helicopter.
James Hunt was talking to Harvey Postlethwaite in the Wolf motorhome. Postlethwaite made him a cup of tea and tried to calm down the agitated driver. Hunt had seen the extent of Peterson’s injuries and had been with him for nearly half an hour after the accident. As Postlethwaite remembers, Hunt’s hands were shaking and his voice was trembling with emotion. He was in no condition to drive his car again that afternoon. Nonetheless, when the restart was called, he duly got back in his car.
While Peterson was on his way to the hospital, Colin Chapman immediately began a clean-up of his own, aware of what could happen if a driver died in Italy. Whilst he had no reason to believe it would happen, he wasn’t taking any chances. Since the Italian authorities had no reason to suspect that Peterson’s injuries were life-threatening, they had no interest in impounding the Lotus – although, 24 hours later, they would.
Chapman quickly arranged for two mechanics to drive the Lotus truck back to England immediately, with the damaged car on board. Rex Hart remembers: “Because of the problems Lotus had had at Monza when Italian officials confiscated the cars after Rindt, Clark and Von Trips had come together, the two mechanics were told not to stop until they reached France. They just about had time to wash their hands before they left.”
Chapman ordered the mechanics to dismantle the car and get rid of it when they got back to the factory. Rex Hart remembers the car was in “a hell of a mess” but still in one piece.
Chapman’s biographer, French journalist Jabby Crombac, said the Lotus boss grew extremely bitter about the fact that Peterson had been in the 78. Crombac said: “The foot box on the new 79 was much stronger than on the 78, and if Ronnie had been driving a spare 79 instead, it is quite likely that his injuries would have been less severe. What made Colin particularly angry was that Peterson’s spare 79 was not ready to take to Monza.”
This anger was directed at the team’s personnel, whom Chapman believed had not worked hard enough to get the fourth 79 ready for the Monza race. Crombac was very close to Chapman, and it seemed to confirm that there was no conspiracy to deprive Peterson of a spare 79.
While plans were being made for the second start, Peterson was being X-rayed over at Niguardia. Svenby phoned Barbro Peterson at home in Monte Carlo as soon as her husband arrived at the hospital. He gave her the news but said the injuries weren’t life-threatening, and they decided Barbro would remain in Monaco with Nina before travelling straight to Milan early the next morning. Brabham team owner Bernie Ecclestone arranged for a private plane to pick her up at Nice airport.
After the initial X-rays were completed, the Niguardia doctors advised Peterson that his injuries were creating a problem with the blood supply to his legs. The doctors apparently advised Svenby that they should consider amputating the badly damaged leg to avoid complications, but Peterson said to Svenby: “I want to be able to drive at Watkins Glen. Please make sure I can.”
Svenby consulted with Swedish doctors on the telephone for a second opinion. Peterson agreed to go ahead with the tricky operation to fix his badly damaged legs. Svenby said: “He was okay about it. After all, there weren’t so many options for him.”
The operation could not take place immediately because the specialist surgeon was not on duty and couldn’t be contacted. He finally arrived at 7 o’clock.
Meanwhile, the re-started race was delayed again when, on the warm-up lap, Scheckter’s Wolf flattened the Armco at the second Lesmo corner and the barrier had to be replaced. The crowd became aggressive and began throwing bottles. With the light fading, the race was shortened to 40 laps.
Hunt eventually got back into the spare McLaren but was in no mood to drive and, without thinking, burned his clutch out at the restart. Shoving the gears in manually, crash style, he circulated for a few laps then retired with an electrical problem. Mario Andretti’s Lotus was in front at the finish and, though he was given a one-minute penalty for jumping the start and demoted to sixth place, the single point was enough for the American to clinch the 1978 World Driving Championship. Niki Lauda and John Watson scored a Brabham-Alfa Romeo 1-2 with Carlos Reutemann’s Ferrari third.
Andretti was crowned world champion but, with Peterson in hospital, it didn’t seem the right time to celebrate. Andretti sat in the John Player motorhome, still in his overalls. The champagne was being drunk, but the talk was all about Peterson. Andretti and Chapman discussed his recovery prospects with Sid Watkins. There was absolutely no thought or discussions about him not surviving – simply about when he would be able to race again.
Later that evening, Watkins returned to the motorhome and told Andretti and Chapman about Peterson’s operation, which was still in progress. The three decided to journey over to the hospital, so Watkins and Chapman set off in the Rolls-Royce Corniche with Andretti driving. He found it difficult to get past the tifosi lining the roads leading out of the circuit. There was no security in evidence once the race had ended. Andretti knew a short cut across the park fields to the motorway.
When they finally reached Niguardia, they found a large crowd of people outside the hospital. Peterson was still in surgery, but all appeared to be going well. Watkins was invited into the operating theatre, and he reported that surgeons were working on the last fracture to Peterson’s legs. “I talked to the anaesthetist and Ronnie’s vital signs were all fine,” he says.
Watkins continues: “The blood transfusion with the correct blood group was in progress. Looking at the X-rays, I counted about 27 fractures in both legs and feet. The surgeon in charge indicated that he thought all was going to plan and that they would be finished shortly. Thereafter, Ronnie was to be transferred to the intensive care unit where Brambilla had already taken up residence.”
Watkins then updated Andretti and Chapman on Peterson’s condition, while Svenby contacted Barbro to update her on the situation and confirm the arrangements for a helicopter to bring her from Linate airport to the hospital in the morning. At around midnight, Andretti and Chapman returned to the Villa d’Este, while Svenby and Watkins decided to stay close and checked into a nearby hotel. Svenby said: “At that time, it didn’t occur to me that anything would go wrong.”
Mike Doodson, the well known journalist, remembered Colin Chapman returning to the hotel: “Chapman came back from the hospital with a look of relief on his face. We thought that it was going to be a long recovery as he’d been very badly hurt; but at some point he’d be back in a Formula One car.”
Back at their hotels rooms in Monza, the Lotus team members, after watching television footage of the Swede lifting himself up on his elbows in the ambulance and talking to people, were also convinced that Peterson was going to be okay. The Lotus mechanics were not worried and they had no thought of Peterson not surviving his injuries. Rex Hart said: “We had a few beers and that sort of thing. No one thought Ronnie would die.”
But strange things happened during the night, and it soon became clear that something was wrong. Hospital insiders were relaying disturbing reports to the media about Peterson’s treatment. Word got out that a mistake had been made in setting the bones and that a cover-up was in progress.
Svenby telephoned Barbro with a progress report, but she told him that she had been receiving calls from journalists – many of them Swedish – giving her various different reports about her husband’s condition. Svenby, who had just come from the hospital, told Barbro to ignore them. The pair decided that Barbro should disconnect the telephone in order to prevent the calls. But she didn’t.
At 4am, Svenby was woken by the telephone in his room. It was Watkins; he had just received a call from the hospital advising him that Peterson’s condition had worsened. The pair left for the hospital immediately.
Watkins’ and Svenby’s accounts differ slightly about the moment they received the bad news. According to Watkins, it was Svenby who rang him: “Staffan woke me by telephone to say that the hospital had called to tell us things had taken a bad turn for Ronnie.”
At the same time, somebody, saying he was a doctor, telephoned Barbro to tell her that he thought the Italian doctors were killing her husband. Watkins says he was never able to find out the caller’s identity, but it was suspected that he had impersonated medical staff in order to get into the hospital. But the caller was right – Peterson was in trouble.
Watkins and Svenby rushed to the intensive care unit and were met by a neurosurgeon, who informed them that Peterson had developed breathing difficulties and was now bein
g ventilated on a machine to try to keep up his blood oxygen levels. “A chest X-ray showed that he had developed multiple emboli [small obstructions blocking the blood vessels] in his lungs,” Watkins said. “His kidney function had also declined and urinary output had deteriorated. He was unconscious, and neurological examination showed that he had signs of severe brain damage.”
Watkins then examined Peterson himself and found fat globules obstructing the small arteries in the retinas of both eyes. Watkins said: “The outlook was pretty hopeless.”
Svenby went off to telephone Chapman to inform them of the growing crisis, and Chapman called Bernie Ecclestone. By the time Chapman and Ecclestone reached the hospital, Watkins had devastating news: neurologists who had come in to do brain electrical recordings had reported no activity and had indicated brain death. It was 6:30am. It was clear that the end was near and, by dawn, Peterson was dead.
By now, Barbro had started her journey from Nice to the hospital, so Svenby was unable to inform her of the situation. At Milan’s Linate airport, the Lotus team members were also waiting to make the journey home when news of their driver’s death came through. The newspaper vendors started shouting: “Peterson e morti”.
Watkins said: “Having seen him on television at our hotel the night before, we couldn’t believe it. It shocked everybody. I remember Mrs Peterson arriving at Milan airport in the early hours, and the plane just turning around and taking her home. She didn’t even get off the plane because there was nothing she could do.” Hunt was deeply shocked and leaned on Jane Birbeck for support at the airport. He said he thought of Peterson as “indestructible.”
Peterson’s friend Ake Strandberg had been at the hospital all night. When he walked out into the dawn of Milan, he recalled later: “I wondered why the trams were still running. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t stopped. For me the world had suddenly come to a standstill.”
