The story of the doctor who helped Ayrton Senna after the accident: the Brazilian driver died thirty years ago after his Williams crashed into the wall of the Tamburello curve in Imola.
It was 2.17pm on May 1st 1994, when in Imola, the Williams of Ayrton Senna it crashed into the wall of the Tamburello curve. It was immediately clear that the situation was very delicate and that it was not a banal racing accident.
Today, 30 years later, there is still great bitterness over the death of the Brazilian driver due to the dynamics shrouded in mystery of a trial that clarified very few things other than presumed guilt and responsibility. That day, the idol of a generation passed away, of an era that changed F1 and the driver who gave the most emotions of all.
It was all useless. The rescue, the trip to the Bologna hospital by helicopter and Giovanni Gordini, at the time the 118 doctor in charge of the rescue and now director of the emergency department of the Bologna Local Health Authority, he thus recalled those moments in an interview with the newspaper Il Resto del Carlino: “It was the first and last Grand Prix in which the helicopter intervened following an accident and took the patient directly to the relevant hospital: in all other cases, the patients were taken to the local hospital circuit. Myself, other colleagues and Senna performed a mini tracheotomy while we put him on the helicopter, then Ayrton was taken to the Maggiore hospital in Bologna.”
After Senna’s fatal accident at Imola all the drivers raced, except one: he owed his life
The doctor describes Senna’s condition after the accident as follows: “The CT scan was devastating. Devastating. We immediately saw everything that was dramatic, including the damage done by the suspension arm, the fracture of the skull base, where the skull articulates with the neck. From there hemorrhages arose. Devastating “.
His personal memory of those moments is very harsh but that accident also became a turning point in the way he acted for rescue operations on the track: “It was one of the first such serious accidents reported live. In some way it was didactic, he managed to explain in such a dramatic situation how to work in rescue operations. There was nothing extraordinary. Only the work of the professionals, the ABC of simple maneuvers to implement in sequence. We stabilized the vital functions to a minimum. From Tamburello there was no possibility of return for Ayrton.
