This year is very tragic in terms of the passing of the biggest legends of motoring. At the beginning of April, the honored Ferdinand Alexander Porsche left us, less than three months later Sergio Pininfarina met the same fate. The date 13 September has become the day we will remember the death of Sir Sid Watkins , the former Chief Medical Officer of Formula 1. His life ended at the age of 84 after losing his battle with cancer.
Sid Watkins was born on 6 September 1928 in Liverpool . His father was a miner, but during the depression of the 1930s, he hung a helmet with a lamp on a nail and began to repair cars. Sid helped him with those until he was 25 years old.
When Watkins graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1956, he enlisted in Africa as a British Army doctor. In 1958, he returned to Britain, where he began to study neurosurgery in Oxford. In his spare time, he worked as a doctor at the Silverstone circuit.
In 1962, he seized the opportunity and moved to America , where he was offered a professorship at New York University. He did not resent motor sports. When he returned to Britain in 1970, he became chief of neurosurgery at the London Hospital .
1978 was a fateful year for Watkins. He met Bernie Eccleston (then still head of the F1 Constructors' Association), who offered him the position of Formula 1 official doctor. Sid accepted the offer and participated in the Swedish Grand Prix that same year, where in case of severe accidents he drove directly to the scene of the incident.
One of the milestones in racing medical history was the Italian Grand Prix of the same year. Here, during the first lap, Ronnie Peterson crashed heavily and his car caught fire. Although passing racers pulled him out of the single-seater in time, Watkins did not get to the scene of the accident fast enough, and Peterson subsequently died in hospital. That same day, Watkins went to Eccleston with a request for better medical equipment, an anesthesiologist, a medical vehicle and a medical helicopter. In addition, it came into force that the medical vehicle will follow the starting field during the entire first lap, when a mass crash is most likely. This rule and many others have endured in the world of Formula 1 to this day.
Neurosurgeon Sid Watkins , who was known in the paddock as the Professor, moved around the world of Formula 1 for 26 long years. A kind man loved by all, he experienced his toughest race weekend at Imola 1994, when Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger perished. Since then, there has been no fatal accident in the world of F1 , which the drivers also owe to Sir Sid. On the one hand, thanks to his two years of experience, but also to the introduction of new safety features, under which the name Watkins was indelibly written.
Honor his memory!
