Gerhard Berger's Sports Injuries

Derek Warwick drives past the scene of Gerhard Berger's Imola accident as his car ignites. Watch as he turns his head to look at...

Here is a compilation of Gerhard Berger's huge crash at Tamburello corner during the 1989 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola. [Music] And although Ferrari's engine probably isn't quite as powerful... oops, big problems! That was something broken on the car for sure. Big crash by Berger, without any doubt. It went straight on and... oh my, oh heavens above, this is dreadful. There are no words that can add to this appalling picture. The car... off, and thank heavens there is a fire tender on the spot immediately. The drivers at least have oxygen pure air piped through to their helmets due to a special valve. The fire is out. There is some... now they must keep those fire extinguishers going. Yes, the fire is out for the moment, but Berger must have been hurt in that because the car is the right way up, and if he hadn't been injured, I'm sure he would have hopped out, so this is very, very worrying. This is the worst possible thing that can happen in a motor race. Cars have gotten so safe, conditions have gotten so safe, the organization is so good that nowadays you don't expect them to be hurt. But bad news, the red flag is out. The San Marino Grand Prix is being stopped, has been stopped on the fourth lap. And here's a replay. You see the Ferrari going off there onto the grass into the wall. Yes, and you see that something broke on the car because it just went straight on. The car did not respond at all to Berger's turning the corner, and that was a very heavy impact. Remember Nelson Piquet, uh, last year or the year before, had a similar accident at the same corner. Piquet also had a failure on the car, and the car went straight on, very heavy impact. So there is a replay of the one thing that we never want to see again, and in my position, there really is, as I've just said, nothing you can say. It's an appalling situation: the driver there in the cockpit, flames all around him, and you desperately hope for a fire tender to arrive quickly, and thank heavens it did just that. Okay, well, as we saw Gerhard Berger going off the circuit, which was obviously a mechanical failure of some description, and of course, this is the great thing that drivers fear most of all, because to sit in these cars alone, you have to have extreme confidence in your own ability. And you always say, "Well, it'll never happen to me," but this is something that the drivers cannot foresee and cannot do anything about, and that's a mechanical failure. It's probably claimed certainly more drivers than any driver error or anything else. It's one of the greatest hazards of motor racing. It's a great shame. It's ironical that Gerhard Berger, being an Austrian, I suppose, and in a Ferrari, Niki Lauda was an Austrian and he was in a Ferrari, had a similar crash, burst into flames. But the trouble, you know, well, not the trouble, but the modern cars now are so thin in the nose. I mean, we saw Eddie Cheever hop out of his car in Brazil and seemed to collapse through heat exhaustion. Well, I found out at a later date that that was partly caused by the fact that the blood circulation was cut off to his legs, and when he hopped out of the car in such a hurry, his legs were unable to support him. So these modern cars are so narrow at the front now that going into a front impact like that, you're really going to know about it. Full commendation to the Italian fire marshals who I believe were on the spot very, very quickly indeed. I was a little bit perturbed to see just a couple of handheld extinguishers initially, but they were very quick to get the proper hoses in there as well, and I think they did an excellent job in getting there quickly. We can only hope now that Gerhard's okay because, as Murray Walker said, he's a very likable guy, very cooperative, and of course an excellent Grand Prix driver. [Music] Berger [Music] Please clear the grid. Please clear the grid now. Ten minutes until the restart. Please, if you do not have a reason to be on the grid, please clear the grid.

Serious accident involving Gerhard Berger before Eau Rouge in wet conditions at Spa in 1992. He remained uninjured.