The BBC newsreader made me think Piquet had been killed, just by the sombre tone of his voice. My heart skipped a beat.
As for the Indy crash, is there a more horrifying non-fatal crash photo in all of motorsport than the one where Piquet's head seems to be in contact with the wall, and you just think "where the hell are his legs?"
I think he was lucky in both incidents to have spun fully before impact.
In the context of Piquet's form though, if the Imola crash had happened a year earlier I would be much less sceptical than I am, as it would help explain everything.
I think the crash explains his decision more to go to Lotus where he was paid highly, but was accepting a garbage car. It was apparent by 1987 Lotus was on their way down, so it made little sense to go to a team in decline. Plus there was the pay for points thing that Flavio enticed Nelson with in what was it, 1990 and 1991?
He drove very well for the rest of 1987 after Imola, but going to Lotus pretty much took him out of the running for good. Going to uncompetitive cars tends to cause incorrect assumptions about drivers, as even not driving as well as he did 5 years earlier, Nelson still had an ungodly amount of talent in 1991. He was smooth as ever behind the wheel. I think that's the part people lose sight with regarding Nelson. He was one of the smoothest drivers out there with how he handled a car around the track even when he had 1200HP behind him in the Brabham in qualifying. His speed was incredibly deceptive in my opinion, because even when going fast, he never quite looked like he was going fast due to the smoothness of which he piloted around the track.