This is inspired by, but not limited to Antonelli’s crash yesterday. Hadn’t heard he’d cancelled interviews due to dizziness. My ongoing view is that there isn’t enough saving teams and drivers from themselves when both are desperate for the driver to just get back in the car.
@DreHarrison1ø1
The most concerning thing about Antonelli isn’t the pace? It’s the fact the man had a 42G impact, cancelled his media commitments citing dizziness, then got back in an F2 car again to qualify.
We’re still deeply unserious on head injuries in Motorsport.
To answer the question of the thread. The answer is a solid no.
As someone who has suffered multiple TBI and knows some of what it is like to suffer PCS there is absolutely no way that it is right for him to race.
Anyone with any knowledge of TBI knows that successive TBI especially before the brain has healed can be devastating.
While my TBI was more than a concussion, it obviously was a concussion, but it was also a broken skull, brain hemorrhage. To later learn that it "was good that you cracked you skull as then we didn't have to drill a hole to relieve the pressure from the bleed" was... interesting.
Regardless, this was in September on my way to school, I had just come off a my best ever karting-results the day before, 2nd in the unofficial junior championship in my country (not official due to rules about official championships for youth in all sports here), and obviously wanted to get back ASAP.
I spent a week at the hospital, they wanted to keep me for another week, but with an aunt who worked at the hospital as a nurse, and she, together with the doc giving me and my parents extremely strict rules of what I could do (not what I couldn't do, as the list of what I could do, meant anything outside that list was strictly not allowed). In reality the only difference being at home was that I was home and could lie in other places. I was not allowed to do anything other that eat, drink, walk around at home and sit/lie down. At the end of the 2nd week, I was allowed to read comics, as there were more pictures than text, so it didn't "wear" on my brain.
It took me over 2 weeks to be allowed to watch 1hr of TV each day, and it took me until late Jan/early Feb before I was allowed to do PE at school, but then, only running and "alone physicals".
I was allowed to step back in a kart in April the next year. It took over 6 months from the accident until I was allowed to do any laps again. I felt totally fine in November already, just some issues with speech as that's where the brain bleed was, so I had aphasia when I was at hospital. While the brain healed as much as it could, I have scarring and scar-tissue on my brain, which does mean I have a lasting brain injury. Regardless, even though I felt fine, it took a bit over 4 months from I felt fine until I got the clear from the different docs. Well, I got a "We cannot recommend it, but you are now allowed to if you want", and a "The brain often heals well from the first injury, if you get a new injury it much less chance of a recovery".
Over two years later I had my last tests to check for lasting damage, and apparently have some damage that will impact, to some degree, the speech, short-term memory and fine motorics on the right side of my body.
I did go back to karting, got another 2nd place almost on the date, 1 year after my accident (the weekend before), but money fizzled out and that was my career. Did some RX later, and have tried to do one race a year the last 7-8 years in some form, usually a 6hr race. However, there are times where I get aware that it is extra risky in case of an accident. I don't have that danger when being in race control, or a steward, scrutineer or similar. But that doesn't give me that calmness inside either.
But.. there should be extremely strict protocols for head injuries, and they should strive to have an as neutral part as possible do it. As the teams don't want to be a car down, or find a very late replacement, and the FOM & FIA don't want to lose a name like Hamilton or Verstappen, and shouldn't be able to have any impact on the decision.
