Remembering Riccardo Paletti

[Bauer]

June 15, 1958 - June 13, 1982

Jason made comment in the Senna thread that no one remembers Paletti. I do.

While certainly true that I had to look up the date, I do remember this day in 1982 as it was the very first GP that I got out of bed in the middle of the night to watch. I was in grade 8 and on school holidays and I set the alarm, grabbed a blanket and turned the sound down so mum and dad wouldn't wake up from the noise. I know this race didn't hook me in as I don't remember watching many more at that age. I really don't remember why I decided to watch this race and for all I know now, it may well have been a replay that pretended to be "live".

[w00dsy]

The poor bastard not only smashed into the back of a stalled car, probably killing him, but then his car caught fire, finishing the poor guy off. It was the first time I saw someone die and it was shocking for a kid my age.

[J.D.]

I remember it well. This whole thing was a perfect storm of unpleasant coincidences too.

I was a big F1 fan then and had been following Villeneuve for a few years. He had died 5 weeks earlier, in Belgium, after a row with Pironi. Canada was still in shock following Villeneuve's death and had named the Montreal circuit after him. It was Pironi's car which had stalled and Paletti, unsighted, ran into the back of him. Word at the time was that for some unknown reason, Paletti was looking down. Whether he was distracted by something or not we'll never know but he hit the back of Pironi's Ferrari at about 160 km/h.

This was in the days before carbon fibre monocoques and the Osella chassis just folded up. Poor Paletti had no chance. He was two days short of his 23rd birthday.

I remember the horrible sight of a massive pall of black smoke and the helicopter shot looking down on the wreckage. It was far worse to look at than the same shot of Senna's crash. There was shit everywhere, car parts, fire retardant foam, scorch marks, extinguishers and people. The cause of death was listed as massive injuries to the head and thorax (read; basilar skull fracture which also killed both Ratzenberger and Senna) and chest injuries from the impact with the steering column. His legs would have been smashed beyond repair too because F1 cars of that era had the driver's feet well in front of the front axle.

A lot of people criticised Paletti's backers for putting him in a Formula 1 car but then there was a lot of blaming and criticising going on at the time anyway. He had relatively little experience and admitted to being a bit daunted by the whole thing. Poor bloke. It was only his second GP start.

[ysu]

There are people who seem to have a nice future and suddenly die, and we seldom know or remember them, even if they were great. Sadly this is especially true for motorsport.

For example this chap, Csaba Kesjar, was a Hungarian racer, he was really good, very quickly made it up to F3 very quickly - and at a race he suddenly just run straight into a wall instead of taking the corner. At that time they didn't really know how or why, I think they just assumed it was brake failure. But the lack of steering is still unexplained. It looked almost like he just blacked out. But he was a young and fit bloke so why would he?

[Bauer]

I moved from an iPhone to a Pixel 3 and it wasn’t enough to have me miss the date.

A thought has been spared.


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[w00dsy]

[Bauer]

Spared another thought.

No calendar reminder this time either. I appear to have moved to a more organic system this year. I doubt the new system will be as reliable.


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