993GT2

The news here in Brazil are that he is in coma and will have a scan early sunday morning.

For now, let's have the most positive thinking for him and his family

caf

Not to be too cynical, but typically they always say the surgery was "successful" unless the patient dies. Only time will tell how Massa does. He needs to get through the acute and sub-acute phase of the brain injury, and it will be at least a few days before we know how he'll do. As far as his driving career, I'd also be worried about the damage to his eye/orbital area; it looks like he took a considerable hit there, and I doubt that they'll be able to fully evaluate that until he's further down the road to recovery.

In the meantime, I'll be thinking positive thoughts and hoping he can bounce back fully. I'd be surprised if he's back at all this season, though.

onefastviking

The dr's doing a drug induced coma in an injury like this is not uncommon.

LDadrenaline

damn did not realize it was this bad when I first heard the news. Hope he pulls through successfully.

stuttgart46

I knew something was wrong when the engine was still running with him stuffed into the wall. His wife is expecting to make matters worse.

333pg333

His wife??
How does a spring come off a car? What spring?? It's hard to see what happens in the video. Just looks like he went straight were he was meant to turn. Perhaps this spring knocked him out or stunned him?

early_grayce

At 29-30seconds of the video you see a black object come out of the top left of the screen. It hits him in the head and you can see his head rattle and then go still. The object was an 800 gram spring hitting him in the head at >300km/h. I'm not so strong at physics, but that's a serious load.
It tore through his visor and caused the cut +/- fracture above his eye, probably giving him a concussion, made him drowsy, and of course he had no vision as his visor was torn... probably came-to just enough to lock up the brakes. Scary stuff.
I wish him well...

993GT2

his wife is expecting the birth of their fisrt child for november, his son's name will be Felipe Jr.

onefastviking

I was wondering the same about the spring.
Yes, you can see it (spring?) hit his helmet then bounce off near in car camera. Immediatly after spring impacts, and his head bounces around, you can hear throttle drop slightly and then you see no further inputs from him. Watch youtube video, impact at 30 second point.

jmreiser

They explained the spring during Speed's coverage of qualifying after the incident. They use 3 springs back there. Two softer ones for normal driving, then they have a third "heavy" or "heave" spring which is to hold up the car's ride height under high aero loads. It was the heave spring that flew off. The FIA was all over the back of Jenson's car looking for an assurance the same would not happen again. This delay helped cause Jenson to qualify poorly.

Fingers crossed for Felipe. That he waved to the crowd after being pulled from the car was a great sign.

ajcjr

the spring they said weighs about a pound but at there speeds it was a dangerous weapon. I thought he would be ok when he waived his hands to the crowd, lets hope he is ok.

Coochas

I can't see Barrichello's car in the video suggesting that the spring must have been launched fairly high the air before being clipped by Massa.

the flyin' scotsman

Get well soon Felipe........godspeed

Geo

OMG the photo that Flying Finn posted just dropped me in my tracks.

This is seriously scary. That is a state of the art carbon fiber helmet (hopefully with some Kevlar as well).

Between this and Surtees, it just brings back too many BAD memories of Imola in 94....

APKhaos

If you go through the video frame by frame, the impact with the spring is much worse than it appears. If that's not enough, there's a solid imact with the steering wheel as the car hits the tire wall. The restraints didn't appear to do their job very well. I've isolated the frames, but won't post them.

Good news is that the skull around the eyes is a progressive crumple zone. Lots of small bones there that can fail before any damage to the eye or optic nerve happens. Hopefully, FM will recover fully despite a nasty concussion and some bone damage.

For the nerds in the crowd, the spring weighs around 800grams which at the 200KPH yields an energy of around 20,000joules. This is in the range of an AK47 round, but obviously spread over a wider area. It was a serious impact.