Handed a Guedel device, the consultant used the plastic tube to reposition her tongue. It was possible to hear the effect almost at once; the rasping noise through her tracheotomy ceased. Her natural airway was clear again. Sabatino was back to breathing “unaided”.
Rather than rely on her natural breathing, though, Uglov decided to keep the artificial airway open, just in case. He secured the tracheotomy tube by applying tapes around the back of the driver's neck.
Sabatino was rendered completely naked. Uglov conducted a systematic examination, looking for obvious wounds and injuries. But he wanted clarity on what internal injuries Sabatino might have suffered. Uglov ordered that she be wheeled off for a full-body scan.
At that moment, at least, the Formula One driver was still alive.
Just.
Out on the grassy bank, the swarm of medical personnel were attending the injuries of the spectators. More sirens could be heard approaching the crash site. Four vehicles pulled up on the outside of the Hermitage corner. These, too, were showing blue flashing lights, but they weren’t ambulances.
From the leading police car a tall thin man in his early forties climbed from the passenger seat. Short blond hair showed beneath his dark-blue and scarlet peaked cap. Police Colonel Arseny Pudovkin's eyes were set high in his face, and, with such prominent cheekbones, the lower part of his face seemed to bow inwards. They did so to a thin, humourless mouth. His rugged expression, projected naturally by his face, was a large part of Pudovkin's command and control. He wore a pale blue uniform with flashes of scarlet and two gold stars on each shoulder. A 9mm Makarov semi-automatic pistol was holstered on his left hip. In his right hand, Police Colonel Pudovkin carried a bullhorn. Other policemen climbed from their cars and converged on the colonel. He conducted a short briefing. Pudovkin's orders were issued crisply and confidently. Then he gave the word.
His team fanned out.
The colonel raised the bullhorn to his lips, and, pointing the loudspeaker in the direction of the people on the crash site above him, announced:
‘This is the Moscow Police. Be informed that this is now a crime scene. Do not touch anything – remove anything – without official police authorization.’
To the medics this was outrageous: how could they provide their best care if they could not spontaneously move the injured?
Several lines of blue-and-white tape were quickly unrolled – encircling the area of the crash and the working medics. This was then suspended at waist-height on a series of four-foot plastic poles driven into the ground.
In no time at all, a police cordon had been imposed around them.
The Grand Prix crash site had been impounded.
TWELVE
Within moments of the crash, the death toll among the spectators was estimated at twenty-five. With no official denial or confirmation, this number soon became fact. That number, alone, sent the media around the world into a state of frenzy. As a story, this tragedy had everything sensation-hungry news channels could want: A spectacular crash. A world-name celebrity. A dramatic heliborne evacuation. Graphic scenes of devastation and damage. And an already-high but very-possibly rising body count. Correspondents were rapidly dispatched to Moscow, not just by news outlets within Russia but also from across the world.
Television and radio editors were having a field day. To supplement their reports and bulletins, they set about raiding their archives. Every crash throughout the history of Formula One, Le Mans, IndyCar, NASCAR and rallying was worked into the coverage of the unfolding tragedy at the Zhar-ptitsa Autodrom in Moscow. Commentators drew parallels with Ayrton Senna's crash at the Tamburello in 1994. The grotesque conclusion was that, already, the Moscow crash was somehow worse, because spectators had been killed. The 1986 Group B Portuguese Rally and even the Pierre Levegh catastrophe at Le Mans in 1955 were cited. Wolfgang Von Trips's crash at Monza – when fifteen spectators had been killed in 1961 – was considered the closest parallel in the history of Formula One. There was an alarming common denominator to all these disasters, though. There seemed to be an assumption – in referencing these particular crashes – that Sabatino was already dead.
Coverage of the Russian Grand Prix story quickly became all that anyone could talk about.
Fuelling the frenzy was the absence of any public response from the FIA, the venue or the local authority. After an hour, when the first cycle of the news channels had been completed, the television stations were screaming for new commentary and observations. With no new official facts, the inevitable speculation started. Everything about Formula One began to be discussed and criticized – from its governance, its safety regime, to the greed of high-profile businessmen involved with the sport. In hardly any time at all, the media were able to draw an unshakeable conclusion: that Formula One had, for a long time, been an accident waiting to happen.
Long before the press conference – scheduled for eight o’clock that evening – journalists were congregating in the principal ZiL Ballroom inside the main grandstand of the Zhar-ptitsa complex. Fifteen hundred people were crammed into this room. The press corps didn’t want to miss out and so were getting in early, to set up well ahead of time. The news hyenas were waiting for something to kick off the next bout of the feeding frenzy.
Within the Autodrom complex, a number of ad hoc meetings were called that afternoon. The two meetings – hosted by the FIA and the local authority – went ahead despite clashing with each other, meaning that neither was attended by a critical mass of the necessary stakeholders. Within the FIA meeting there was much discussion among the powers that be. Divergent ideas came from the FIA, the commercial rights holder and the F1 teams. All seemed completely fazed. In very short order, every discussion became rambling and inconclusive.
Formula One had never had to deal with such a disaster before. It had had its tragedies and losses, but those were mainly confined to its own kind. Never in living F1 history had so many members of the public been hurt. Heated arguments failed to conclude what their response to this tragedy should be, or decide any course of action. One unproductive exchange concerned the press statement and what the sport should be saying. All the discussion, though, was on what it shouldn’t say. Several stakeholders declared that any indication of remorse would be construed as an admission of guilt, and therefore an admission of liability. Others countered vehemently that, with an understanding that twenty-six people were now thought to have been killed, they had to express regret, surely?
Next, they tried to decide what they should announce by way of an investigation. Should they be inviting an independent enquiry, or would they handle a review internally? How would that, though, play with the public? Would it be enough?
Finally, there was considerable agitation over who should front the press conference. This issue was so sensitive – and clearly invoking such emotion – that everyone realized it would need someone with a huge stage presence and gravitas to project the right response. Few of the normally publicity-hungry figures in the sport were keen to step forward. Ironically, there soon developed a readiness to defer to an individual with whom most of them would normally disagree fiercely.
The Marquis of San Marino, the president of the FIA, was already flying in to Russia that afternoon. As head of the governing body, and therefore the organization that set the rules, he was usually seen as a dampener on the other stakeholders’ interests: safety cost money; new limitations on the cars and teams, as set out in the Formula, all cost them money; even the attempt to broaden the sport, making it accessible for smaller teams to compete – by influencing the distribution of the proceeds from the TV and sponsorship rights via the Concorde Agreement – cost the bigger teams money. Consequently, the FIA president was typically seen as a negative influence – as a brake on the other stakeholders’ commercial interests and freedoms.
But not today.
All such resentments were readily yielded to the authority and soothing power of this patrician figure.
By special arrangement, San Marino landed at the corporately owned Ostafyevo International Airport, not far from the Auto-drom. A car was waiting for him there, as was a team of local police outriders.
Whisked through the Sunday afternoon traffic, San Marino arrived at the Zhar-ptitsa circuit just after six o’clock that evening and asked, without stopping to freshen up, eat or drink, to be taken straight to the room where his FIA team was meeting.
Looking like a 1950s film star, he walked in among the baying rabble of motor racing's key players. Almost instantaneously the mood changed. The room quietened as all eyes turned to him.
In a matter of minutes, San Marino laid out clearly what was needed – how it should be handled and, most importantly, who had responsibility for doing what.
At precisely eight o’clock that evening, the 7th Marquis of San Marino walked into the thronging ZiL Ballroom within the Zhar-ptitsa complex and mounted the dais. He was hit with dozens of bright halogen lights from the bank of TV cameras along the back wall, a stroboscopic barrage of flash guns, as well as a crescendo of voices.
San Marino walked over to stand behind the lectern. He was partially blocked from view by the mountain of microphones secured to each other with gaffer tape. Before speaking, San Marino had the presence to look out into the faces of the multitude: journalists, photographers, sound recordists, cameras and cameramen. To each side, the aisles were six deep with people on their feet.
Appearing completely composed, the president of the FIA – without reference to notes – prepared to address the room. As he removed his half-moon spectacles, the noise levels dropped.
‘Motor racing's first response to this horrible afternoon,’ he said in English with his soft Italian accent, ‘is to look the people of Moscow and Russia in the eye and apologize. We – all of us in Formula One – are devastated by the hurt we have caused to this city. This was not what anyone was expecting when you graciously invited us and our sport to come here.
‘Our second response is to state that, without reservation, all of us involved in the sport will participate fully in any enquiry called to investigate this tragedy. As a starting point, I undertake to conduct a full enquiry within the International Automobile Federation, appointing independent experts to assess this accident. I am keen to make it clear that, as its president, I will readily surrender the FIA's jurisdiction and powers to any inquiry launched by the Russian people.’
Flashguns were fired in repeated fusillades as thousands of pictures were taken.
San Marino did not want to say more than necessary, for fear of appearing to pad the response or to be waffling, either of which could be construed as evasion or obfuscation. He had already said all he wanted.
Respectfully the room fell silent.
At first.
