Red Bull junior Fittipaldi appears to have had brain surgery
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Enzo Fittipaldi is the newest member of the Red Bull Racing Academy. A nice reward for a driver who survived a very serious accident in Formula 2 last year. It now appears that his condition at the time was worse than known.
During the penultimate F2 race of 2021, Fittipaldi - grandson of two-time F1 champion Emerson - had a horrible starting accident. In Jeddah, he shattered his heel and needless to say, he had to miss out on the concluding weekend in Abu Dhabi. At the start of this season, Fittipaldi was already back on the grid, to have a season in which he finished eighth in the standings. Red Bull signed him this month as an Academy driver.
Brain haemorrhage
After the test in Abu Dhabi, he spoke The Race with his brother Pietro, who revealed that Enzo was in worse shape than thought after that crash. "A lot of people don’t know but when I was doing the test here last year [F1 Abu Dhabi young driver test], and I got COVID, I stayed stuck in quarantine for 14 days, that’s when he flew back home and he actually had brain haemorrhaging and they found it out and went to the emergency room. He had like very severe brain haemorrhaging so they had to do brain surgery on him and everything", said Pietro Fittipaldi.
It was close for Fittipaldi. His family did not expect Enzo to be back on the grid at the start of the season. Miraculously, he did it anyway. Next season, Enzo Pittipaldi will race again in F2, this time for the Carlin team. There, he replaces Liam Lawson (also a Red Bull driver), who is likely to go to the Japanese Super Formula.