The family of Jules Bianchi says the French Formula One driver has died from head injuries sustained in a crash at last year’s Japanese Grand Prix, reports The Guardian.
The news was posted on Bianchi’s official Twitter feed early on Saturday morning French time and later confirmed by the Manor F1 team.
Bianchi, 25, had been in a coma since the accident in October 2014, in which he collided at high speed with a mobile crane which was being used to pick up another crashed car.
The family statement said “Jules fought right to the very end, as he always did, but today his battle came to an end. The pain we feel is immense and indescribable.”
Bianchi competed in 34 races over the 2013 and 2014 seasons, scoring the first ever championship points for Manor then known as Marussia by finishing ninth at last year’s Monaco Grand Prix.
The Manor team tweeted: “We are devastated to lose Jules after such a hard-fought battle. It was a privilege to have him race for our team.”
Bianchi died at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in his hometown of Nice, where he had been since his emergency treatment in Japan in the days after the accident.
“We wish to thank the medical staff at Nice’s CHU who looked after him with love and dedication,” the family statement said. “We also thank the staff of the General Medical Center in the Mie Prefecture [Japan] who looked after Jules immediately after the accident, as well as all the other doctors who have been involved with his care over the past months.
“Furthermore, we thank Jules’ colleagues, friends, fans and everyone who has demonstrated their affection for him over these past months, which gave us great strength and helped us deal with such difficult times.”
Bianchi’s accident occurred at the end of the race at Suzuka. In rainy, gloomy conditions, Bianchi’s car slid off the track and ploughed into a crane picking up the Sauber of German driver Adrian Sutil, who had crashed out at the same spot one lap earlier.
The section of the track where the accident occurred was subject to double yellow flags from race stewards, due to Sutil’s crash. But they failed to prevent a second accident.
A working group of the sport’s governing body, the FIA, investigated the accident and found that as Bianchi went off track into the run-off area, he “applied both throttle and brake together, using both feet” and thus over-riding the failsafe mechanism. His front wheels had also locked. It also said that Bianchi “did not slow sufficiently to avoid losing control.”
The findings of the working group prompted F1 to alter its rules, allowing a ‘virtual safety car’ in which race stewards can neutralise a race, forcing all cars to proceed slowly into the pit lane.