Soames Langton's Fatal Crash @ Nogaro 1996 (Aftermath)
- 5 months ago
Soames Langton never recovered from his huge accident which happened on Sunday, 06 October 1996 during a BPR Global GT Endurance Series race at Nogaro, France. He passed away fourteen and a half years after the accident.
On 33rd lap of the Nogaro 4 Hours, the tenth and penultimate round of the 1996 GT world endurance championship, Soames Langton lost control of his Porsche 911 GT2 entered by Lanzante Motorsport, and crashed heavily against a wall. The medical staff at the track intervened almost immediately and the British driver who at the time was 29-year old, was airlifted unconscious to a hospital in Mont-de-Marsan, with serious head injuries. He was then taken to the intensive care unit of Bordeaux hospital, where doctors did their efforts to keep him alive during the months following the accident. He was later transferred to different hospitals in the UK, including Professor Sid Watkins’ clinic. Soames Langton was permanently disabled, suffering cerebral dysfunction. He was in a coma for a number of years and returned home only in the early 2000s, after numerous years of rehabilitation. He was in a state that is defined by doctors as the "Locked-in syndrome”, a condition in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. "It looked like he was trapped behind a wall", described one of his friends after visiting him. This condition lasted for the rest of Soames Langton’s life.
R.I.P
On 33rd lap of the Nogaro 4 Hours, the tenth and penultimate round of the 1996 GT world endurance championship, Soames Langton lost control of his Porsche 911 GT2 entered by Lanzante Motorsport, and crashed heavily against a wall. The medical staff at the track intervened almost immediately and the British driver who at the time was 29-year old, was airlifted unconscious to a hospital in Mont-de-Marsan, with serious head injuries. He was then taken to the intensive care unit of Bordeaux hospital, where doctors did their efforts to keep him alive during the months following the accident. He was later transferred to different hospitals in the UK, including Professor Sid Watkins’ clinic. Soames Langton was permanently disabled, suffering cerebral dysfunction. He was in a coma for a number of years and returned home only in the early 2000s, after numerous years of rehabilitation. He was in a state that is defined by doctors as the "Locked-in syndrome”, a condition in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. "It looked like he was trapped behind a wall", described one of his friends after visiting him. This condition lasted for the rest of Soames Langton’s life.
R.I.P