Death of Spanish F1 driver Maria de Villota may be linked to existing head injury

There is growing speculation about the cause of death of Maria de Villota, the Spanish F1 driver who was sadly found dead in her hotel room on Friday morning.

De Villota had suffered serious head injuries and lost her right eye when she was testing a car in Cambridgeshire in July 2012 and hit by another vehicle at travelling at 40 mph. Despite what seemed to be a remarkable recovery over the last year, its is possible that that this was linked to her tragic death, and her family have released a statement saying: “Maria left us while she was sleeping, approximately at 6am (on Friday), as a consequence of the neurological injuries she suffered in July of 2012, according to what the forensic doctor has told us.”

It has been a particularly shocking turn of events as the 33-year-old was given the all-clear to resume driving again in February 2013 and had written a book about the accident, which she was promoting in Seville when she died. According to media sources in Spain, the autopsy, carried out in Seville’s Forensic Institute, confirmed her death as “due to completely natural causes”.

However, Stuart Ross, the neurosurgeon who treated Top Gear’s Richard Hammond for head injuries, believes that her death may have been caused by epilepsy. He said: “The only obvious connection I can see between the injury and her death is that she could have developed seizures after her head injury and she happened to have a big seizure in the hotel room,” he said. “After a knock on the head or any brain injury, there’s a possibility of developing epilepsy. That could happen 14 months down the line, even if she had not had a seizure in the interim.”

A Health and Safety Executive spokeswoman connected with the incident said that an investigation launched immediately after the accident was still on-going, adding “We don’t know if there is a link between her injuries and her subsequent death but we would expect to be kept informed of any new evidence.”

Read the source article here
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/motor-racing/family-links-spanish-f1-driver-maria-de-villotas-death-to-cambridgeshire-crash-8876150.html