Sid Watkins

Romain Grosjean's awful crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, towards the end of the Formula 1 season, when he was attended within seconds by Alan van der Merwe and Ian Roberts in the medical car, and evacuated to hospital by helicopter, made me look up Dr Sid Watkins, an earlier medical officer in Formula 1.  

Sid Watkins was a neurosurgeon, a published researcher who also compiled two brain atlases.   He was always interested in motor racing and had already had a medical role at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, and at races near where he had worked in the United States, when he was appointed by Bernie Ecclestone, then head of Formula 1, to work in that role.

After the death of the driver Ronnie Peterson in September 1978, Watkins instigated a medical car, with doctor and anaesthetist, which followed the racing cars during the first lap, as it did that Sunday in Bahrain.   He also instigated evacuation helicopters.

After the crash which killed Ayrton Senna in 1994, he became convenor of an FIA expert advisory committee on safety.

Watkins has publications in PubMed (he is Watkins ES, although there is another writer of the same name and initials who writes about non neurosurgical topics), and there is one biographical article about him (which I used for this post):

Schweder PM, Pereira EA, Green A, Aziz TZ.  Eric Sidney Watkins, British Journal of Neurosurgery. 2009;23:570-3.

PubMed indexes one article by Watkins about Formula 1, which I have not seen in full: 

Watkins ES. The physiology and pathology of formula 1 Grand Prix motor racing.  Clinical Neurosurgery. 2006;53:145-52.