Imola at 20: A dreadful weekend relived

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

There are some moments where if you were old enough, you will remember where you were when a historic moment occurred. Events such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, 9/11, 7/7 and Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 probably spring to immediate thoughts.

Those connected with the world of sport will have the same when relieving the 2003 Rugby World Cup final, England’s 5-1 football win over Germany two years earlier and Super Saturday at the Olympics in London. If you can remember, the same sadly applies to the events of the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Motorsport is dangerous, it always has been and always will be but no-one could predict the horrific chain reaction of accidents that marred the weekend at the Imola circuit in April/May 1994. By the end of the weekend, mechanics and spectators had been hurt, and two drivers had been killed on consecutive days – one of them perhaps the greatest human being ever to have sat behind a steering wheel – Ayrton Senna.

20 years on and in a series of daily posts on Viewing Perspectives – I reflect on San Marino 1994 as we approach this sad and painful anniversary. Whilst my Formula One passion has dwindled in the last year, the past can’t be ignored. Coming up this week, there will be pieces on the rule changes, the pain the Simtek team had to deal with following Roland Ratzenberger’s death and pay tribute to Ayrton Senna by choosing his top five races of his career.

However, it is only appropriate to start this series, Imola at 20 with a lookback at just what occurred on Friday 29 April, Saturday 30 April and Sunday 1 May 1994.

Early warnings

The paddock arrived at the popular Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari for the third round of the 1994 championship. German wunderkind Michael Schumacher had comfortably won the first two events in Brazil and at the TI Aida track under the Pacific Grand Prix banner. 

Championship favourite Ayrton Senna had scored absolutely nothing in points and was under pressure to deliver. Autosport magazine ran on their front cover SCHUMACHER 20, SENNA 0 in their preview to the weekend.

Senna was a previous three-time winner at the track and was desperate to perform, despite still big concerns about the handling of the evil Williams Renault FW16. He set the pace in Friday qualifying by some distance but reported to his race engineer David Brown that the balance was worse than it had been a fortnight earlier at the tight and twisty Aida track.

Friday brought a chilling omen though to the weekend’s forthcoming events. Early on in Friday qualifying, Rubens Barrichello had a massive accident at the Variante Bassa. The Jordan driver overshot the chicane and somersaulted into the barriers, narrowly avoiding catch fencing that probably would have killed him. Despite the ferocity of the accident, Barrichello suffered only minor cuts, bruises and a broken nose but his weekend was over.

Everyone hoped that would be the only lucky escape of the weekend but F1’s luck was about to run out.

Luck runs out on the sport

Around 18 minutes into Saturday’s second qualifying session, 31-year-old Austrian rookie Roland Ratzenberger left the circuit at the flat-out Villeneuve kink on the approach to the Tosa hairpin. Ratzenberger was travelling at close to 200mph, unaware that an excursion on a previous lap had damaged the front wing of his Simtek Ford. As he went to start his next flying lap, the wing weakened and fell off exiting Tamburello. With no control on his steering or braking, he stood little chance.

The impact was destructive as the wrecked chassis finally reached a stop point at Tosa, with Ratzenberger slumped in the cockpit and clearly in big trouble. Marshals quickly gathered around him to prevent any further distressing images to television viewers around the globe. The fraternity was stunned – Senna close to tears in the Williams garage when he realised how big the shunt had been. He went down to the scene of the crash to see the damage for himself. 

When he got back, he told Brown and teammate Damon Hill that he had no chance of surviving.

Sure enough, FIA press officer Martin Whittaker had the tough task of confirming the death of Roland Ratzenberger on arrival at the Maggiore Hospital in Bologna. His fatality was the first in a Formula One racing car in eight years – the last being Elio de Angelis perishing at the wheel of a Brabham during a test session at Paul Ricard, France in 1986. The last driver to die on a racing weekend was Riccardo Paletti at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix.

Qualifying did resume but Benetton, Williams and Sauber immediately withdrew from carrying on that day. Everyone looked lost and wondered what they were doing racing in these circumstances. Senna claimed a joyless 65^th pole position from Schumacher, Ferrari favourite Gerhard Berger and Hill. If Saturday had been a hellish day, Sunday would be even worse.

The king of racing is dead

Sunday morning began with a minute’s silence and the confirmation of the reformation of the GPDA (Grand Prix Drivers’ Association). Three-time world champion Niki Lauda would chair the new committee with a meeting scheduled to improve safety from the next event in Monaco two weeks after Imola. Senna, Berger and Schumacher were among the prime movers.

With Ratzenberger’s fatal crash still on everyone’s mind, the show must go on and the 25 cars lined up for the start of the race. Senna looked pensive and very thoughtful on the starting grid as he sat in his FW16 chassis. This wasn’t a weekend for happy faces.

At the green light, there was more trouble. The unsighted Lotus of Pedro Lamy careered into the stalled Benetton of JJ Lehto on the grid. Lamy’s car was shattered but the Portuguese driver walked away without injury. Lehto likewise but an errant tyre from the Lotus vaulted a fence and entered an area where spectators were located. A policeman and seven fans were injured by the flying debris, although lightly in comparison to the weekend’s earlier events.

Rather than choose to halt proceedings, the safety car was deployed whilst marshals cleared up the wrecked cars and the various pieces of carbon fibre. Senna still led Schumacher, Berger, Hill and the fast-starting Sauber Mercedes of Heinz-Harald Frentzen. After five laps at reduced speed, the race restarted again with the top two breaking away considerably from the chasing pack.

The wrecked Williams of Ayrton Senna is returned to the pits

Senna had been faster than Schumacher all weekend but the Benetton’s aggressive three-stop strategy plan meant he was keeping up with the Brazilian. Entering Tamburello on lap seven, Senna’s car went straight on rather than turning to the left kink of the bend. He was powerless to correct the car and headed straight for the concrete wall. The Williams rebounded towards the racing track, stopping just short of the tarmac in a crumpled wreck (pictured being taken back to the pits) with the Brazilian motionless. The race was stopped.

From an early stage, it became clear that Senna was at best gravely injured. The accident had been heavy but he would have walked away unharmed had it not been for a piece of suspension assembly from the car that broke away and pierced the great man’s helmet. Professor Sid Watkins and the rest of the medical team got to work and a helicopter quickly arrived on the circuit. Watkins later revealed that when he got to the scene, he could see that from Senna’s neurological signs, it would be a fatal accident.

After 45 minutes of work, Senna was airlifted to hospital in Bologna and the race was unbelievably restarted. For the record, Schumacher was beaten off the line by Berger but quickly passed the Ferrari and went on to win by over a minute from the second Ferrari of Nicola Larini and Mika Hakkinen’s McLaren Peugeot. Berger retired due to a handling imbalance with his car, whilst Hill finished a lapped sixth after contact with Schumacher on the first lap of the restart. There was also another accident in the pitlane that injured mechanics from Ferrari and Lotus when an errant wheel came off Michele Alboreto’s Minardi after his second pitstop.

The most important thing now was to find out Senna’s condition. The news came through before 6pm UK time that he was clinically dead at the age of just 34, as confirmed by Sky News (video below).

It had been a truly terrible weekend and 20 years on – the pain for those closely associated to both Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna will never go away. Both left memories and they will never be forgotten by anyone who is involved in the Grand Prix fraternity today.

Categories: 1994, Ayrton Senna, Death, Imola, Motorsport, Roland Ratzenberger, Rubens Barrichello, San Marino, Simtek, Williams

Ayrton Senna - Was the Brazilian the greatest of all-time?

By Simon Wright

Today marks the 19^th anniversary of the passing of one of Formula One’s greatest ever drivers, Ayrton Senna (pictured).

The three-time world champion was a national hero in Brazil, at a time where the country wasn’t experiencing the best of periods.  For many locals, he brought the nation together, and his 41 Grand Prix victories all had their own special moments.

Not everyone endeared themselves to Senna’s ability.  His ruthlessness and determination to win led to some high-profile controversial moments.

The feud with Alain Prost pushed Grand Prix racing into the sporting limelight in the late 80s and early 90s.  There were the regular run-ins with the flamboyant FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre, and raging battles with the likes of Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and in his final days, Michael Schumacher.

One of F1’s unanswered questions we will never know will be whether Senna at his peak, aged 34 could have defeated the young wonder in Schumacher.  Certainly, the Benetton Ford package at the start of 1994 had the upper hand on the evil-handling Williams Renault FW16.  It was Schumacher 20, Senna 0 in points heading to Imola.

However, the Brazilian persisted with a car that was certainly not to his liking, and was dominant all weekend at the San Marino Grand Prix meeting.  He was leading going into lap seven and then, he perished at one of F1’s most feared corners at the time, Tamburello.

What made him so great?

There were two great qualities for me that made Senna stand out from the normal driver.  They were the wet weather ability and the amount of pole positions he collected in his career.

When the rain comes down, some drivers have the ability to make the genuine difference.  Jean Alesi, Wolfgang von Trips, Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton have shown their quality in tricky conditions throughout their careers, but there was something uniquely different about Senna.

The first signs came in his debut season in 1984, when he charged around the streets of Monte Carlo in filthy weather.  From 12^th on the grid, he took the underpowered Toleman unit into second place, with some brave and devilish overtaking.  Had it not been for a slightly convenient red flag, he probably would have caught Prost in the McLaren and won the race.

A year later, the Brazilian transferred to the Lotus stable and in Portugal, just his second race for them, he destroyed the competition in wet weather lapping all but one car.

It was the first of his victories, and he repeated his skill when the skies opened on several more occasions.

His first lap at Donington on a damp, dull Easter weekend in 1993 is in my mind, the greatest first lap I’ve ever seen in Grand Prix racing.  The skill, the commitment and the delicate approach he would take in the wet was masterful.

From the start of the Lotus days, Senna’s ability to be the fastest over a single flying lap became legendary.  There were times where he would still set laps much faster than other competitors, even when he had to deal with slow moving EuroBrun or Coloni cars infront (two of the hard-trying backmarker teams in the late 1980s).

He achieved 65 pole positions, the last one coming on Saturday, 30 April 1994 – a day before he paid the ultimate price.  Schumacher has beaten this figure, but it took him 15 years to do it, and Sebastian Vettel has every chance nowadays to top this list.

However, neither can compare to what Senna could do on a quick lap.  Don’t forget, these were the days of qualifying cars, monstrous V12 engines, and having to make manual gear changes on a regular basis.

And one record that still remains is his six victories around Monaco.  At Monte Carlo, he was almost virtually unbeatable.

The detractors

His ruthless approach to winning sometimes cost Senna, and it didn’t win him many friends.

The feud with Prost which started when they became McLaren team-mates in 1988 was gold dust for the race promoters and the neutral spectators.  At a time where if you weren’t in a McLaren, you could forget winning – they produced some classic battles.

Senna frightened Prost when he drove him towards the pitwall in Portugal in 1988, but that was only the start of things to come.

He didn’t make any friends for breaking an agreement made at his behest with Prost at Imola in 1989.

Senna wanted the pair to agree on whoever led off the startline to win the race.  On the restart after Gerhard Berger’s fiery accident, The Professor got the better getaway, but Senna broke the agreement into Tosa on the first circuit, broke away and won the race by miles.

Prost refused to attend the press conference and the cordial relationship was over – similar to what is happening at Red Bull in today’s paddock.

No-one will forget the clashes at Suzuka in 1989 and 1990.  Some feel Senna was harshly treated in 1989 when he was disqualified for receiving outside assistance.  In 1990, he had enough of the bickering, and pulled off a dangerous move that could have had worse consequences.

So annoyed the pole position had been moved onto the dirtier side of the track, he vowed to punish Prost if he turned into the first corner first.  That’s exactly what happened, and the result was catastrophic.

The pair ended in the gravel, and into the tyres.  They strapped themselves out of their cars, neither talking to the other and Senna was hiding a massive secret.

He had deliberately crashed into Prost, but that was something he only admitted after wrapping up his third title in 1991.

There will be those detractors, who will never forgive him for this act of frankly disgusting driving, but everyone has made mistakes, and most have some kind of darker side or done something we are not proud of, but at the time thought it was okay.

Was he the best?

It is almost impossible to declare who is the greatest Grand Prix driver of all-time?  

Schumacher might have most of the records, but then Prost was the most measured, Juan Manuel Fangio the best in an era where you had a 50 per cent of dying, Jim Clark was the best when it came to protecting an inter-team relationship, Fernando Alonso the best when it comes to consistently getting the job done, no matter the equipment at his disposal.

So I don’t want to make comparisons, considering these were different eras, different cars, different circuits and different safety regulations.  However, in his prime – Ayrton Senna was the best of his generation.

When he died at the wheel of the Williams on Sunday, 1 May 1994 – he became a legend that will never ever be forgotten, no matter of the legacy he left.

19 years on – F1 has moved on, but devoted fans will always remember Senna’s personality and genius behind the wheel of a racing car.

Categories: Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Brazil, FISA, Formula One, Imola, Jean-Marie Balestre, Lotus, San Marino, Williams