A nightmare weekend for Formula 1 in Imola lasting 30 years. That damned Grand Prix, always in everyone’s memory due to the death of the legend Ayrton Senna, who will be remembered with a series of celebrations starting yesterday evening on the Enzo and Dino Ferrari Autodrome where ministers and personalities from the Circus will be present today, began precisely on April 30, 1994, and with another drama: the death of 34-year-old Roland Ratzenberger. That unfortunate Austrian driver who, in order to fulfill his desire to race in F1, accepted Simtek Ford, a rookie team sponsored by MTV. He did not qualify in Brazil, he came 11th in Aida. Then came Imola where qualifying, a few hours after another serious accident involving Rubens Barrichello, proved fatal.
On that sunny Saturday afternoon something goes dramatically wrong at the worst time and in the worst place, after the Tamburello which in Imola until ’94 was done at full throttle and then always arrived at full throttle in the dive of the curve named after Gilles Villenueve. The Austrian driver’s Simtec is unable to exit that curve, the wing gives way and the single-seater, ungovernable, crashes into the track wall at over 300 per hour with an impossible impact angle.
A tragedy followed the next day by an even more sensational one – a real shock for the whole world – the one in which the icon Ayrton lost his life and which contributed to a drastic increase in safety in Formula 1; from there, a long era without fatal accidents.
Formula 1, after those two tragic days in Imola, was never the same again, in every sense. The myth of Senna was no longer there. But it was no longer accepted that the risk was worth his life.
All thanks above all to the work of the old patron Bernie Ecclestone, of the FIA and of its former president Max Mosley who established the FIA Expert Advisory Safety Committee (safety oversight committee). In that period it was understood, also thanks to a strong and undisputed leadership (Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone above all) that similar events had the potential to decree the end of Formula 1 as we were used to conceiving it, in economic and human terms. An awareness translated into concrete actions that will lead to a Formula 1 without deaths for 20 years.
Over the years, then, there has been a flourishing of extremely important innovations, from improved survival cells, to the widespread use of safety cars, up to the Halo system, which have represented a profound difference.
From 1994 to today, only one fatal accident has been recorded in 28 years of sport at the highest levels: the Frenchman Jules Bianchi in Japan in 2014 who died due to a series of events, such as the presence on the track of a tractor used to remove the single-seaters. But that’s not all: in 1996 the FIA contributed to the creation of the Euro NCAP safety protocols, which are still fundamental today for evaluating the level of protection of cars on the market.
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