Thirty years without Ayrton and Roland
Today marks the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s deathdied on May 1, 1994 at the Maggiore hospital in Bologna a few hours after the terrible accident that occurred on the 6th lap of the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola. An episode that was added to that of the previous day in qualifying, when the young Austrian Roland Ratzenberger lost his life. The violent impact of the Brazilian’s Williams against the barriers at the exit of the Tamburello curve, in the same point where other drivers before him risked losing their lives, is still remembered today as the episode that changed the world forever of Formula 1, as well as one of the many accidents that occurred in that same unfortunate race weekend which raised a lot of controversy.
Mosley’s belief
Many still remember that weekend with great pain, starting with Bernie Ecclestone, head of Formula 1 for almost forty years. The same category that, at the time of the facts and according to the then President of the FIA Max Mosleywould have disappeared forever after those tragic events, as admitted by the 93-year-old: “It was a disastrous weekend – he told the PA news agency – if you think about everything that happened, with Roland crashing and never getting out of his car, and then Senna, I really don’t think it can happen again. Mosley told me later that he believed it would be the end of Formula 1. I replied: ‘I think you’re wrong and we’ll have to see’. We hoped that what Max had assumed would not happen, but it was a real disaster. It wasn’t a good weekend, e.g seems much longer than 30 years to me. Ayrton was really unfortunate to die in that accident.”
The race never stopped
40 minutes after help was given to Senna, who already appeared to be in critical condition due to the very serious injuries he sustained which later proved fatal, the race however resumed regularly, and finished despite another accident in which Alboreto lost a pit lane tire, hitting some Ferrari mechanics. Already Martin Brundle, a McLaren driver at the time and now a respected TV commentator, has repeatedly expressed his displeasure at having raced “in front of Senna’s pool of blood for 55 laps”but even today Ecclestone reiterated his idea: “Should we have stopped the race? I do not believe – he added – we wouldn’t have helped Senna in any way. When these things happen it all happens so fast that you don’t have much time to think. From a legal point of view, he should have been stopped, because now we know that he died on the circuit. But in the end it was about commercial problems, people who wanted a refund and other things like that, and the other side of the issue was not taken into consideration. Formula 1 became more popular after Senna’s death. It got so much publicity worldwide that people who didn’t watch Formula 1 before started to get interested, but I hope we never see something like that again and I think today, with the way everything has improved as far as safety, thank God, the chances of this happening again are much smaller.”
