Ayrton Senna died at Imola on May 1, 1994. Photo: Allsport/Chris Cole
But Imola 1994 was a watershed moment for Formula One because it brought the dark side of the sport straight into spectators' living rooms on a perfect spring day. And at that moment our sport had to look at itself in the mirror and decide how it wanted to see itself in the future; as a reckless, soulless, human-sacrifice sport… or as an adult, responsible, sophisticated and disciplined.
While the word “Imola” will always conjure up a sad association with the death of Ayrton Senna, let's not forget that this weekend also claimed the life of handsome Austrian F1 rookie Roland Ratzenberger. Roland became the first fatality in Formula 1 competition in more than 10 years. It shocked us, but not to the extent that we would have been shocked by the ending of the game the next day. After the accident with Ayrton, the entire sport was left in bewilderment and confusion regarding the rights and disadvantages of our chosen profession. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the loss of one driver can be considered failure, the loss of two – carelessness.
Roland Ratzenberger died at Imola on the same the same weekend as Senna. Photo: Getty Images/Paul-Henri Cahier
The weekend has already started abnormally, with a terrifying acrobatic accident involving a very young Brazilian, Ayrton Rubens Barrichello. Perhaps because they were both Brazilians, Ayrton took a great personal interest in Ruben's recovery and treatment. But Roland's accident seems to have had an even more profound effect on Ayrton's state of mind. Indeed, the entire weekend was a series of terrible accidents, culminating in the final disaster that claimed Ayrton's life.
For everyone who lived through this series of increasingly serious events, including millions of television viewers around the world, this will forever be remembered. Because it would be a tragedy of such visibility and seismic global news that its shock waves seemed to spread across the entire planet. Ayrton was revered by most hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fans as a racing god. Plus all of Brazil.
When he died, he was only 34 years old. No age really, considering the size of the legend he has already created. His death and the circumstances surrounding it – the mystery, the court cases, his funeral – multiplied his legend many times over and gave his life the aura of Greek mythology. After all, he was the Achilles of our sport. He always seemed to be at war with something or someone. There was a fury in his driving and a conflict in his soul that made Ayrton an utterly fascinating, feared and awe-inspiring competitor.
However, Ayrton never did anything but strive only for survival. He raced to win. Always. That he died in the attempt shouldn't have been so shocking. Our sport was dangerous. He knew it. He took the risks. Indeed, it has recently been suggested that the night before his death he had a dream in which God came to him and promised to appear in some mystical way, implying a predestined role for the saint in his career.
That the ever-present “Angel of Life”, doctor, Formula One professor Sidney Watkins, begged Ayrton, seeing how emotionally upset he was when he accompanied Sid to the site of Roland's crash, to immediately give up racing and go fishing with him instead. , only heightens the sense of tragedy and reinforces the idea that Ayrton accepted the possibility, if not the inevitability, of his death as a result of racing.
Of course he couldn't go fishing. He was Ayrton Senna, and he had a job and a responsibility to himself and others. Sid suggested that he felt that people were counting on him to make sacrifices that would benefit others.
This aspect of the Imola tragedy takes the story from the realm of normality to the realm of mythology. Countless articles and YouTube videos have been created attempting to explain or provide a well-intentioned but perhaps not very informed understanding of what actually happened. Indeed, I included an entire chapter in my autobiography dedicated to the weekend at Imola. So this has been playing on the imagination of Formula 1 fans for a very long time.
To be honest, even though I was his teammate at Williams at the time, I can't claim to have known Ayrton Senna, a private man, is much more than the rest of us. Well, I had the opportunity to work with him a little and I consider it a very valuable privilege. I can tell you he was frighteningly fast. But we all knew it. I just didn't want it to be true! In any case, I am not the right person to ask about who Ayrton Senna was. What I can tell you is that after that weekend the whole sport went in a different direction, partly because we lost someone who looked beyond the sport and saw the bigger picture, but also because it was necessary, otherwise sanctions will be imposed against him. And there was too much business at stake for that to happen.
In Imola '94, Formula 1 grew out of necessity.
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