RIP SENNA: F1’s darkest weekend at Imola

At Imola 30 years ago today, Grand Prix racing was shaken from its complacency about the dangers of the sport. Read the AUTO ACTION magazine review of the shocking 1994 San Marino Grand Prix written in the aftermath by Joe Saward.

Rubens Barrichello, several spectators and four mechanics were injured. Roland Ratzenberger and the sport’s greatest champion, Ayrton Senna, were killed.

Dark clouds descend

It began so well. Flying south over the snow-capped high Alps on a bright and sunny Thursday morning, there was nothing much wrong with the world.

READ THE FULL SIX PAGE SPECIAL FEATURE ABOUT MORE UNTOLD AYRTON SENNA STORIES HERE

Ahead lay the great plains of northern Italy and motor racing’s famous highway which runs, straight as an arrow, from Milan to Rimini. Ferrari country.

Lamborghini. Maserati. And where the mucky little Santerno river crosses the great highway is Imola and the Autodromo Enzo & Dino Ferrari, home of the San Marino Grand Prix.

Imola is the first European GP of the year, where the hard-core F1 folk are joined by those who do only European races; where the teams wheel out their ‘gin-palace’ motorhomes.

It is always lively and the paddock is alive with back-biting and gossip.

“It’s all bullshit,” said new boy Roland Ratzenberger with a smile. “The serious business is a couple of hundred miles east of here. In Bosnia. This is just a game.”

But, at Imola, FI is a risky game. The track is fast and has a history of big shunts.

Over the years we have sat through many an anxious moment here after a big crash, but on a cool and overcast Friday morning such thoughts were far away as the Ferraris set off from the pits and the crowd delighted to have Gerhard Berger and Nicola Larini ahead of the pack It didn’t last long.

Ayrton Senna, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher quickly put things back in perspective. Berger was fourth quickest, ahead of Mika Hakkinen’s McLaren-Peugeot and the impressive JJ Lehto, back in F1 now his neck injuries after a nasty testing crash in January were healed.

Larini and McLaren’s Martin Brundle rounded out the top eight. Williams, Benetton, Ferrari and McLaren. F1 was back to business as usual.

The afternoon promised a similar competition and it was building up to an interesting fight when there was a monster shunt in the Variante Bassa, the chicane before the pits.

Rubens Barrichello in his Jordan -out on his first flying lap – had got it badly wrong and been launched over a kerb. He flew, four feet off the ground, towards the wall.

The only thing between him and the nearby grandstand was a wire cable debris fence. Luckily the bottom edge of the car clipped the top of the wall, which sent the car tumbling back towards the track. It came to rest upside-down.

The marshals reached the car in seconds and, there being a risk of fire, turned it over quickly, albeit rather roughly.

The F1 doctor Prof Sid Watkins was parked in the middle of the chicane where the accident happened.

A quick U-turn got The Prof to the wreck within seconds – even before the red flags came out.

This was fortunate because Barrichello needed help. His breathing passage was blocked by his tongue and blood from his damaged mouth and nose, the driver’s head having hit the side of the monocoque, smashing his helmet.

Rubens was fitted with breathing tubes, a neck brace and a drip and then taken to the nearby circuit hospital.

Slowly the feeling of dread began to lift. Rubens was conscious. Later he would be flown to Maggiore Hospital in Bologna for a thorough check-up.

“I remember exactly the moment before I touched the barrier – waiting for the crash,” he said. “And then everything went into darkness. The next thing I knew I was in the medical centre with Senna alongside me.”

Everyone was shaken, not least down at Williams where blessings were being counted.

There were not many people in the grandstand that Rubens would have hit, but in the path of the car was seated the worldwide number two of the entire Rothmans empire, paying his first visit to F1.

The session would be restarted after half an hour and Berger was briefly on pole before Schumacher and Senna took to the track. Each did a fast lap – Senna’s was faster – and then each had a slow spin at Tosa.

Later Ayrton went even faster, taking pole down to 1:21.55, leaving Schumacher behind.

Berger was third with Lehto, Larini, Sauber’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Hill, Hakkinen, Gianni Morbidelli in his Footwork and Mark Blundell’s Tyrrell filling the top 10.

As the excitement of qualifying faded, conversations returned to Barrichello’s crash. It had been another close shave.

But even as the news of Barrichello’s accident was being beamed round the world, the evil spirits of Imola 1994 were looking ahead to Saturday.

It started like many F1 Saturdays with an unexciting morning session. The two Simteks had a misunderstanding which resulted in David Brabham spinning into sand trap.

The first 18 minutes of afternoon qualifying suggested that the track was a bit faster than Friday. Schumacher improved his lap time but not his second

Larini, Sauber’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Hill, Hakkinen, Gianni Morbidelli in his Footwork and Mark Blundell’s Tyrrell filling the top 10.

As the excitement of qualifying faded, conversations returned to Barrichello’s crash. It had been another close shave.

But even as the news of Barrichello’s accident was being beamed round the world, the evil spirits of Imola 1994 were looking ahead to Saturday.

It started like many F1 Saturdays with an unexciting morning session. The two Simteks had a misunderstanding which resulted in David Brabham spinning into sand trap.

The first 18 minutes of afternoon qualifying suggested that the track was a bit faster than Friday. Schumacher improved his lap time but not his second grid position and Hill jumped up to fourth place.

But then everything went quiet. Red flags came out and TV cameras zoomed in on a horrible wreck at Tosa. The remains of Ratzenberger’s Simtek slid to a stop at Tosa Corner. It had hit the wall at the flat-out Villeneuve kink.

The crash was so violent that experienced F1 watchers had little doubt that the driver was beyond help, but the medics did everything to save  him.

A dreadful feeling settled over the paddock as the doctors began heart massage.

Later eye-witnesses, among them Jean Alesi, said that a front wing flap had fallen off and gone under the car, launching it off the ground at 200mph.

It hit the wall at probably 160 and ran down to Tosa corner with the bloodied driver slumped in the cockpit and a hole in the side where a wheel had been slammed into the chassis.

Given the extreme violence of the impact the Simtek had stood up very well, but there was no way Roland could be saved.

It had been 12 years since there was an F1 fatality at a race and eight since Elio de Angelis died after a testing crash at Paul Ricard.

Many in F1 had forgotten – or never known – the fine line that exists between life and death in a Grand Prix car. In those chilling minutes in motorhomes and garages up and down the pitlane many quiet tears were shed.

Roland was flown off by helicopter in a desperate dash to Bologna but he was certified dead a few minutes after arrival.

People have different ways of coping with pain and while it may seem heartless even vaguely obscene – that cars were soon out and running again.

There were some, even Roland’s friends, who felt the need to drive. Williams, Benetton and Sauber packed up.

No-one felt this more than Johnny Herbert, a longtime friend of Roland’s, who was out hammering around.

Gerhard Berger, who had spent much of last week messing about on boats with Ratzenberger in Monaco, also went out and later with great eloquence explained the feelings of a racing driver at such a time.

“Most of you are going to ask the question of whether or not it was right to continue to drive,” he said.

“I saw the accident. I knew how heavy it was. It was the first time I have found myself shaking after an accident.

“Of course in our job you are sometimes a bit prepared to see situations like this, but as it was another Austrian driver, as it was a personal contact, it was even worse.

“I know it should not make a difference that you know a driver, but it affects you in a different way.

“I told myself that the question was not whether I was going to drive now, but whether I would drive tomorrow and in the future. It was not related to this afternoon, it was related to – whether or not you are prepared to have this risk or not.

“It was not going to make any difference for Roland if I drove or not. But I had to decide if I was prepared still to take risks.

“I said to myself ‘Do you want to race tomorrow or are you not going to race?’ I said I was going to race and from that moment on I told myself to concentrate on the job. It was a difficult situation.”

No-one really cared what did happen out on track in the remaining 42 minutes although the midfield pack was shuffled.

Senna, Schumacher, Berger, Hill, Lehto, Larini, Frentzen, Hakkinen, Ukyo Katayama and Karl Wendlinger made up the top 10.

A nightmare continues

Friday had been bad, Saturday worse, but no-one was prepared for what would happen on Sunday.

From start to finish the 1994 San Marino GP was a nightmare.

When the lights turned to green Senna and Schumacher were forgotten. Lehto has stalled and as the cars came up the Benetton, row after row, they were getting faster and faster.

For a second it looked like everyone would get through but then Pedro Lamy arrived, unsighted as he swept from right to left across the track seeking a gap.

He saw the stalled Benetton at the last second, swerved but couldn’t avoid a crash.

The Lotus ran into the left rear of the Benetton, its entire right side being torn off and hurled high into the air.

Having cleared the debris fencing, it rained down on the crowded grandstand. Ten people would be hit, one suffering serious injuries.

There will always be debates about when a race should or should not be stopped.

At Imola the race director decided on a safety car. This mean that the whole field went past the Lehto wreck at racing speed before they caught up with the safety car.

The track was strewn with debris which the marshals hurriedly brushed away.

For four laps the field ran behind the safety car. Engines getting hot, tyres getting cold.

At the start of lap five the safety car pulled off and Senna and Schumacher were off again.

As they thundered into Tamburello next time around Senna’s rear end sparked and jumped a little out of line.

He caught it and kept ahead. Next time round the back jumped again. Williams telemetry would show that he lifted off the accelerator a fraction to settle the car.

By doing so he may have caused a loss of downforce which caused the car to understeer straight off the track.

There may have been debris, there may have been a puncture or a steering failure. We may never know.

Senna had little time to do anything. He was trying to pull the car around before it hit the wall, but there was no escape.

He hit the wall front right first at about 180mph. The car bounced back towards the track, throwing wreckage into the air, and slid to a halt beside the circuit – not far from the point of impact.

Ayrton was slumped in the cockpit. For what seemed like an age no marshal approached the car – the whole field was thundering by.

Senna seemed to move and there was a moment of hope but then the medics arrived and the awful truth began to dawn.

The distance between the wreck and the point of impact was too short. That meant the car – and the driver – had taken the shock.

There was a numbness in the paddock. A sense that lightning could not have struck twice, that Senna was invincible. But the TV screens showed a frantic battle going on to save Senna beside his car.

The day before the cameras had zoomed in close, today they did not. When the medical helicopter landed on the track there was no doubt that Senna’s injuries were critical.

Many hours later we would learn from Brazil that on Saturday night Ayrton had phoned his girlfriend Adriene Galisteu in Brazil and said he didn’t want to race, because he had had a premonition that something bad would happen to him in the race.

But now all we knew was that Senna – perhaps the finest driver F1 has ever had – was fighting for his life. Rumours swirled around the paddock but no-one really knew.

It seemed callous that the race would be restarted. Many people in the paddock just wanted to go home. But the show must go on and so it did.

At the second start Berger took the lead on the road. In the course of that first lap Hill tangled with Hakkinen and had to pit for a new nose section, which dropped him right back.

Although Berger was ahead on the road, Schumacher led on aggregate. These two were chased by Hakkinen, Larini, Wendlinger, Katayama, Fittipaldi, Morbidelli and Martini.

Schumacher went ahead on lap six of the new race but dived immediately into the pits, leaving Berger to lead once more.

Two laps later Gerhard pitted as well. Gerhard would go out again, but a lap later he was back in the pits. It became clear that Gerhard had just had enough and decided to stop.

For a while Hakkinen led on the road but then he pitted, leaving Larini leading on the road – although Schumacher was still ahead on aggregate.

By now there were pit stops coming fast and furious, but Larini stayed out until Schumacher caught and passed him on lap 26.

Schumacher would never be headed again and the race ground painfully on and increasingly alarming stories drifted back from Maggiore Hospital.

The sooner the race was over the better. But fate had one last trick to play yet.

On lap 49, as Michele Alboreto accelerated gently out of the pits after his final stop, his right rear wheel nut came off.

It was followed by the wheel and the Minardi slewed sideways slicing through waiting Ferrari mechanics. He hit three and the bits of debris injured a Lotus and a Benetton mechanic.

It was too much. As stretchers were pushed up and down the pitlane, this evil race played out its final moments.

A distraught Berger left the injured lying in his pit and stormed up to the control tower to demand that the race be stopped. It was not.

Finally the flag was shown and the engines ceased to howl and a dreadful hush descended on the race track.

No-one knew what was happening at the hospital and many knew nothing of the injured spectators or the seriousness of Senna’s injuries.

Michael Schumacher – who had been right behind Senna when he crashed – was in no mood to celebrate.

“Too many things have happened this weekend. What we have to do is to make sure we learn from this – to get experience from these accidents,” he said.

“We were discussing changes today with Ayrton, Gerhard and Michele and we intended to organise a meeting in Monaco.”

On a day of disaster poor Nicola Larini could not really enjoy the best result of his F1 career. At the next race he will be gone from Ferrari again, the injured Jean Alesi making his comeback.

“It is difficult to be happy when I think about my injured mechanics,” he said sadly.

Hakkinen was third, giving McLaren-Peugeot its first podium, but again there was no satisfaction at McLaren, which is a team with so many links to Senna.

News finally came from the hospital saying that clinically Senna was dead. He hung on until 6:40 pm when the great champion’s heart finally stopped beating.

In the days that followed there would be many eloquent tributes to the man, but on Sunday, wrapped up in pain and numbness as it was, the voice of the F1 paddock was one of warning.

Formula 1 veterans are hard men. They have seen many die.

“Formula 1 is a dangerous business,” said Tyle Alexander, a close friend of Senna during his six years at McLaren.

“We’ve been very fortunate that things like this haven’t happened before now. I don’t think people should go berserk because it has happened.

“There are people in the paddock who have been involved long enough to understand and have been there when lots of these incidents have happened.

“This was a bad weekend because a couple of them happened in a row, but there’s no reason to panic. This sport is as dangerous as hell.

“It says so on the back of the tickets.

Not everyone can be that tough. As night fell at Imola, and groups of fans gathered at Tamburello to lay flowers at spot where Senna had crashed, it was hard for many to accept the sudden return of the harsh world of F1.

In the years to come, perhaps we will remember Imola 1994 as the day when F1 lost its 1980s innocence. Perhaps it will be the start of a new safety campaign.

Only time will tell.

What will always be remembered is that no matter how great a talent, no man is too brilliant to escape death.

It happened 1968 with Jim Clark and – years and a few days later – it has happened again with Ayrton Senna.

Clark’s loss left a void in the sport which took almost a generation to fill and it will be many years before the sport finds a driver to rival Senna’s genius.

The modern generations – strong and young as they are – are pale shadows compared with the great Senna.

Image: LAT Photographic

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