May 1st. No need to say the year. Just the day. This is how every silence begins for those who love Formula 1. It doesn't last a minute but it lasts years. The 31st, this one. The memory of a weekend in which the world, shaken by a few years before, began to suffer again the reality, already so clear to the eyes: the gods fall. Those were the days in which Senna left the Imola track expiring on a curve, taking with him the petty shadow of Roland Ratzenberger's death, made superficial by the desire for profit and the lack of empathy.
Imola 1994 wasn't just a Grand Prix, it was a watershed. A slap in the face to carefreeness, yet another of a sport without a parachute, the end of an era, the beginning of awareness. The so-called weekend in which this sport truly changed. And everything that people thought. A tragedy, and for every tragedy there is a first time. A series of events that should have slowed down this sport, but they let arrogance, hunger, get the upper hand, despite the bad feelings. In those days of which the memory remains, that today is honored not only with emotions, but also with details, what happened?
Friday: The Dancing Machine and the Omen That Something Is Wrong
The 1994 season began with an epochal change: no more electronic controls. And Senna's FW16 was an unstable, nervous machine, difficult to tame. Newey's technical solutions, while within the margins allowed by the FIA, seemed more like tolerated experiments than real certainties. Minor errors, perhaps, but enough to raise concern. Hill felt it. Ayrton felt it in his bones.
In Brazil he had started on pole, but he had not seen the checkered flag. In Japan, neither. In Imola, Ayrton was now certain: he wouldn't have made it with that car. Not like this. The car wouldn't hold. Hill said it. Ayrton repeated it. And in the paddock the air was thick, heavy, almost intoxicated. There was little talk, you could hear everything. That April 29th even the frenzy of Williams seemed directionless. What was it? Awareness? Fear? Or too much confidence? He had the face of someone who knows, a tense, dark expression. Because the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix was not a race to be run. It was an event to be left behind, like a bad day. A page to be turned quickly. But no one knew that it was about to become one of the darkest days in the history of this category.
Senna had said it. He had spoken clearly to the FIA leaders. He had discussed it with Gerhard Berger and other colleagues: Security needed to be reviewed, and quickly. No one really listened to him. And the first shock, the clearest, came with Rubens Barrichello. At the Variante Bassa, he flew with his Jordan: 225 km/h, a flight, a rollover, the metal fence, then silence. Broken arm and nose, bruises. But alive. Really alive. And Ayrton cried. Those tears had a deep meaning. A meaning that went beyond friendship. An omen.
Saturday: Ratzenberger, the Unforgettable Scream
13.15 hours. Ratzenberger loses control of his Simtek at the Villeneuve curve, after a very high-speed exit from Tamburello. The front disintegrates against the concrete wall. The impact is devastating. 300 km/h without a doubt. The second silence of the weekend falls. And it won't lift for hours. The helicopter is fast, the faces quickly fade. We await the official news that is already healing. Senna is at the edge of the track. He looks at the monitor, fixed. He doesn't move, his hands are clasped. Then he leaves. He wants to go. He wants to see. Run on the circuit, see for himself. He, who was already carrying the tension of that whole weekend on his shoulders, now has one more certainty: it's no longer just a bad feeling.
14:00. The Austrian didn't make it. 33 years old. It was his second race in his career. For some he was just a supporting actor, for Ayrton he was a colleague. A boy who wanted to do this job and who died on board a car without protection. “A man trying to live his dream,” he will say later. In the Williams box the frenzy turns to ice. Senna tells those who meet him that “it doesn't make sense to run like this anymore”. He quietly confides to the engineers that he wants to talk to Ecclestone, that he wants to do something. “We can’t wait for this to happen again.” Wants found a pilots' association, like in the days of Lauda, like in the days of those who did not want to die. A series of decisions that already seem too late. It's still Saturday. The worst, absurd to say, is yet to come.
20:00 pm. Ayrton dines alone. The day is long, too long and he no longer feels like talking. Those who meet him describe him as immersed in thought. That evening he could have called his family, seen friends, sought distraction. He doesn't. To those who approach him he shakes his head "no". That evening, for those who see him up close, something had already changed: Ayrton was no longer Ayrton. Not at that moment.
Sunday: that day when time stood still
14:00. The San Marino GP begins. It is May 1, 1994. The sun is high, the crowd is standing. If everyone had felt the sensations, things would have gone differently. Instead, despite the still air and the dark atmosphere in the pits, no one suspected the outcome of that equation. But at the start something immediately goes wrong. Lehto remains stationary on the grid, his Benetton does not move. Behind him, Pedro Lamy does not see him in time. It is a very violent impact, debris everywhere. A tire flies off and goes over the fences. It ends up in the crowd. Nine injured, including a child. The safety car comes in immediately and it was not today's Aston Martin, but an Opel Vectra. Slow, too slow. The single-seater tires cool down, as do the brakes, in six interminable laps where the tension begins to slice.
No one overtakes, no one dares, until the race restarts at 14.17pm. Senna is ahead of everyone, in front of Schumacher, in front of destiny. He faces the Tamburello curve for the umpteenth time. From the On-Boards it seems like a simple turn, one of those that in Beco's hands seem like magic, even if the Imola curve is a curve that bends at very high speed, a wall against the wind that can play the nasty trick of changing the trajectory. But something else goes wrong. Everything stops, the radio connection, the camera, Ayrton's breathing, because the single-seater goes straight. In a second, maybe less, the nose of the FW16 crashes into the concrete. A sharp flight without braking, the steering wheel that doesn't respond, the fault of the disconnection of the steering column. The third silence that falls.
The minutes that became history
14.18 and the red flag. But the show is already over. And no one applauds. The helicopter lands on the track. The medical staff surrounds the car. Watkins focuses on his case. That doctor friend of the Brazilian to whom he himself had asked advice, whether it was worth racing, because he had doubts indeed and while he was asking him he had already given himself the answer: “I can’t stop, not now. I have to keep going.” But fate had thought of it: Ayrton Senna was no longer moving. The dark visor, the reclined helmet. Nobody believes it, even if in front of them, that “not him”, That “not this way”, are stronger than any lie.
The next few minutes were endless, the certainty even before it was news. It is 14.55pm when Ayrton is declared clinically dead. at the Maggiore hospital in Bologna. But at Ecclestone's request, the official announcement was postponed. It will only be 18pm when TG1 opens the news with the journalist's broken voice: “Ayrton Senna is dead”, a name that makes Italy, the world of sport and beyond, stop, because the tragedy of that page to be turned as quickly as possible had reached its peak. And Imola would never be the same again.
In Imola it wasn't just sport and Ratzenberger and Senna showed its fragility
That weekend in '94 wasn't just a race, it was a fracture. Also because 1994 was studded with extremely dangerous events and although they were not the last to leave us on the track - Jules Bianchi followed them about twenty years later, finally breaking (and hopefully forever) the chain of inattention dedicated to the subject - someone was opening their eyes. Ayrton left us taking with him a piece of poetry. Roland reminded us that even fragile dreams deserve respect. And every time we return to Imola, it's not nostalgia: it's active memory. Formula 1 is also run thanks to them and that's why remembering them helps not only to look back, but to look better ahead.
Numbers that tell nothing, but are useful (even for FantaF1)
Ayrton Senna da Silva, three times world champion. 41 victories, 65nd pole position, a career made of acts of faith in braking, absurdities in the wet and looks beyond fear, in a hypothetical 2025 he would have been an active legend. A veteran like Alonso, with the hunger of Verstappen, the depth of Hamilton, the class of Leclerc and the precision of Piastri. Or not, but we like to think of him there at the top, or on the margins leading a team and building talent.
In FantaF1, a modern Senna would probably be worth a fortune: undisputed leader of the team, pole bonus almost assured, strategist for driving in the wet. 40 YAW a weekend? If the medium supports it. To be put captain.
Roland ratzenberger, instead, was the man of the beginnings. He had 33 years, was realizing his dream. Sacrifices, minor races, sponsors found with difficulty. He didn't even have a single point yet. He is certainly an unknown quantity. His hunger would have justified a quote like Doohan, maybe, like Bearman. Maybe he would be worth as much as Ocon? In our imaginary FantaF1, he would have been the smart player from last slot: one to keep an eye on, who may not win the race, but gives you a surprise. But this is just an idea…
