Ayrton/Roland - RIP

[LucaBadoer]

Roland Ratzenberger - RIP
4th July 1960 - 30th April 1994

Ayrton Senna da Silva - RIP
21st March 1960 - 1st May 1994

[marcus]

as its the 30th of April , its timely to remember these two men.

just sitting here thinking about that weekend I still get chills down my spine, it was the strangest weekend with a multitude of things that went wrong.

we saw a young man at the start of his F1 career sadly loose his life and a man who had won 3 world championships and had little else to prove also loose his life.
And on top of that several other incidents that could have been far worse as well (Barichello is practice, the startline crash and the incident in the pits)

Its was simply a scary weekend and one that I will never forget but never want to witness again.

RIP Roland and Ayrton , your spirits will live on with us forever

[J.McClane]

.....since the great Senna died (and IMO, the day F1 died).

I remeber it like it were last week.

[Mattracer]

Same here...

F1 is alive again now though, just not the same...

<sigh> He really was something else.

[MiniMe]

It just seemed like a little tap against that wall - I'm still in shock.

With these new rules, Senna's all time pole position record will stand forever - 65 pole positions!

The legend lives on!

[racefanatic]

I miss him so much. He was just different, you know? People accuse me of being "too young to really remember him" and it drives me crazy, because I remember him SO well! I think about him at least once a day. He's still my favorite driver- no one else even comes close. I'm just glad I have my memories.

[Lee Janotta]

Don't feel bad about it. Anyone with a brain in their head only had to see Senna once to realize how great he was.

[craigmanning]

...I miss Senna too and think of him often. Can you just imagine how the face and history or F1 would have changed had he survived. I will wear either my Senna 'S' t-shirt or my lucky Senninha t-shirt on May 1 and maybe the famous blue 'Nacional' cap. ...I do it every year.

[paulzinho]

9 years alredy. Jesus I remember it like yesterday, my Mum got me my Brasil football shirt out that morning as a good luck thing following his bad start to the season. Still can't believe it really. Anyone who saw his funeral parade will realise just how much of an influence he was not only in sport but on an entire nation.

I was only 9 when it happenned but i was fortunate enough to have been brought up on F1 as a kid so I saw how gr4eat he was, my last GP was Donnington 93, need I say more?

Just wish we could turn back time and change history....

[racefanatic]

Yeah, he did have a pretty bad start to that season, didn't he!? I remember being so happy when he won that pole though.

Lee, that's a great picture! I love it!

[GTRMagic]

Like at McLaren, Senna carried the Williams Renault on his back and got pole because of his skill, not from any sort of car advantage....

To watch Senna in that McLaren Ford, knowing that the car was technically inferior, and certainly less powerful than those cars around him, and he was still faster, was always magic to watch...

A sad day, and one of the few GP's I watched live that year, I taped most others.... the Roland Ratzenberger and Rubens Barichello accidents made me think something else could be on the cards too

[Mattracer]

An inspirational person- it is sure that had he not left early, he would have won 6+ WDCs and probably 100+poles.

The greatest driver ever.

Period.

[Arturo Pereira]

RIP

[neilwaynesmith]

I started the tape to record the race because I had to pop out briefly. When I came back it had just happened. I forgot to stop the tape and it recorded for four hours. I still have the tape, but have never played it since. Somehow throwing it away or recording over it doesn't seem right...

It was unfair to the sport, even more so because in the future statistics will show that he hadn't even scored any points that year.

9 years.....

[TeddyG]

How old was Senna when it happened? When do you guys think he would have retired? Would he still be racing today do you think?

[DNQ]

He was 34 when he died, I think he had another 2-3 seasons maybe. Assuming he drove for Williams the whole time, there's no reason he couldn't have won another title in '94, maybe in '95, and at the very least, another in '96.

Jim Clark and Mario Andretti are my all time best drivers, but for sheer outright speed, Senna is #1. Unbelievable speed. So many examples of him outdoing his car, racing it much higher than it should have been.

Often overlooked, to me, his years at Lotus were some of his best, taking pole for half of the races in some instances...!

[jetsetter]

The thing i most remember about that race was just wanting the race to end after the accident & waking up the next morning to find out that Senna had lost his life. I was in no way a Senna fan but it made me realise if a driver as good as Senna could die in an accident anyone could.

[R]

It hit me too, when I saw the "1st of May" alongside a post last night, that it's actually nine years since this double tragedy happened. In one year's time, it'll be a decade. Unbelievable. It doesn't seem that long at all, I too remember it vividly. RIP Ayrton and Roland.

I'm moving this thread to our newly created Tributes forum, btw.

[Prost!]

I am a Prost fan above all others, however Senna's will, determination, & talent were undeniably as good as it gets. My admiration for Senna is such that I don't believe, outside of family & friends, I've ever had a persons death whom I did not personally know affect me the way his did.

I recall waking up in the morning for a long while afterwards, collecting my thoughts, and it would come to me: Senna's dead... and, I'd pause & marvel over how could this be? I mean, he was the best, and things aren't supposed to happen this way, in a new, and safer era of motorsport. But it does, whether you're Ayrton Senna, Roland Ratzenberger, Dale Earnhardt, or Kenny Irwin.

As a tribute to Senna, I've hanging over my couch a very nice Nicholas Watts lithograph of Senna applying opposite-lock in a downpour on his way to his first victory at Estoril, 1985. For me, the litho captures all of the said attributes above regarding Senna, the driver. Enjoy.



Viva Senna Por Sempre!

[racingdick]

He will never be forgotton...

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by neilwaynesmith
I started the tape to record the race because I had to pop out briefly. When I came back it had just happened. I forgot to stop the tape and it recorded for four hours. I still have the tape, but have never played it since. Somehow throwing it away or recording over it doesn't seem right...

Likewise Neil. Except that I was watching the race when it happened. I was stunned for days. I was a married man of 36 years of age when it happened, but I was in tears when I watched the silence before the Monaco race.

The guy was F1 and motor racing for me, with the emphasis on the racing. Like some others here, F1 has never been the same for me. I used to watch everything I could, practice, race, post race festivities, the lot - all the time willing Ayrton on. If Prost went off in the warm-up, or Ayrton chalked up yet another pole, I used to get a real buzz.

Now, if I bother to watch, I often fall asleep (yes, I'm a bit older!). F1 really isn't motor racing any more, IMO.

I mustn't forget Roland as well, who I watched many times in F3 and at Le Mans.

RIP both of you guys.

[Rafael]

A nice question is ask "how the Formula 1 would be if Senna survived that accident?"
Let's suppose... Senna would miss the next race (Monaco) due to injuries (anyone know if he had any bone broken at the accident?), and regressed at Spain, starting a recover al over the championship, staying 40 points behind Schummy.
People may say "of course he would be the champion, the silly Hill missed the championship by only one point!". This is a wrong view, because Hill had 7 points before spain, he turned the first driver of williams, and people had disqualified schummy from italy and portugal, to do a thrilling end. (What would not happen if Senna could drive). So, I think Schumacher would have won the 94' championship by a little margin and after a great challenge.
To 1995, Senna would win easily the championship (let's remember, on that year williams had a great car) and in 1996, he won his fifth world championship and decided to stop his carrer as a tribute to Fangio, who died on the last year.
And what about the others?
Coulthard would start his carreer at F1 replacing Senna at Monaco, doing a nice job and gettin some place to 1995. Barrichello, without pression, would drive nice for jordan in 94, moving to mclaren in 95 and replacing senna at williams in 97. Villeneuve, and Zanardi and Mansell would never movin (back) to F1. Schumacher would stay at Benetton, and get more championships... or going to ferrari...
There will be not new rules at the half of the season, so Lotus, Larrouse, and other teams could survive...

We don't know how the things was going to be if senna had not died, but we can say surely that F1 would be MUCH better!

[pole2pole]

Everytime there is a wet race I often think of Ayrton.He brought so much joy into peoples lifes all over the world. I was lucky to see Senna race at silverstone in 93 I will never forget him.R.I.P My friend.

[Bononi]

Well, I have posted many times about this day, that I don't think it's worth repeating all.

I don't like to think about "if", a parallel world that never will exist.

As you, the veterans knows, I have never been a fan of Senna, and when he died I had mixed feelings about him, when I just discovered somethings about him. I had taped since the start of the race, up until when he was finally buried. Those tapes are hidden somewhere, and I recall watching some of them, just to clarify a subject discussed here sometime ago. It was only late in the night, when everybody was sleeping that I could cry, all alone in the livingroom. I just realized the loss for the sport, an most of all that the country was losing an idol that was a living reference for his countryfellows. Although I couldn't understand the suicides that happened, I joined the whole nation suffering.
As far I can remember, I saw this happen only twice, but I can't tell you which one was the most sad...

[Craig]

I remember that Sunday vividly too. We had been down at Ringwood watching some stock car racing and we'd had the GP on the radio. We heard that he'd gone off but like a lot of other people we didn't even contemplate that it might be anything serious. I was a Mansell fan and so Senna always seemed invincible as, more often than not, he would beat the galant trier, Mansell, the typical plucky Brit. Senna was almost a god and it never even entered our heads that he might miss a race let alone anything more serious. We went about our business and thought nothing more of it.

As we left the circuit that evening we received the news that things were looking serious which came as somewhat of a surprise. When we reached Southampton we decided to stop the car for a break for some reason and we went into a shop. There must have been around 20 people in there at the time and the radio was on in the background. It must have been around seven in the evening and the news came on. The pause before the newsreader read the story gave the game away that something had happened and, when he made the announcement, everyone in the shop seemed to stop what they were doing and listen, transfixed. As the bulletin finished people went back to their shopping, by now in silence and contemplating the loss of a great sportsman.

The thing that struck me was that I doubt a single one of those people had actually watched the GP on TV that afternoon but every last one of them was visibly shocked and moved by the news. That says a hell of a lot about the man and, I have to say, it is something I have never witnessed before, or since.

RIP Ayrton and RIP Roland. Both legends amongst those who love the sport.