Ayrton Senna’s bright yellow helmet peeking out of the iconic Lotus 98T‘s black and gold livery is one of Formula 1’s most evocative images. Bruce Thomson has captured that perfectly with his digital illustration of Senna at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Thanks again Bruce!
The Monaco Grand Prix is a special event. History, glamour and location make it so. It’s the one race Formula 1 drivers truly covet.
The streets of Monte Carlo are etched into the story of Ayrton Senna. It was in the wet in 1984 that Senna first made the F1 world stop and take notice. Then in 1988 during that qualifying lap he stood head and shoulders above his peers. He also stands alone as a six-time winner in Monaco.
Moments before qualifying for the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix it’s timely then to reflect once more on the twentieth anniversary of Senna’s death with this video which documents the activities which took place at Imola earlier this month.
The highlight is hearing F1 photographer Keith Sutton share his memories of both Senna and Roland Ratzenberger.
No other words necessary.
“It was twenty years ago today,” as The Beatles lyric goes, and if you want to find tributes for Ayrton Senna today you don’t have to look too hard. Here, though, is a video from 1 May 1994 showing how BBC television reported on Senna’s death, including some words from legendary F1 commentator Murray Walker.
Last year Adrian Newey, designer of the Williams FW16 Senna was driving, said: “What happened that day, what caused the accident, still haunts me to this day.”
A failure in the steering column is thought to be the most likely cause of the accident. Although, Newey added: “There is no doubt it [the steering column] was cracked. Equally, all the data, all the circuit cameras, the on-board camera from Michael Schumacher’s car that was following, none of that appears to be consistent with a steering-column failure.”
Unsurprisingly, the events of Senna’s death have attracted incredible scrutiny. The Williams F1 team was held to account with Newey and Patrick Head brought before Italian courts to answer charges of manslaughter. The focus of the trial centred around the failure of the steering column in Senna’s car.
While both men were originally acquitted in 1997, Head was later found guilty in a 2007 retrial. Head avoided a penalty due to the statute of limitations being passed.
Ayrton Senna 1960–1994
To mark the 20th anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s death Sky Sports F1 invited Damon Hill to Imola so he could share his thoughts on a weekend he and the motoring world will never forget.
In an appropriate sign of respect David Brabham was also there to tell of his experience with the Simtek team after it lost Roland Ratzenberger the day before Senna was killed.
Both men were the last teammates of Senna and Ratzenberger respectively. The documentary is low key, there’s no overbearing voiceovers filled with hyperbole. It’s just two men talking us through that fateful weekend.
In some ways it’s quite morbid seeing Hill and Brabham alone on the sections of track where two men lost their lives. And yet it delivers a poignancy that makes this film very much worth watching.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Roland Ratzenberger. He was killed during qualifying for the ill-fated 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, which claimed the life of Ayrton Senna the following day.
David Brabham was Ratzenberger’s teammate that day and he has shared his thoughts via the family website. Here’s a few selected quotes, make sure you follow the link below for the full story.
After seeing Ratzenberger’s wrecked car on track
I remember immediately changing my focus to get back to the pits and keep the tyres warm. This was a ridiculous thing to think, but my mind just didn’t want to think about what I had seen and focus on something else, like some kind of defence mechanism.
On the team’s reaction
We were completely devastated, shocked and felt numb. We pulled the shutter down in the pit garage and went to the back of the pits, unable to say much. We couldn’t really see the reaction from the rest of the paddock, being in a state of shock we couldn’t absorb what was going on.
On his decision to race
I remember jumping in the car for the start of the race and feeling uneasy, but thinking this is what I had to do. I can’t imagine what my wife was going through, seeing me go out there after what happened the day before. It must have been very painful for her.
On the immediate aftermath of Senna’s crash
We all had to stop on the pit straight and get out of our cars. You could see all the drivers were in a state of shock, word got round it was Senna and it didn’t sound good, although no one knew how bad. It took a while to start the race again, I’m not sure how many drivers really wanted to continue, but a driver finds it hard to say ‘no more racing’.
[Source: brabham.co.uk | Pic: Sutton Images]
This week Darren Heath’s blog after the Chinese Grand Prix has nothing to do with the race and everything to do with the 20th anniversary of Ayrton Senna‘s death. That milestone will be reached in seven days from now, on 1 May.
No doubt there will be countless tributes paid to Senna over the next week or two. This one is a pretty good place to start…
[Source: darrenheath.com | Pic: Williams/LAT]
March 21 is Ayrton Senna’s birthday. He would have been 54 today. To honour his memory Google has created a Senna-themed doodle which appears on the internet giant’s home page.
In 41 days it will be 1 May 2014, the twentieth anniversary of Senna’s death.
That’s not any old Honda NSX, that’s Ayrton Senna’s old NSX. Well, that’s the story at least. If you’re keen you can buy it for yourself too. The 1992 model will be up for grabs late next month at the Silverstone Auctions and is expected to fetch as much as £85,000 (approx AU$160,000).
Actually, on closer inspection of the auction listing it turns out that Senna used the car on a regular basis, it was owned by a close friend, but it wasn’t legally his own car:
Antonio Carlos de Almeida Braga was a close personal friend, manager and mentor of Ayrton Senna who purchased this NSX for the great driver to use when he visited his house in Sintra, Portugal north of Lisbon. Senna already had another red NSX that was kept at his villa in the Algarve. Antonia Braga ordered the same specification car that Ayrton had at his home in Brazil. Senna stayed with the Braga’s on numerous occasions and would have been a guest when competing in the Portuguese Grand Prix in 1992/3 at nearby Estoril, endorsing his Honda contract by commuting in the NSX.
Still, that’s good enough, isn’t it? We wonder where the other two NSXs used by Senna are now?
[Source: Silverstone Auctions]
When the Top Gear Festival rolls around to Sydney next March one of the headline acts will be Ayrton Senna’s 1988 McLaren MP4/4. In partnership with Alain Prost the iconic driver pairing won 15 of the 16 races that year. Senna went on to win his first world championship in the car, ensuring it will forever remain etched in F1 folklore.
After the break a short video is available with Bruno Senna and former race engineer Neil Trundle talking about the car.
The Alain Prost–Ayrton Senna rivalry is perhaps the most intense intra-team stoush Formula 1 has ever seen. After Ron Dennis put his money on Senna when the inevitable split came, McLaren’s Tooned animated series starts by bestowing more credit than you might imagine on the four-time world champion.
So it was always going to be interesting to see how this light-hearted look back at McLaren’s history was going to handle Ayrton Senna. It’s all pretty harmless really, but in attempting to delicately tiptoe around the Prost rivalry it seemed they forgot to properly respect Senna’s own immense on track achievements.
For the trivia buffs Bruno Senna provided the voice for the role of his uncle.
The death of Ayrton Senna, almost 20 years ago, still sits uneasily with Adrian Newey, chief designer of the Williams FW16 used during the 1994 season. “What happened that day, what caused the accident, still haunts me to this day,” Newey told the BBC.
Controversy has shrouded the events of Senna’s death with Newey and Patrick Head brought before Italian courts to answer charges of manslaughter. The focus of the trial centred around the failure of the steering column in Senna’s car. While both men were originally acquitted in 1997, Head was later found guilty in a 2007 retrial. Head avoided a penalty due to the statute of limitations being passed.
Newey spoke about Senna’s death in revealing interview with The Guardian back in 2011. Then, Newey speculated that a puncture may have been the reason Senna left the track. “The car bottomed much harder on that second lap which again appears to be unusual because the tyre pressure should have come up by then,” he said. “Which leaves you expecting that the right rear tyre probably picked up a puncture from debris on the track. If I was pushed into picking out a single most likely cause that would be it.”
Newey didn’t repeat that theory in his recent BBC interview, saying “no-one will know” if a mechanical failure or driver error caused the crash.
“There is no doubt it [the steering column] was cracked,” Newey said. “Equally, all the data, all the circuit cameras, the on-board camera from Michael Schumacher’s car that was following, none of that appears to be consistent with a steering-column failure.
“The car oversteered initially and Ayrton caught that and only then did it go straight. But the first thing that happened was oversteer, in much the same way as you will sometimes see on a superspeedway in the States—the car will lose the rear, the driver will correct, and then it will go straight and hit the outside wall, which doesn’t appear to be consistent with a steering-column failure.”
Senna’s accident happened in only his third race for Williams, acknowledged as the premiere manufacturer in F1 at the time, coming off the back of repeat drivers’ and constructors’ championships in 1992 (Nigel Mansell) and 1993 (Alain Prost).
“I guess one of the things that will always haunt me is that he joined Williams because we had managed to build a decent car for the previous three years and he wanted to be in the team he thought built the best car—and unfortunately that ’94 car at the start of the season wasn’t a good car,” Newey admitted.
[Source: BBC Sport | Pic: Williams/LAT]