Thirty years ago this month what made Ayrton’s death so stunning and brutal was that by 1994 we all thought racing had come so far in terms of safety, that so many of the old spectres – even fire, the drivers’ greatest fear – had so successfully been exorcised. Formula 1 had reached the stage where people had almost allowed themselves to believe that death was no longer a visitor to the races.
How wrong we were. And how horribly that was proven as, in images that still haunt the sport to this day, he became arguably the first F1 fatality on live television.
I loved Imola, and the little hotel in Fontanelice – La Pergola – that was run by a chirpy Italian lady called Rosa, whose husband Leo would glare at us from the kitchen, as he watched her embracing us upon arrival.
We were all excited to see what aerodynamic magic Adrian Newey had woven to pull Williams back on par with Benetton, and what sort of dent Ayrton could make in the 20-point lead upstart Michael Schumacher had opened up in the first two rounds after the great champion had failed to finish either the Brazilian or Pacific GPs.
The bad things started happening 16 minutes into Friday afternoon’s qualifying session when Rubens Barrichello had his massive accident when he lost control of his Jordan 194 in the Variante Bassa after putting a wheel over a kerb. The car was thrown brutally into the debris fence at around 140mph and came to a halt almost immediately in one of those really horrible
