Ayrton Senna 25 Years On

[Antepli Ejderha]

Ayrton Senna: 25 years since F1 lost its flawed, fascinating hero

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...y_to_clipboard

A great article I thought, balanced and fair, of imho the greatest ever driver.

[Paul S]

How about a bit more about Roland Ratzenberger who died at the same meeting during qualifying the previous day. He merits just one line in the article, a forgotten hero.

[ad hoc]

What did he do that made him a hero? Forgotten, yes, but a hero?

[Patrick Thistle]

I remember watching that race.

[Patrick Thistle]

I think the next race (Monaco) was when Karl Wendlinger crashed and ended his career. And then later in the season a wheel came off a Minardi and flew into the crowd. F1 was really dangerous back then.

[Kevin S]

Paul - tribute to Ratzenberger here:
https://www.grandprix247.com/2019/04...-never-forget/

I do need to finish watching the Senna biopic on Netflix; the first half that I've seen was excellent. You could see how the other drivers (with one or two notable exceptions) looked up to him from early on - he almost acted as their shop steward in discussions with the FIA. And of course, had outrageous talent and charisma.

[Kevin S]

I think the next race (Monaco) was when Karl Wendlinger crashed and ended his career. And then later in the season a wheel came off a Minardi and flew into the crowd. F1 was really dangerous back then.

There had been leaps in speeds and stability through the 80s and early 90s. The FIA then made changes for 1994 - apparently reacting to criticism that the drivers were relying too much on technology, or perhaps it was a way to force a reduction in cornering speeds - and they banned a lot of the mechanisms that the teams had been using to make the cars stable (active suspension, ABS and traction control for example). Senna was convinced it made the cars more dangerous to drive. There were always allegations that Schumacher's title-winning Benneton still had traction control on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_F...ng_controversy

And it was a terrible year for safety - not just Ratzenberger's and Senna's deaths but the Jos Verstappen fuel fire, nasty accidents for Lehto and Alesi in pre-season testing, and Barrichello being badly injured the day before Ratzenberger's death.

The one silver lining is that safety became such a priority after the horrors of Imola that there were no deaths in F1 between these and Jules Bianchi's.

[Wouter D]

What did he do that made him a hero? Forgotten, yes, but a hero?

The case can be made that anyone who drove the death traps that were F1 cars up until the mid-nineties can be considered a hero.

[longeared]

I think the next race (Monaco) was when Karl Wendlinger crashed and ended his career. And then later in the season a wheel came off a Minardi and flew into the crowd. F1 was really dangerous back then.

There were loads of incidents in the early part of that season - they'd banned various driver aids and the cars became really skittish and difficult to drive as a consequence. Safety procedures had considerably improved over the years but were absolutely nowhere near what they are now.

Jean Alesi missed the San Marino race entirely because he'd had a testing crash. Barrichello was ruled out of the rest of the meeting after crashing heavily in practice. Pedro Lamy drove into the back of JJ Lehto at the start, a wheel flew into the crowd and killed a spectator. A wheel came off Michele Alboreto's car and hit a Lotus mechanic standing in the pit lane - after that the FIA changed the rules so mechanics had to sit in garages outside of pit stops, a procedure which continues to this day. Then in Monaco practice Wendlinger had his huge crash which effectively ended his career - he made a couple of comebacks in 1995 but was well off the pace. Lamy had a crash in testing at Silverstone when he flipped over a fence which would have killed loads of spectators had it taken place during the Grand Prix. Then finally Simtek replaced Ratzenberger with Andrea Montermini who crashed heavily in qualifying in Spain which ended his career.

(Edit; bit of a cross post with Kev there)

[Kevin S]

I'm sure there'll be folk on this thread who don't watch F1 any more - for me, 2018 provided defining images of how far F1 driver safety has come:

[Sits]

In fairness there was an article about Ratzemberger too - linked in a panel on the Senna article. Still remember that weekend vividly, and it feels nothing like 25 years.

Of course while the 80s-90s were indeed terribly dangerous, they were considered incredibly safe against earlier decades. Fire safety in particular had improved a lot since Bandini, Lauda etc.

[Paul S]

Paul - tribute to Ratzenberger here:
https://www.grandprix247.com/2019/04...-never-forget/

I do need to finish watching the Senna biopic on Netflix; the first half that I've seen was excellent. You could see how the other drivers (with one or two notable exceptions) looked up to him from early on - he almost acted as their shop steward in discussions with the FIA. And of course, had outrageous talent and charisma.

Thanks for the link to that. In particular, this stands out for me:

"Mosley had to make a decision about which funeral to attend, “I went to Ratzenberger’s funeral rather than to Senna’s where all the great and good of Formula 1 were because I felt somebody needed to support him and his family.”"

For all we say about Max Mosley, I'll give him credit for this, it was quite a thing to do.

[Sits]

Can't argue with that.