Ayrton Senna – My Opinion on What Caused his Crash?, by Ibrar Malik

One of the most fundamental mysteries of the 1994 Formula 1 season was why Ayrton Senna, one of the sport's greatest ever drivers, crash fatally at a relatively easy corner?

To this day, no-one knows for certain why Senna crashed. Many theories of varying credibility have been put forward. My personal view is Senna, desperate to break free from the car behind, carried a bit too much speed into Tamburello the car went slightly offline onto a part of the track known to be extremely bumpy. The ride height was still too low after the safety car so it 'bottomed out'. This also caused the peaky aerodynamics on the Williams to stall resulting in a catastrophic loss of grip made worse by tyres not up to working pressures or temperatures. This view is shared by Damon Hill who drove an identical car to Senna, and Michael Schumacher, who had the clearest view of what started the crash. In my humble opinion, they are the two best people to judge its cause.

 Senna leading Schumacher moments before the crash

Memories of Imola 1994, by Ibrar Malik

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of that horrific race weekend and the passing of two Formula 1 drivers there will be three separate blogs over the coming days. The next blog pays tribute to Roland Ratzenberger and how his accident helped spark an important safety legacy within F1. The third blog will remember Ayrton Senna's final 24 hours.

However, today's blog gives a more personal recollection. Mike Fairholme is well known and respected among F1 circles having provided the finest bespoke helmets to over 60 Formula One drivers since the 1980s.

Mike with his other love, Toffee. In March 2018 Motor Sport Magazine wrote an article about him entitled "Racing's artist in residence"…it is well worth a read for his wonderful stories

The Most Successful and Worst Car of 1994, What Do They Have in Common?, by Ibrar Malik

Answer - they shared the same ancestor. The Pacific PR01 car failed to finish a race in 1994 whereas the Benetton B194 won eight Grands Prix, yet amazingly the two cars originated from the same 1991 design. It's just the Pacific was a less refined version of the Benetton.

In 1991 a high-quality design team headed by Rory Byrne and Pat Symonds secretly worked on a Reynard F1 car. However, the project was eventually shelved and the team moved back to Benetton for 1992. "I was a director of the Reynard F1 effort so knew a lot about it," explains Willem Toet, Benetton's Head of Aerodynamics in 1994 and one of the key contributors towards the upcoming book. "Pat Symonds, Rory Byrne and Adrian Reynard were the other directors. Afterwards we all went back to Benetton because Rory did a deal for the whole group. I don't think there is a person on the planet who knows the story better than I do." Their 1991 Reynard design morphed into the race winning 1992 Benetton and the B194 car, which Michael Schumacher used to win the 1994 drivers' championship, was an advanced evolution of it.

Some extremely rare photos of the 1991 Reynard F1 project conducting wind tunnel testing with Willem Toet. 

Ayrton Senna - His Final Hours, by Ibrar Malik

Here is the latest guest blog posts by Ibrar Malik, about his forthcoming book 1994 – The Untold Story of a Tragic and Controversial F1 Season. This book will aim to offer much additional insight into this turbulent season and much else besides. You can find much more detail on this on his website at: www.1994f1.com.

Twenty-four years ago today Formula One lost one of its greatest ever drivers. Ayrton Senna's passing was felt across the globe, especially Brazil, which declared three days of official mourning. He had been the world's most famous racing driver and his death was broadcast live on television in front of millions. The grief felt was on par with the deaths of Princess Diana or JFK, and he is still sorely missed among F1 fans even 24 years on. The loss of Roland Ratzenberger a day earlier had been profoundly shocking, however, Senna's passing was another order of magnitude. It turned a shocking situation into the biggest crisis F1 had faced in recent times.

Ayrton Senna was a unique champion and is still adored by F1 fans today.

Senna was a complex, charismatic yet contradictory character who evoked strong emotions within others - qualities which were evident during the final hours of his tragically short life. The death of Roland Ratzenberger during qualifying for the 1994 San Marino GP, the first death at a race meeting in 12 years, deeply affected Senna. Indeed, the Brazilian commandeered an official FIA car to visit the accident himself as he wanted to understand what lessons could be learnt for the safety of others. It was something the triple world champion would be chastised for before the race.

Roland Ratzenberger - 24 Years On, by Ibrar Malik

Here is the latest guest blog posts by Ibrar Malik, about his forthcoming book 1994 – The Untold Story of a Tragic and Controversial F1 Season. This book will aim to offer much additional insight into this turbulent season and much else besides. You can find much more detail on this on his website at: www.1994f1.com.

F1 is filled with irony, but the hand it dealt Roland Ratzenberger on 30th April 1994 was a particularly cruel blow - even by the sport's standards.

Ratzenberger was popular among other F1 drivers and drove to that fateful San Marino GP with JJ Lehto.

The Austrian, just weeks into his dream job, was attempting to qualify for his second Grand Prix with the new and underfunded Simtek team. During a fast lap he had a minor off-track excursion and instead of coming into the pits to check for damage he weaved the car, perhaps trying to judge for himself. Believing the front wing was OK, Ratzenberger carried onto another quick lap. That would prove to be a fatal error.

Non-championship F1 races - time to bring them back?

Recently for Grand Prix Times I wrote an article looking at the 1965 year of the late and very great Jim Clark (you can have a read of it here). Why that year in particular? Well, partly it was because we're now exactly 50 years on from it, but especially because without hyperbole it was likely the most astonishing calendar year of motorsport success undertaken by anyone ever.

To the modern eye his achievements read like something from fantasy - in addition to winning the F1 title in record time he also within those 12 months bagged the Indianapolis 500, two F2 championships as well as took a couple of race victories each in sports cars and in saloons.

Jim Clark's 1965 included as many as
12 non-championship F1 races.
"ClarkJim1965mitMechaniker".
Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 de via
Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClarkJim1965mit
Mechaniker.jpg#mediaviewer/
File:ClarkJim1965mitMechaniker.jpg

Of course your initial response to hearing this might be to point out that back then the F1 championship calendar was much more sparse, which left far greater time for other things, and that is true. In 1965 the offical itinerary consisted of ten races, around half of what we have in the modern era. But factor in that on the other hand travel and logistics is much easier now than it was then. More pointedly factor in too that in addition to his championship schedule Clark - as many of his contemporaries did and in every year - took part in a number of non-championship F1 races.

You may be wondering at this point what the heck I'm on about - but time was that the F1 annual schedule on top of the points-paying stuff had a handful, and sometimes a big handful, of Grands Prix that didn't count towards the title scoring. The non-championship races that I mentioned.

Britain was especially well-served by them, with the International Trophy at Silverstone taking place as an F1 event almost every year between 1949 and 1978, the Race of Champions (not to be confused with its current namesake) at Brands Hatch which was first held in 1965 and last happened in 1983, and the Oulton Park Gold Cup which existed as an F1 race on and off from 1954 to 1972. Therefore British fans of a certain vintage could have seen F1 cars racing on three separate occasions - and not one of them the British Grand Prix - before even the spring was out.

Boycotts and ironies

This game lacks nothing for political intrigue. And even by its usual standards we're getting rather a lot of it right now.

So it continued in Austin last weekend; indeed if anything it was therein more exasperating than we'd been getting used to in the days and weeks beforehand. As Mark Hughes noted for Motorsport, come the red light going out on Sunday it felt like 'a race broke out amid the arguing about the sport's future'.

It was thought for a while that Sauber and Force India as well
as Lotus, may sit out the Austin race
Photo: Octane Photography

F1 indeed was oh-so nearly hit for six by a boycott (and well done to everyone who got that esoteric reference. Not that Geoffrey of that ilk hit too many sixes). With two teams not reaching Texas at all due to financial maladies, rumours circulated that three more - Lotus, Force India and Sauber - feeling a similar pinch would sit out the race, perhaps by parking after a lap, in order to make their feelings known on the same matter.

It was a rather odd affair, as the concept smouldered without anyone apparently wanting to admit to rubbing sticks together. Force India got closest to it though, with Bob Fernley confirming after qualifying that a no-show was 'on the table'.

Twenty years on - personal recollections of Ayrton Senna and Imola 1994

Some things you can't explain. Some things just are.

I watched my first ever F1 race on TV when not yet seven years old, in the British Grand Prix of 1986. And while to this day I cannot rationalise it somehow during that hour and a half the bug bit. From that point on I was an obsessive.

My recollection of the spell of childhood that followed that day was of rather standing apart from my school friends. For them it was soap operas (Neighbours, quickly buttressed by Home and Away), pop stars (Kylie and Jason, natch), football and, increasingly, computer games that took up much of their existences. While I wasn't too bad on the latter two subjects, all-in this wasn't for me.

Credit: Norio Kioke / CC

For me Formula One was the thing. My world would stop when a live race was on television, the highlights programmes would be recorded and watched repeatedly, copies of Autosport would be pored over.

I often would incite glazed expressions among friends when I asked them if they'd watched a race over a weekend. Sometimes I would impress them but more likely would take the glazed expressions yet further with my ability to recite the entirety of an F1 grid - drivers, cars and engines, the whole season's calendar, to doodle circuit layouts, as well as quote sundry other details.

But even with this as far as I was concerned there may as well have been only one guy out there - and his name was Ayrton Senna. Throughout much of my fervent following of the sport right up until the 1st of May 1994 - now almost exactly twenty years ago - I had eyes only for he.

The best driver of my generation - Ayrton Senna

The Senna film frustrates me. More broadly, the hagiographic assessments of Ayrton Senna as driver and man that have predominated for close on 20 years frustrate me.

Why is this? Well, one thing it isn't is reflective of is tribalism: I grew up hero-worshipping Ayrton Senna. And perhaps appropriately I did so with extreme intensity; something close to mania.

Credit: Norio Kioke / CC

But Senna was not the saint portrayed in the film or anywhere else, nor was he the perfect heroic racing driver claimed in retrospect. And worse than such claims being inaccurate they also sell him far short. Senna was much more - more complex and more fascinating is his contradictions and unique imperfections.

Senna was often gentle, poetic, governed by conscience and humanitarianism; yet his F1 career was also characterised by astonishing ruthlessness and hard-nose, and an apparent inability to accept fault. Senna was supremely intelligent and rational - and surely no racing driver in history was as captivating, almost mesmeric, to listen to; yet he was also emotional, and capable of breath-taking spite, grudges and rages. And the contradictions applied to his driving also: to watch Senna in action was to watch the most delicate, almost ethereal, command of a racing car. He also was clearly concerned, and frequently vocal, on safety. But as we know his driving sometimes displayed extreme crudeness as well as what appeared a disregard for his or other drivers' preservation when around rival cars, particularly when around that of Alain Prost. What he did at Suzuka in 1990 was reprehensible.

Why though with all of these apparent drawbacks do I consider Ayrton Senna the best driver of my generation? I do because the flaws were all part of his unique tapestry which was also coloured by a quite extraordinary and inimitable driving genius.

Retro F1: the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix

The latest Retro F1 was held yesterday, watching the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola in Italy.

For those who don't know, Retro F1 is watching a classic F1 race in full on YouTube and chatting on Twitter with like-minded F1 people as we go. This race was memorable and controversial, featured Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, as well as other great drivers, and was run in the classic turbocharged machines of the mid-1980s.

The YouTube footage that we watched is below (or you can click here) as are the highlights of our Twitter chat.



Right, ready, let’s do this. I’m clicking play now. Everyone else please do the same.

@mario_eb Of course. I couldn't miss this one :) All systems checked over here :) -O=O'
@DavidHer228 And here we go, 1985 Imola GP live Twitter commentary :)
...with the legendary Murray Walker and James Hunt :)
@kanemelegatti Here we go!
@djtrickster77 Never seen this one before so looking forward to it...
@mario_eb You'll have fun :)

Hordes of tifosi at Imola as you’d expect. After a difficult 1984 Ferrari was showing signs of returning to form in this early part of 1985.

Some scene-setting: this is race three of 1985. McLaren had dominated 1984 (Niki Lauda pipping Alain Prost for the title, despite Prost usually being the quicker of the two) and were expected to dominate again. Prost indeed won round one in Rio, but in round two Senna announced himself properly with his debut win in the pouring rain in Estoril. And he’s on pole again here at Imola...

@djtrickster77 Ayrton Senna on pole with the JPS lotus...Legendary.
@DavidHer228 Senna on pole position more than one second ahead...
@mario_eb Those names, those cars, Turbo Era, those races. GREAT!!!

@SartoMutiny Where is Gerhard! I MUST KNOW.
Gerhard (Berger) qualified 10th :)

Off we go... Senna leads team mate Elio de Angelis, with Michele Alboreto's Ferrari 3rd. The roar of the tifosi can be heard above the engines.
@ElenaF1 Clean start and Senna running away!

The next Retro F1: 1985 San Marino Grand Prix, this Sunday at 1500 GMT

Retro F1 number five is on its way this weekend. It'll take place this Sunday, 19 February at 1500 (3pm) GMT and we'll be watching the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

Retro F1 is where we watch a classic F1 race in full on YouTube, and post updates and chat about it on Twitter as live. The race we'll be watching this Sunday is memorable and controversial, it's around an excellent circuit and stars the likes of Ayrton Senna and Alan Prost in the turbocharged F1 monsters of the 1980s. So it will be a good watch!

It will be great if you can watch along with us and have some Twitter chat as we go. The ones we've done so far have been really enjoyable with lots of welcome insight and contributions on Twitter from a wide range of people watching along.

You can follow, and contribute to, the chat with the #retrof1 hashtag here, and the link I'll be using to watch the race is here.

Michele Alboreto in the Ferrari 156/85
Credit: Lothar Spurzem / CC

I also put a write up of the Twitter chat on my blog after the event. Those for the previous Retro F1 events can be read here (if you scroll down).

If you're anything like me, watching old F1 races is a real treat, and it'll be good to hear your thoughts through the race. I'll be delighted if you can join in.

You can work out how to convert 1500 GMT to your local time using this website.

Keke Rosberg in the Williams FW10
Credit: Lothar Spurzem / CC

Please let me know any questions or comments you have via the comments below or on Twitter. I'm also happy to hear requests for future Retro F1 races to watch (the selection of this race to watch is as a result of a request!), though bear in mind it needs to exist in full (and for free) on the internet.

See you Sunday, hopefully.