Pedro Lamy's 1994 Silverstone Testing Accident, by Ibrar Malik and Ben Green

This is a special blog to celebrate the launch of the audiobook: Team Lotus, Struggling Beyond The Post Colin Chapman Era.

This blog has been co-written by Ben Green, who is the proud owner of the Lotus Formula 1 car Pedro Lamy crashed during that Silverstone test in May 1994, just prior to that year's Spanish Grand Prix. If you have read the book: 1994 The Untold Story of a Tragic and Controversial F1 Season, you'll know Lamy's crash and its subsequent fallout, was hugely significant to F1 that year. Ben's Lotus chassis is the 107C (chassis no 1).

This is the (restored) Lotus 107C that Lamy almost was killed in during that fateful day at Silverstone in May 1994. Ben purchased the chassis from Team Lotus during 1995, along with a heap of spares.
     
1994 Lotus 107C
At the end of the 1993 season, Team Lotus's finances were in a bad way. The newly released book: Team Lotus, Struggling Beyond The Post Colin Chapman Era details how and why Team Lotus got there by the early 1990s.

Its Chris Murphy-designed 107B was fast but unreliable, while its complex active suspension and customer Cosworth HB engines had drained resources. Along came Honda with the Mugen brand and an updated 1989 ZA5 V10 engine, a no-cost factory option.

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

Take a Time Warp Back to the Mid-1990s, by Ibrar Malik

This is the first of what will be several guest blog posts on Talking about F1 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. 

Want to know what the internet looked like back then? There is one website that hasn't been modified since 1 October 1995…that of the Pacific Grand Prix team.

They weren't the greatest F1 team but Pacific's website certainly is memorable.

1994 was the Pacific and Simtek teams' debut F1 season. It proved a baptism of fire because it was one of the sport’s most turbulent years - as the upcoming book explains. After the Imola tragedies extensive, and some might say rushed, car modifications were imposed upon teams in the name of safety. Keith Wiggins, the Pacific team boss, summed up his thoughts at the time; "If my engines don’t bankrupt me, this stands a pretty good chance." Pedro Lamy suffered a massive testing accident which many claimed was a direct result of the FIA’s safety initiative. "That is self-evidently nonsense," retorted FIA president Max Mosley, meanwhile the Portuguese driver was lucky to have survive the crash, albeit with extensive injuries.

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.