How is worse than the weekend Von Tripp killed several spectators as well as himself. Or how about the many occasions when a driver literally burned to death trapped in their car?
MasterViseOMG It's not about being worst it's about fuck me, get these cars safer whichj I think they have. But I know where your coming from. Good call.
Rubens Barichello must feel like a very lucky man. He had the most violent and shocking crash of that weekend and came out of it almost completely fine. Roland and Ayrton did not.
Rubens's car hit into a tyre barrier that absorb some of the forces, but Roland and Ayrton hits to a concrete wall, so it tells the importance on safety standard of track did affect
@Kin Fai Poon Although atleast on Senna's accident it wasnt so much crashing into the concrete wall that killed him rather than the angel of the impact and how it shot up the right front wheel into the cockpit and to Senna's head....so granted, had there been tyres there, that could have been quite possibly avoided, even if it still would have been really bad impact, same with Ratzenberger. But to this day I hear people say that "no, there should not have been tyre barriers where they crashed" and I just cant understand why they are saying so...
@@Balnazzardi Because their tiny slightly below room temperature IQ brain tells them to spit out idiotic shit. Just tell them they are wrong, state your arguments and leave them be. Idiots will continue to be idiots.
@@Balnazzardi To be exact..Senna had insane bad luck: His head was impaled by a Williams suspension rod. That was the only injury he received from that impact.
I love Burndle's quote about him, saying that his only memory of him is a good one, going up and introducing himself, RIP Roland, the forgotten man of Imola 94, although I am a massive Senna fan we must not forget the other tragedy of the weekend, let's hope these are the final race weekend deaths in F1-
😢😢😢😢 One of the saddest times in racing history. I'm 63 years old and STILL, VIVIDLY, remember that tragic weekend. I'm SO thankful, in the midst of these tragedies, that the safety industry realized that there were many changes to be made to make racing a little safer. It will NEVER be completely safe. But SO thankful for the Hans device and improvements on the tracks. These guys are brave HEROES, just like a soldier, who sees the rewards as well as the risk and decides to live the risks RIP to these warriors 🙏🙏🙏
Dr Gunsmith they had no reason to cancel the race. Ratzenberger's crash was due to him going flat out on a damaged front wing, which upset the car. Something that could have happened before. You know what could have saved Senna? him having a failure anywhere else during the race. He died from incredibly bad luck as a piece of suspencion went through the visor of his helmet. Had that not happened he'd have survived. Ratzenberger's and Senna's death showed that F1 needed more safety, and they changed it. It's quite sad that the worse needs to happen for people to change the rules when there's people who want those rules changed before tragedy happens.
@@tukamadafuka Really? That's interesting, but I wonder if that law was not triggered because Roland's death occurred during qualfying, and not during the grand prix itself the next day.
I'm told that under Italian (San Marino is part of Italy) law, A sports event must be stopped if someone dies. Why wasn't this race weekend canceled when Ratzenbeger died?
You're right about Italian's law. But to stop the event, the person who die must have been declared dead on the location of the event itself. We all know that Ratzenberger was immediatly killed but for money reason, he was declared dead on his way to the hospital. And the same thing happend the day after with Senna. Sorry for my bad english.
I know I'll sound pedantic here but San Marino isn't part of Italy. Imola, however, is in Italy so these accidents were indeed processed by the Italian law system. :)
I remember this day,I was only a kid and my sister was a teenageer,she was a Senna fan and she told me Rolland was dead I didnt understand. My sister and my father were watching the TV all the time and speaking about that,my family used to stay together to watch F1 back then they were all Senna's fans.
In all honesty (i dont mean this in a horrid way) but the Health and Safety of F1 was so poor that it took the death of Ayrton Senna for them to realise. If for example just Roland had died that weekend i doubt anything would have been done about it. As soon as Senna died everyone was up in harms in improving. It took the death of a champion to make them realise just how stupid and under prepared they were. Very sad. R.I.P Roland And Ayrton.
I agree with you but its worth bearing in mind, and im talking twenty yeas ago, that attitudes were different back then. Ok it wasn't the 70s when it was acceptable for drivers to burn to death while marshals stood by watching, cars to disintegrate and so forth, and F1 to loose a couple of drivers a year, but it wasn't like today when kids cant play conkers or fly a kite because of H&S. To be fair F1 was very safe...no fatalities at a race meeting between 1983 to 1993 (inclusive). Drivers suffered massive, horrific accidents and walked away. Clearly Imola showed just how far F1 had come by RB surviving his massive shunt, and how much work needed to be done with the two fatalities. As you said if It had been Roland and, say, Llehto who died that weekend would F1 been so quick to reach for the rule book? Senna was F1s yardstick and that is why his death shook F1. Compared to the cars of the 80s or 70s the 94 cars and circuits were many times safer. Technology has moved on and thankfully nobody has died since.
marky mark and i do hope there are no more fatalities at that, these guys put there life on the line every time they step in to a vheicle. Luckily though they are no longer death traps.
I think eventually they will move to closed canopies over the cockpits to prevent the type of crash Massa had in 2009 or Alonso at Monza 2012. Then people will look back at the current cars and think Phaw what were they thinking! Eventually, by a law of averages, a driver will be killed at some point. 20 years without a fatal crash is superb but Mass, Kubica, etc could easily have died.
marky mark Absolutely. When, back in the 60's, drivers (mainly Jackie Stewart) started to use full face helmets, people thought they were crazy and were "pussies". A few years on, everybody realised how stupid they were not to use them before that. Same thing for the side walls on the cockpits: back in the early 90's, it was common to see the drivers' arms and neck exposed on the cockpit, it seemed almost like a rule. Today, looking back to that, it looks absolutely ridiculous on the basis of safety. I think it will be just a matter of time before closed cockpits come to F1: it's undoubtedly safer, and the essence of a single seater open wheel race car is still there. Unfortunately, and I hope that I'm wrong, I think it must take a driver to die before they make that change. Massa's accident should be more than enough evidence to do it, but, as harsh as this may seem, I think they must've thought: "Well, he didn't die, so let's leave it as it is". Over the years we've had many examples of how unsafe and deadly open cockpits can be: see, for example, Marco Campos' crash in 1995, Henry Surtees in 2009, even Tom Pryce back in 1977 (even though at that time they had plenty of other things to worry about rather than an open/closed cockpit). I believe that in 20 years time, closed cockpits will be a reality in F1, and by that time everyone will look back and think how unsafe it once was. But, as I said, a driver "must" die before they decide to make that change.
Yes we are heading in that direction but its also a technological problem. Currently its hard to find a ideal solution. Glass/clear canopy like a fighter jet would give distortion issues visually and could fill with smoke very rapidly with even a small fire (bearing in mind ERS, energy cells, etc). It could also make escape/extraction problematic if heavily damaged. The other option is roll bar.cage type which would look UGLY! and give less protection from projectiles.
I wouldn't last 5 seconds if I had to give that news... Very sad... And sadder still that the worse was yet to come, not that they knew at the time... :( R.I.P Ratzenberger R.I.P Senna
shaolinfingajab not the same barrier, Senna at the Tamburello corner while Ratzenberger at the Villeneuve Curva., an utter and terrible loss not only for F1 but for humanity as a whole.. but may their souls rest in peace ~ T.T
Senna was so upset about what happened to Ratzenberger he almost didn't race. He'd already been troubled by Barrichello's big crash even though he was only slightly hurt. Senna opted to race as like everyone else he felt Ratzenberger wanted the show to go on. Tragically the rest you know. R I P Ratzenberger, Senna & now Murray Walker.
We know. Thanks for your contribution, all we can hope for is for no more deaths to ever happen in F1 again. Once again, RIP to all F1 drivers who sacrified their lives for their passion.
+tobi lythgoe He isn't the only racing death in the 21st century... Villota died as a result of F1 injuries, plus all the guys in the US that hardly get a mention in Europe.
+Dipsticks LC That's true. Dan Wheldon, Paul Dana, Justin Wilson, Bryan Clauson, all of them passed away during these past 10 years, and the only one I remember being mentioned in Spain (because I live there) was Wheldon, and I think he was mentioned because he was the Indy500 Winner the same year he passed. Even more surprising, if Hildebrand didn't hit the barrier, I wouldn't even know about Wheldon's passing until a few days sfter his tragic crash
TheRomanRuler Magnussen in Spa two weeks ago, Villeneuve in Melbourne 2001, Michael Schumacher in Silverstone '99, Katayama in Estoril '95... A lot of drivers are alive today thanks to Senna, I think, but this is the hardest part of any sport
never thought about it that way but it is (in my opinion) one of the ultimate sacrifice's that someone can make to help save so many otheres lives by making it safer. may all the racers who have died doing what they loved to do weather it be for the sport , what they absolutely loved to do, or for us the fans, and have helped make it a safer sport rest in peace
The whole Imola 94 Grand Prix week still scares me just thinking about it. Everything that could have gone wrong did and two innocent men lost their lives needlessly.
Just seeing Roland crash and then stop, with his head slumping....you just knew it wasn't going to be a crash he was going to get out of....I must say that the cameras should have gone to another shot. No one should have seen that corpse for more than a second. The fact they kept rolling as he was pulled from the car was just plain disrespectful. Props to Murray as always being the voice of f1 in such a tragic time.
They did the same at Monza in 2000. Showed several shots of the doctors trying to revive the marshal who had been hit by a wheel. Both Imola and Monza were produced by the same tv broadcaster and I believe it was one of the reasons FOM ended up producing the World Feed in-house (the other main reason being to prevent bias from producers towards certain drivers at their home races). Strangely enough, the BBC had for the first time brought a full production crew to Imola in 94, and after Roland's crash had came up with a plan for what they would do if a foreign broadcaster tried to get intrusive shots of an injured driver (which was to cut to their own cameras in the pitlane/paddock and have Murray commentate on what he was seeing on the World Feed, as indeed they did after Senna's crash)
i remember the next day. i was fourteen years old, laying on sofa, my mum hoovering. The cars were lining up on the grid. I was crying because i wanted the race cancelled. It wasnt.
I too was fourteen, it was weird because Roland's death was the first I'd known watching F1. I remember seeing the crash between Lehto and Montermini (I think) and thought "this weekend is crazy" I had no idea then that in the hours ahead there would be worse to come, culminating in the loss of THE greatest driver of my (and IMO any) time. 20 years next May - RIP Roland and Ayrton.
And the day after that bad afternoon he had to announce Senna's death as well...it's just so sad..:( Two young men died on one weekend, two sympathic, talented young men. I pray for their souls. RIP Roland, RIP Ayrton.
It is. What a sad, tragic weekend for Formula One...but the silver lining has come with the emphasis the sport now has on the safety of the brave men in the cockpits. AS, RR - RIP
The question is, did the track really needed concrete walls instead of tires or some other softer materials? The cars were also not safe enough of course but, colliding with concrete at 200 mph is pretty brutal even for today's GP cars.
narc1s m. True, I mean at very least in both Senna's and Ratzenbergers accident, the impact might not have been as severe had there been several layers of tyre barrier.....and in both cases the car might have "sunk" into the barrier, absorbing most of the impact.....with that kind of simple solution both drivers might have been saved
Balnazzardi I think the problem was Imola's lack of run-off at the time. Multi-layers of tyres would have "moved" the barriers closer to the track increasing the chance of a driver hitting one if he left the track. Also a single row of tyres would have had the potential of throwing a car (and the tyres) back onto the track and resulting in a potential massive accident with anyone passing the scene. (Ratzenberger's car did pretty much end up back on the circuit, but had travelled so far that anyone passing by would have seen the debris and be prepared to slow down or stop).
MadGaz85 ye I remember hearing some ppl saying that, including Keke Rosberg who said that ofcourse there shouldnt be tyre barrier there...overall though it sound to me like safety before this accident was just secondary thing, and that people were still having this attitude that there was no reason to even try to make tracks safer, cause the danger was accepted factor....I mean it still is ofcourse, but you could say that today every possible precaution has been taken to prevent any serious accidents....if only back then they had had these barriers were are having nowdays that are not made out of tyres, but out of some other material..... Either way that weekend still makes me so sad and even angry, despite the fact that didnt even really follow F1 back then (I was only 5 years old)....I never witnessed Senna's racing live, but from everything I have seen afterwards, his best moments in racing and his interviews, I have become to truly admire and respect him, and I have just so many times wondered how much more Senna could have won, had he not died....Senna would have had so much more to give to the sport and I would have loved to hear his comments afterwards about the state of F1 nowdays and his thoughts on current F1 drivers....
watching this and other footage of this gp has made me want Rubens to FINALLY get success he has deserved. What a turn up it would be if he won this years F1. Heres hoping.........
The amount of harm that occurred that weekend is actually quite spooky... 2 drivers killed, 1 seriously injured, and spectators injured by flying debris.
@Scaura90 yes it was..he damaged his front wing on a kerb a lap earlier and a piece of the wing flew off just before the Villeneuve corner..there´s even a video where you can see this piece of wing flying off..
two stunningly good racing drivers dying at what was possibly their happiest. r.i.p ratzenberger, senna, and all others that have lost their lives in any form of motor racing.
Yes, that's why Berger had a serious crash in Tamburello in 1989. Later he said he was lucky he wasn't seriously injured or dead. Patrese crashed in 1991 in Tamburello and Alboreto in 1992. Rubens Barrichello had a serious practice crash in 1994, in Tamburello. He too was lucky it wasn't worse. Ratzenberger crash, not in Tamburello but still Imola. Pardon me for being brash but what you're saying is utter nonsense. Piquet, Senna and Berger all said Imola was dangerous years before 1994.
@dukeofstradone Senna discussed with Gehard Berger moving the wall after his crash after his crash in 89 (I think, don't shoot me if I'm wrong) but were prevented by the reiver running round the corner, but the lack of tyre barriers I'll never know R.I.P. Ayrton and Roland (the forgotten man)
Which begs the question why these high-speed runoff areas for Ratzenberger and Senna's crashes had concrete walls unshielded by tyre barriers or other defensive features.
Nice words. Nobody will hate you for it. He could have pulled out, we know he prpbably thought of it following Ratzenberger's (rip) accident but we also know that pulling out is not what he really wanted. He was on pole, the best possible way to start a GP. And he went for it like he should have. What happened was so tragic but nstead of thinking about the ways he could have survived we should accept what happened and honor him like the legend he was. Senna, a great person both on and off track.
I have to be honest, Murray doesn't seem to bothered. Maybe he'd seen so many deaths by this point ... I'll have to see how he dealt with the Senna announcement.
It still happened recently, remember Kubica's accident in Canada in 2007? High speed curve with a concrete wall close to it and we're lucky for the safety advancements of modern Formula 1 or Robert may have lost his life that day too.
Nobody else other than Senna and Ratzenberger lost their lives that weekend. There were nine people injured @ the start of the race; 8 fans and a policeman, and then there was the accident in the pits. Those two accidents just added to the misery of 1 May 1994.
This, for me, is the darkest weekend in racing history. Barichello's injury. Ratzenberger's death, Senna's death and the pitstop incident....Life is unduly harsh at times. We MUST carry on. We must spite mortality. If we die doing what we love and carry on that spitit, then none of us truly dies and for now, at least, death it cheated!
@hazzamfc22 I think that something broke on his car, from slow motion replay etc. but when you see the way it hit the wall (one of the videos on you tube has it) the force of the impact was so great, and the concrete so damaged (again where was a safety barrier) that nobody could have survivied it. is Imola still on the tour, have they replaced/fixed thes barriers? Also i agree EMS response appalingly slow, 15-30 seconds max
it's a long edit, the only guy apart from Murray that is still in shot after it continues is the guy posing for the camera, and he has moved about 8 feet, still posing for the camera but in a different position lol =/
The inconsistency of not be in placed tires and other measures of protection all over the circuit is conspicuously unacceptable... The world lost its greatest F1 Champion and a driver who was privileged and he had lots of skills, he offered many outstanding moments to the fans of the sport and yet, he still had more to offer, instead he has been lost, because the tires weren't there where they should be.
the reason for his death was said to be that he damaged the nose going over a kerb, but there is another story that a mechanic did a runner because the nose wasn't fitted properly.
SAFER barriers are not needed in F1 these days, all newer racing cars in non-US areas (including Le Mans cars as used in the US too) now have multiple crumple zones and face tough crash testing to make sure they can absorb enough energy from a rigid wall crash to protect the driver. Look at Robert Kubica's rally crash, he got away with just leg and hand injuries.
@onewildcarl82 Why wouldn't they race? In 1982, every car except Gilles Villeneuve's teammate raced the day after he died. They even finished that qualifying session knowing he was on the verge of death. There were no delays after deaths in practice of Revson, Rindt, or Cevert. The 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans continued after 80 spectators were killed in a crash. It's just the way racing has always worked. They try to make it safe, but you just have to keep going.
If these cars were restricted to say 100mph the crashes would be much less severe, plus fit them with front and side airbags for driver protection and all barriers should be covered in rubber or foam ...
As cynical as it sounds, Ayrton would have died later because the madness and complacency went on. His death was a major kick in the balls for F1, and they had to do something after that.
@GTAstuntz I think the biggest reason why Ratzenberger IS remembered is cause of Senna's death. Now he's always the other driver that died, otherwise eventually he would've been forgotten.
