I know there aren’t many of us on this hellsite who can actually remember Imola 1994 firsthand. If anyone gets triggered please scroll on, I won’t be offended.
You see for years my memory of that weekend has been foggy, blurred by years of documentaries and footage I didn’t see at the time, clouding the few clear memories I had of it, to the point it no longer made sense. I’d always put it down to being young. Yet I could tell you clear as day who replaced Senna at Williams and the number of their car (David Coulthard and 0, because Senna’s car had been number 1 and it seemed disrespectful).
However somehow an 8 minute documentary jogged the true memory to the surface and explains why some parts are so clear and others like frosted glass.
Back in 1994 they didn’t televise practice sessions and I admit it was maybe 15 years later before I even knew Barrichello’s had had a crash on the Friday, which to this day I still can’t understand how that was the none fatal crash.
I remember watching qualifying, I remember seeing Ratzenberger crash, although all we saw was the car spinning to a stop. I remember looking at his head slumped to the side and no movement and somehow just knowing. It’s only now I realise that I still to this day always look to see a drivers head move after a big crash.
I don’t remember anything else from the Saturday other than being insistent in all my childish sensibilities that the race shouldn’t go ahead on Sunday.
I remember when I found out the race was going ahead I didn’t want to watch it. I can’t remember what I did, but I remember changing my mind after the start and walking into the living room and Dad saying “now Senna’s hit the wall”. I remember sitting down and watching the ambulances and medics from a distance on the coverage as Murray Walker tried to keep the broadcast going (we now know he knew already what had happened simply down to the behaviour of Dr Sid Watkins).
I remember being incredulous that they were going to restated the race. Young as I was I knew it was wrong, now I would say disrespectful, naive and gave no consideration to the drivers and teams and what they had been through that weekend. Watching the restart, when there was another crash and cars were spinning everywhere I walked away and I think at the point my memory edited itself as self preservation, hence why it’s never been clear since.
I found out later on the news that Senna had also died. Years later, that members of the crowd had been hurt from flying debris on the restart and mechanics had been hurt in the pits during the race.
What still makes me sick to my stomach 29 years later, is that as a child I knew on Saturday what the FIA and F1 should do. Abandon the race weekend. Yet every accident just resulted in them carrying on. Everything after Barrichello’s crash on Friday seems avoidable.
Sadly I had no such premonition of Suzuka 2014 and was sat watching live, though thankfully what was televised was a car going off and disappearing behind a tractor. The only true footage of that came from fans.
I don’t really have any memories of the 1994 season after Imola. Yet I remember seeing Schumacher win both his Benetton World Titles. Im making this post more so as I’ve been trying for 29 years to piece together what I saw at the time and what I saw later. Now I thought it best to write it down Dammed if I know why it resurfaced tonight at 2am.
