Roland Ratzenberger

[Mr Tidy]

I watched a recording of the Senna documentary that was on TV recently and relived the Ratzenberger and Senna crashes that I had seen live 30 years ago, and it probably affected me more now than it did then for some reason.

That weekend in May 1994 was horrific.

[coppice]

It was indeed . But if one takes the longer perspective, even that horrible weekend's carnage was almost trivial compared to Le Mans 1955, Italian GP 1961 (16 dead ) , Mille Miglia 1957 (11 dead , including kids ) and as for pre war events, multiple fatalities were common.

There is only reason Imola 1994 is the subject of much commemoration and that is the death of Senna . And Ratzenberger is remembered so fondly mainly because of Senna , not in spite of him . If it had been poor Roland and a guy in a support race who had died , they'd be almost forgotten -like Paletti, De Angelis and Pryce now are .

I am not being callous but the lustre of the death of such a legendary driver illuminated everything else at Imola .

Edited by coppice on Monday 13th May 06:38