17 years

I was three, apparently it was one of the first ever races I watched with my dad. Obviously don't remember though lol. Probably didn't have a great enough attention span at that age either.

 

A painful day.
It was clear well before the severity of Senna's accident was announced that something bad had happened. By what they weren't saying on TV.
I have that tape somewhere. Haven't looked at it once since.

 

I haven't seen it yet but now that its streaming on Netflix I will.
The TV audience at least was not informed until later.

 

If you taped the actual race, then you have in-cockpit video of the RF tire coming back and hitting him. They showed it on replay ONCE before the safety crew got to him, and after that I have never seen it anywhere, ever. I remember David Hobbs commented that he (Senna) was stirring around in the cockpit, after that he didn't say much else..
The replay of the race the next day does not show this footage, and it happened so quick you almost don't see it anyway.
And maybe we don't want to see it....

I had it on tape, until my VCR ate that tape a few years later.

 

Mines on Beta. Seventeen years is a long time

 

Nor were those present in the stands. I was sitting at the top of the stand overlooking the Variente Bassa just before the front straight. It was known that he had had a big crash and had been helicoptered out, but just how serious his condition was remained unknown. The race had just gone green after Lamy's crash into Lehto at the first start.

In addition to losing R. Ratzenberger, Barrichello was almost lost that weekend as well after crashing the Jordan, going upside down and swallowing his tongue.

Larini filled in for Alesi who had been injured during testing. He finished 2nd.

In retrospect, it was a terrible weekend for the sport, however during the event it was hard to put into perspective all of the bad crashes that were happening, one right on top of another.

 

I was shocked that Tamburello had not been modified after Berger's fiery crash of a few years earlier.....

 

I remember watching the race and the accident live on ESPN. I noticed for a brief moment how his head moved. That mislead me to belief that he was alive. In reality that was probably just the head slumping one direction.

I had no idea he died and the next morning I called my friend (who was a big Senna fan) in Europe teasing him that now Senna had to sit out a few races and MS could establish a bigger lead in the WDC chase. I was completely shocked when he told me the news.

IIRC in the US we didn't see all the blood that was underneath him once they lifted him up, but in the Euro newspapers they showed that and it was quite telling.

 

Wow, didnt know that.

 

It was Easter Sunday that day (for us Greeks anyway...) and I had been at church till 2am so I set the VCR to record the race. When I woke up I immediately watched it and remember thinking Varsha was just being overdramatic with his comments since the crash didn't look all that bad.

When I stopped the tape at the end of the race, it went back to live tv and there was a news program on. They happened to be talking about Senna just then and the first thing I heard when I pressed the stop button was "3-time world champion Ayrton Senna, dead at the age of 34." The timing was absolutely creepy.

No amount of Ouzo was going to make me feel any better on that Easter...

 

I kept the Swiss newspaper from then. Never dared to look at it again but I believe it has that picture if somebody cares.

I never kept any headlines of anything except for this

 

It's crazy to think that it's been over 17 years. Last night I watched Senna's movie and I gotta say that it was one of the best movies I've ever watched. If you're a F1 fan, you will have the same feeling about his movie.

 

They modified fuel cells and locations of them a bit.