The 20 years without Ayrton thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter mister dog
  • 94 comments
  • 5,328 views
Long gone but never forgotten
R.I.P Ayrton Senna da Silva
ayrton-senna-wallpaper-senna1.jpg
 
Rest in Peace Ayrton.

Thought I'd share a photo of a different kind, one of Senna's other hobbies.

I'm not sure he'd still agree with the short choice mind you!
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    48.5 KB · Views: 13
Last edited:
http://blog.quotidiano.net/turrini/2014/04/29/ma-che-cosa-resta-di-ayrton/
by Leo Turrini

Translation

But what remains of Ayrton ?

Formula1 April 29, 2014
In these twenty years , I have often asked and often they asked what is left of Ayrton .

It's a question that has the merit to put me in some trouble.

Let me explain .

I believe that Formula One, a bit ' like all things in life, has undergone a tremendous evolution over two decades.

Some prefer to speak of involution , but I'm not that satisfied by the implicit of this negative judgment ( in the concept of involution ) .

Let me explain again.

Driving a car today has nothing to do with the exercise , theoretically identical drivers required for the '80s and '90s .

The change was genetic .

I'm not saying , God forbid, that one such as Senna ( but also one as Prost or Mansell or as a father or as Alboreto Piquet ) would not fit the needs of ipermoderne era.

I'm saying that change, epochal , has radically transformed the job.

Whether for better or for worse , it's a matter of opinion .

That's why I loved Schumi so much .

Because Michael , a passing figure between distinct and far generations , has remained competitive . As he was, even in the unhappy Mercedes three-year period .

So , back to the point, I say ' no one ' when they ask me to indicate the heir of Ayrton .

Not because , I repeat, the VettelAlonsoRaikkonenHamilton etc. are not up to the task .

Simply, they do something else.

From my point of view , twenty years later , however, remains the same as the fuel that feeds the heart of the pilots.

It's the fuel called passion.

We can judge them how we want , the champions and 2nd drivers of post-modern Formula One .

Yet , there is no one among them who's not animated by the sacred fire that lit Ayrton , Alain , Nigel .

The extreme and ****ing beauty of motorspot is all here .

In the inner impetus that makes Fernando, Lewis, Kimi , Seb and so on , pushing for the limit . It's not their fault if today they are asked by radio to raise the foot , to slow down and save the tires and blah blah blah.

The soul of a pilot is still intact , despite the crazy rules and technology that become sometimes incomprehensible .

I'm very fond of Senna and I imagine those who have the misfortune to read my lines did get it.

He was not a saint and I do not like that he was after the accident, turned into saint .

I know he had an idea of life not too far from mine.

And I know that when we meet again , because we will meet again , He will say it was worth to keep writing about cars and drivers. Even after him.

Even without him.
 
Last edited:
Ganon83
No they wouldn't, just like how people looked at Earnhardt differently after he died in similar fashion.
Before Earnhardt died a lot of fans didn't like him because he dumped a lot of people. Now he was just "rattling their cages".
Senna would be regarded as one of the greats and a lot of people (Mostly those in Brazil) would argue he's the greatest regardless of if he were alive or not, but the discussion would be a lot more open for guys like Prost, Schumi, Piquet, etc.
Click to expand...

As an Earnhardt fan before he died, I'd easily disagree with this, I saw him in the same light before and after death. Same goes for Senna, there are many greats alive today that I tout just as much as Senna and would probably do the same as I do now if the 3 time WDC were alive. It's what he achieved in a car that made him strong and why people should be fans not this iconic glorifying a hero dying in the climax of battle.

It's easy to dismiss a guy because they died, but your not giving Motorsports fans enough owed credit, we spend much time watching or have watched these drivers and some of us watch old races before our time to gain understanding and respect for the sport we love. And it's from there we judge a driver, not because others say well he was great and lost his life while being great, that's a bit annoying and using a single moment to encapsulate a person. For me I think Prost and Senna were both amazing and when people want to talk racing I easily have them on the list of drivers. It's the same way I see Loeb or Hamilton, or Alonso and others as people that seem to be able to show such control and skill to an almost super human level.
 
Well it must be around that moment right now, 20 years on though.
Man he could drive a car....some of the incar footage is the amongst the most sublime I've watched.

Frank Williams said a wonderful thing about him...."Ayrton was no ordinary person. He was actually a greater man out of the car than in it."
 
The most important person in the universe to me made this book for my birthday three years ago, she knew me so well the book may as well have poured directly out of my dreams. It contained all the old posts from my blogspot blog formatted along with new pictures, comments, anecdotes, and pictures of us.

Everything about it is perfect, the layout, the size, the order of the posts (not chronological), even the feeling of the paper. I can't appreciate it enough. But I have to share a portion of it here for you guys on the occasion of Ayrton Senna da Silva's 20th anniversary of passing. This is something I wouldn't usually do since I cherish this book so personally.

I wrote this post on the 15th anniversary of his death to signify what his legacy and character meant to me. It's still incomplete, perhaps someday I'll revisit it and somehow fully elicit the full breadth of how he's influenced my life. But the fact that the influence never stops makes that a difficult thing to do.

She included it in the book prominent and center, along with what is now my favorite photo of Ayrton. One I was extremely happily surprised to see, since I didn't think it was possible for me to see such a stunning new photo of my idol at that point. But she worked absolute magic, she's a special kind of marvelous.

20140501_013315_Android.jpg


20140501_013131_Android 1.jpg


20140501_013220_Android 1.jpg
 
Ratzenberger and Senna's deaths made me understand, at the age of 13, what death actually meant, that there was no coming back from it. I had not lost a relative or friend at that point, so the whole concept of death was hard to understand, to put into emotions. The reality check came in quite brutally.

I remember everything about that weekend 20 years ago so vividly... where I was, what I was wearing, what I had eaten for breakfast, even what the weather looked like. It's one of those events you just cannot forget. I remember faking being sick so I could miss school to watch the free practice on tv Friday morning. And waking up at 6am on saturday to catch the qualifying.

Ayrton was my driver, and the last two seasons had been sub-par, with the 92 McLaren not able to keep up with the Williams, and the 93 McLaren being a bit of a dog. So when he signed with the at the time all-dominating Williams team, I was ecstatic. Finally, I thought, back in contention for the championship. Pole at Interlagos, but a DNF. Oh well. Pole at TI Aida, taken out by Hakkinen at the start. This isn't going well.

Imola, then. We'll get them this time. But something seemed off, something didn't feel right. And then Rubens crashed. And then Ratzenberger crashed. And Ratzenberger died. I didn't particularly care for him at the time, being in a Simtek at the back of the field, a relative newcomer who hadn't done stellar things in a less than stellar car. But his death shook me. I was old and mature enough to understand he wasn't only badly injured, he was not going to get through his injuries. I cried.

Sunday morning came, and I remember everything. The minute of silence in Ratzenberger's memory, the two empty spots on the grid where a Jordan and a Simtek should have been. It just wasn't right. The start. Lehto stalls, Lamy hits him, debris everywhere. Carnage, it looks like a bomb went off. We don't know at the time, but 9 people in the grandstands are injured. What is going on this weekend, I thought. Oh how I wasn't ready for what happens next.

Tamburello, 190mph. The crash. It doesn't look that bad for a high speed crash. He's not moving... probably dazed, and a bit dejected, I think. Still not moving. Marshalls come on the scene, they're frantically waving. Uh-oh. Helicopter shots... the medical car arrives. More helicopter shots... blood, a lot of blood. Erik Comas comes around in a Larousse, out of nowhere. What the hell? More helicopter shots, medical helicopter now on the track. This is bad. I'm nervous, anxious even, at this point. I shut the TV off and took a nap. A few hours later, TV stations announce Senna's death, the grandstand injuries, and another incident once the race restarted involving Michele Alboreto and pitcrews. I'm shocked, borderline psychotic. I have football practice in the afternoon. I don't want to go... I never went. I cried, again. I had lost my hero. A cursed weekend, said the woman on TV. I never watched the end of the race. To this day, I still don't know who won. I don't care. When Karl Wendlinger crashed heavily at Monaco two weeks later, I was done with motorsports for at least 3 or 4 months. I couldn't enjoy it anymore. Then Adelaide came, along with the whole champion debacle. I don't think I watched a single 1995 race.


I lost my grandmother some 6 months later in September 1994, and I felt the exact emotions I felt when Senna died. It was like someone took away a part of me. 20 years on, that feeling still lingers.
 
-Fred-
Imola, then. We'll get them this time. But something seemed off, something didn't feel right. And then Rubens crashed. And then Ratzenberger crashed. And Ratzenberger died. I didn't particularly care for him at the time, being in a Simtek at the back of the field, a relative newcomer who hadn't done stellar things in a less than stellar car. But his death shook me. I was old and mature enough to understand he wasn't only badly injured, he was not going to get through his injuries. I cried.
Click to expand...

What was "off" about the lead-up to the 1994 San Marino GP? I wouldn't know, I was born a couple of weeks after that horrific weekend.
 
I don't quite know how to explain it, really. It had more to do with what I felt rather than the buildup itself. But, while I don't really believe in occult sciences and god-based theories, I did feel like there was a dark cloud glooming over the San Marino GP that weekend. I just had a strange feeling something would go wrong somewhere for someone. It's... odd. I've felt something similar only once since then, in 1999, a few hours before the CART race at Fontana that claimed Greg Moore's life.
 
mister dog
Suzuka '90 influenced this image greatly. Yes he drove into Prost but people usually don't know the whole story that went behind it. He was robbed of the championship the year before when Prost drove into him, and Balestre had Senna disqualified for skipping the chicane. The next year his pole position was moved to the dirty side of the road by said Balestre, and when on top of that it was communicated during the drivers meeting that skipping the same chicane wouldn't mean disqualification, he must have been boiling of injustice in his cockpit at the start of the race, which in turn explains why he just thought "**** this, that first corner is mine".

Schumacher did the same in '94 and '97 without this kind of injustice put on him.

Apart from that F1 is a hard and generally cold world of competition and envy between drivers and teams, so he wasn't an exception to the rule if he preferred to keep to himself and step up to people that mess with him on the grid.
Click to expand...
No hating, but wasn't the pole in always the same side of the circuit?
 
-Fred-
Ratzenberger and Senna's deaths made me understand, at the age of 13, what death actually meant, that there was no coming back from it. I had not lost a relative or friend at that point, so the whole concept of death was hard to understand, to put into emotions. The reality check came in quite brutally.

I remember everything about that weekend 20 years ago so vividly... where I was, what I was wearing, what I had eaten for breakfast, even what the weather looked like. It's one of those events you just cannot forget. I remember faking being sick so I could miss school to watch the free practice on tv Friday morning. And waking up at 6am on saturday to catch the qualifying.

Ayrton was my driver, and the last two seasons had been sub-par, with the 92 McLaren not able to keep up with the Williams, and the 93 McLaren being a bit of a dog. So when he signed with the at the time all-dominating Williams team, I was ecstatic. Finally, I thought, back in contention for the championship. Pole at Interlagos, but a DNF. Oh well. Pole at TI Aida, taken out by Hakkinen at the start. This isn't going well.

Imola, then. We'll get them this time. But something seemed off, something didn't feel right. And then Rubens crashed. And then Ratzenberger crashed. And Ratzenberger died. I didn't particularly care for him at the time, being in a Simtek at the back of the field, a relative newcomer who hadn't done stellar things in a less than stellar car. But his death shook me. I was old and mature enough to understand he wasn't only badly injured, he was not going to get through his injuries. I cried.

Sunday morning came, and I remember everything. The minute of silence in Ratzenberger's memory, the two empty spots on the grid where a Jordan and a Simtek should have been. It just wasn't right. The start. Lehto stalls, Lamy hits him, debris everywhere. Carnage, it looks like a bomb went off. We don't know at the time, but 9 people in the grandstands are injured. What is going on this weekend, I thought. Oh how I wasn't ready for what happens next.

Tamburello, 190mph. The crash. It doesn't look that bad for a high speed crash. He's not moving... probably dazed, and a bit dejected, I think. Still not moving. Marshalls come on the scene, they're frantically waving. Uh-oh. Helicopter shots... the medical car arrives. More helicopter shots... blood, a lot of blood. Erik Comas comes around in a Larousse, out of nowhere. What the hell? More helicopter shots, medical helicopter now on the track. This is bad. I'm nervous, anxious even, at this point. I shut the TV off and took a nap. A few hours later, TV stations announce Senna's death, the grandstand injuries, and another incident once the race restarted involving Michele Alboreto and pitcrews. I'm shocked, borderline psychotic. I have football practice in the afternoon. I don't want to go... I never went. I cried, again. I had lost my hero. A cursed weekend, said the woman on TV. I never watched the end of the race. To this day, I still don't know who won. I don't care. When Karl Wendlinger crashed heavily at Monaco two weeks later, I was done with motorsports for at least 3 or 4 months. I couldn't enjoy it anymore. Then Adelaide came, along with the whole champion debacle. I don't think I watched a single 1995 race.


I lost my grandmother some 6 months later in September 1994, and I felt the exact emotions I felt when Senna died. It was like someone took away a part of me. 20 years on, that feeling still lingers.
Click to expand...

You almost wrote down what happened to me as there are so many similarities (being confronted with death and the realization that a person you admire is never coming back, and my thoughts of what i saw unfolding before me live on the telly that weekend). Difference is I was an 11 year old boy in Belgium, huge Senna fan since i first bothered to watch a f1 race in '92, and also waiting for his first victory in the magical williams (which at that point wasn't magical at all without the active suspension and electronics, but i didn't know that then).
It was a beautiful sunny day in Belgium, saw the crash happening, saw the scene and the blood but strangely i still had hope he would recover in hospital. After Senna went out no reason to watch the race anymore so me and my friend went out to shoot some balls at the goal of the pitch at our school. When we were at my friends house his older brother told me Senna was dead,.... i didn't believe it keep asking him if he wasn't pulling my leg.... In panic i drove my bike home and my mother was already waiting at the porch as she could see me coming from the kitchen. She looked at me and nodded her head like "it's true son, he is dead".... cried my eyes out afterwards.

Next morning at school the first thing the other kids did when they saw me arriving was acting like cars who hit a wall, as they knew i was the biggest Senna fan. I felt depressed the whole week.

6ranTur15m05
No hating, but wasn't the pole in always the same side of the circuit?
Click to expand...
Before the race it was agreed with the stewards, that pole would be on the right side of the road, and then Balestre gave the order "do not change".
 
6ranTur15m05
No hating, but wasn't the pole in always the same side of the circuit?
Click to expand...
Yes,88,89,90 pole was on the right.Senna and Berger went to the stewards and requested the pole position be moved to the left side,which they did,and then were overruled by Balestre.
 
Last edited:
A day I'd like to never re-live, but I'll never forget it.

I remember both days quite vividly; even though it was a work-filled weekend and finals were coming up. My co-worker told me about Roland Ratzenberger's accident in qualifying (he was kind of new to the sport, and he couldn't remember his name). It wasn't until I watched the 11:00pm news that I'd found out who it was - a fellow who'd tried for a long time to get a lucky break into F1 at the age of 33 - and paid the ultimate price for it all.

I remember there was some nervous tension in me before watching that race live, the start-line accident which injured spectators didn't really help. When Senna's crash occurred, my first thought was how far back in championship he was now going to be.

After about 10 seconds or so, I was talking at the TV: "get out of the car, Senna; that's not a safe place to meditate on your accident." When he didn't move for a few more seconds, I was louder; not quite yelling, but loud enough to mumble uselessly. "Get out, damn it!".

It just couldn't be real; five years earlier, Gerhard Berger nearly burned to death at the same spot, in such ghastly circumstances. He'd live to race a few weekends later. Surely, Senna was going to dust himself off, and be upset, like Monaco in 1988. But still no movement, and like many...I hoped for the best. I didn't remember hearing much about his condition during the race. (As it turned out, ESPN's live broadcast, like the BBC's, was a global feed of RAI Television, and they'd "blocked out" some of the most distressing parts of the injuries.)

I went to work not long after the race was over...I chit-chatted with my co-worker later in the day, both of us having not known his fate by then. We both figured he'd pull though, because he was such an obstinate bad-ass. This was 1994, and nobody else in the area probably knew nor cared about such an obscure sport. Nobody was going to randomly throw a spoiler at you, what with F1 racing being the 79th-most popular spectator sport in America.

I get home late, around 10pm or so, and turn on ESPN. Varsha and Hobbs (the race announcers) are being somberly interviewed on SportsCenter...they're never interviewed. And then I know, that's it.

I took a long, rambling drive to nowhere, on the following day, instead of studying. I think I drove faster than I should have...I'd gone through a break-up the week before, but as much as I hate to say it, I also realized my life could have been a lot worse.
 
Azure Flare


When May 1st comes, it will have been 20 years since that tragic accident. 20 years since Grand Prix racing was changed forever. He inspired many to become drivers, and still does today. Even top-level drivers would say he was the best, including Michael Schumacher.

I spent just 3 years of life on Earth with Ayrton, but I would spend an eternity searching for his soul.
Click to expand...


The lap of life video is the best Senna tribute ever made.
 
Frank Williams saying Senna had politics in the back of his head, and could have ended up president of Brasil :eek:

 
10314018_749901121696628_7586804071147854831_n.jpg

Guess the car!
A very very brief preview guys, I did not have the opportunity to take a picture of the Mp4/4 or the various Lotus at the event...but there's still 2 days to visit the track
 
Classic
@Wardez That is so unbelievably cool! That person must really, really care about you.
Click to expand...

Thanks! She does, and I really do too.

btw, don't know if this has been posted yet, but it was really touching for me, Nascar did a few laps in formation in tribute to Senna since they had a race that day after learning of his death. Dale Earnhardt won and commented about Senna during his victory interview. It's times like those that show you just how small motorsports really is relative to other sports where there's tons of active professionals like football. It's like extended family.

 
JogoAsobi
Published today, also on front page of Globo in Brasil.

Senna: What Bernie Really Said to Leonardo Senna (English)

http://betisesportsworld.net/2014/05/01/senna-what-bernie-really-said-to-leonardo-senna/
Click to expand...
Sad how greed got the upper hand above people's lives again. If they would have sealed of the corner and suspended the race on saturday after Roland's death (who died immediately on the track also thus making it a requirement for Italian justice), Senna would have lived today...


They chose to lie for the mighty $$$ and make it worse.
 
20 years with Senna... I would have liked to see him race more than I did (I think I only saw one race, but I was only two years old so it was very difficult for me to remember).

But I would also like to show my respect equally for Roland Ratzenberger, whose death is sadly overshadowed. So here is to both of these fine racing drivers. 👍
 

Latest Posts

Back