20 Years Of Ayrton Senna's Legacy

[Hawkwood]

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the death of Austrian Roland Ratzenberger.
The F1 rookie died at the San Marina GP at Imola on the same weekend as Ayrton Senna and is therefore a normally forgotten man.
RIP to a man who, like legends such as Senna, lived his dream, though only for a short time.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by Hawkwood

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the death of Austrian Roland Ratzenberger.
The F1 rookie died at the San Marina GP at Imola on the same weekend as Ayrton Senna and is therefore a normally forgotten man.
RIP to a man who, like legends such as Senna, lived his dream, though only for a short time.

Roland Ratzenberger won the Formula Ford Festival in 1986.

[Hawkwood]

Originally Posted by wnut

Roland Ratzenberger won the Formula Ford Festival in 1986.

Indeed he was, and gained some noteriety in the UK at that time.
He was also competed at Le Mans in the early 1990s, getting a 5th place finish in a Toyota.

[TheNo1F1Fan]

Ratzenberger also raced in the All-Japan Sports Prototype Championship, where he won one race each in 1990 and 1991, and in Japanese Formula 3000, where the DC was 7th in the season.

[Aysedasi]

Roland is the reason why I vent my spleen (so to speak) every time someone mentions or puts a pic up of the Dauer Porsche than won Le Mans in 1994. I badly wanted the Irvine/Martini/Krosnoff Toyota to win that race. Had it not been for Roland's untimely death, he would have driven it.....

IIRC from seeing the car in the Le Mans museum back in 2010 (below), it still had Roland's name on it....

Roland's Toyota

[TheNo1F1Fan]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

Roland is the reason why I vent my spleen (so to speak) every time someone mentions or puts a pic up of the Dauer Porsche than won Le Mans in 1994. I badly wanted the Irvine/Martini/Krosnoff Toyota to win that race. Had it not been for Roland's untimely death, he would have driven it.....

IIRC from seeing the car in the Le Mans museum back in 2010 (below), it still had Roland's name on it....

Roland's Toyota

I really like your picture.

[S griffin]

Roland also competed in the WTCC and BTCC in 87 and 88 respectively. Interesting he changed his birth year to 1962 to appear younger, as other drivers have done. He was actually born in 1960, so he was the same age as Senna. I think he also had the popular TV show Roland Rat as his sponsor due to the similar name.

Like Roger Williamson, Helmuth Koinigg and Riccardo Paletti, he died in his first year before he had the chance. Such a shame. David Brabham has been on the radio talking about him today. Glad to see Roland hasn't been overlooked in remembering Senna.

[TheNo1F1Fan]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Roland also competed in the WTCC and BTCC in 87 and 88 respectively. Interesting he changed his birth year to 1962 to appear younger, as other drivers have done. He was actually born in 1960, so he was the same age as Senna. I think he also had the popular TV show Roland Rat as his sponsor due to the similar name.

Like Roger Williamson, Helmuth Koinigg and Riccardo Paletti, he died in his first year before he had the chance. Such a shame. David Brabham has been on the radio talking about him today. Glad to see Roland hasn't been overlooked in remembering Senna.

What a surprise!

[chunterer]

Ratzenberger didn't need to F1, he wanted to as he had already set himself up as a professional driver in Japan in 3000, sports cars and touring cars.

His time came late but then so did Damon Hill's and i'll venture that Roland was every bit as talented, of not more so on pure raw ability? He could drive anything quickly, very versatile.

[wnut]

Pat Symonds remembers Ayrton

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns27905.html


Talking about never giving a small team an even break!

"We had been limited that season in the Michelin tyres we could use, because to agree with us having tyres for the season Ron Dennis had imposed we'd use the previous year's tyre specs, but in Monaco, in the rain, there were no 1983 tyres, we used the same tyres as everyone else and Ayrton drove magnificently to 2nd place but behind him Stefan Bellof was driving even faster to climb up to 3rd from the back of the grid!"

[PascaLM]

Erik Comas's interview about his accident (Senna rescued him) and about the 1st of may 94.

[wolfhound]

You could sense the emotion in Eddie Jordan's voice as he spoke about Senna on the BBC today.

[GT6]

Very good piece on the anniversary, bergers comments were to the point as you would expect from him the two were very close

[S griffin]

Yes I agree. First time in a while we've heard from Johnny Dumfries.

[Aysedasi]

I can't deny the fact that I had a tear in my eye. Good piece. Where did those 20 years go?

[Tucky]

You could see Newey's pain in the interview, especially when it got to describing the crash. 20 years on and he's still taking it that hard.

[wnut]

I always enjoyed this Top Gear feature of Lewis driving Senna's McLaren:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldTEesFbd5s

[henners88]

I was very surprised to see nothing on TV to mark the 20th anniversary of Imola 1994. Radio 5live did a very good program and I thought this would be something to at least produce a documentary for. They could have shown the older ones too. Strange.

[S griffin]

Liked the tribute of that Italian rider, forgotten his name, in the World Supersport race. Wearing a Senna and going to win his first, on home ground, at Imola.