Imola 1994 - the other drivers' memories

The deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna on the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix weekend changed motorsport, and changed the lives of every other driver in the field at Imola.

In this feature, taken from Autosport's reissued Senna tribute special and published online for the first time today, we hear from almost all the other drivers who entered that weekend, via a mixture of their words in the aftermath and their reflections in the years since.

Michael Schumacher

Grid: 2
#5 Benetton-Ford B194
Race: 1st

I was always a great admirer of Ayrton. I had seen him at a karting race, back in Zolder, and this guy I didn't know at that time immediately caught my attention: the lines he was driving, the way he was doing it, I just loved the way he was karting there.

From that day on I knew his name, and obviously when he entered F1 I still looked at him. And when I got to F1 it was the same, I just loved the way he was driving. So in a way Ayrton was my idol, even if I wasn't happy at first with his approach towards young drivers when I entered F1. But this was part of the game, so it was no big deal.

The 1994 season started surprisingly well for us, and we found ourselves in the position to eventually fight for the championship, which was great. I looked forward to fighting against Ayrton and Imola was the next step in this fight.

I saw his accident but I wasn't informed what had happened. So at first, I wasn't aware of the consequences. But when I heard about it, I remember it was a deep shock.

You know, it might sound strange, but that weekend, with Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna dying, was the first time for me that I experienced that somebody found death through the sport I loved so much. For me, dying on a racetrack was something related to the past, to the times I didn't know a lot about, but clearly not to 'our' times.

The Sunday night after the race I was totally shattered. I was seriously thinking about quitting F1, as I struggled with the fact that people could lose their lives there. I really wasn't sure if I wanted to go on, and I was speaking a lot with [my wife] Corinna about it. I remember at the next test I was mainly trying to find out for myself if I still liked it.

Schumacher was speaking to Autosport before his skiing accident in December 2013

Gerhard Berger

Grid: 3
#28 Ferrari 412T1
Race: DNF

Most of you are going to ask whether it was right to continue to drive. Honestly, I saw Roland's accident. I saw it in repeat and I know what happened. I know how heavy it was, how bad it was for the driver.

I knew before I went out that the situation was critical. But without even knowing, I could feel it myself. It was the first time that I have found myself shaking after an accident. I was sitting in the car, I watched it on the monitor, and when they started to get him out of the car, I could see that it was going to be very bad.

Of course, in our job you are sometimes a bit prepared to see situations like this. But as it was another Austrian driver, as it was a personal contact to a person, it was even worse. I know that it should not make a difference between a driver that you know and a driver that you do not know. But it affects you in a different way.

I went out from the car. I felt sick. I went to the motorhome and I was shaking, all my body. Then the difficult situation was coming, to say if I was going to drive or not.

I told myself that it was not whether I was going to drive now. The question was whether I would drive tomorrow [in the race] and in the future, or if I was not going to drive at all. It was not related to this [Saturday] afternoon, it is related to whether you are prepared to have this risk or not. It wasn't going to make any difference to Roland if I drove or not. But I had to decide if I was prepared to still take risks like this.

"What you see at a racetrack when two of your friends die is what affects you the most" Gerhard Berger

Honestly, when [Rubens] Barrichello went off, it gave me a picture of how close sometimes we are between life and death. I felt really on the limit.

But I said to myself, 'Do you want to race tomorrow or are you not going to race?' And I said I was going to race.

From this moment on, I told myself to concentrate on the job, because it was not going to make any difference to anybody. It was a difficult situation and it was very hard.

But Ayrton - I think he was incredibly unlucky to have the head impact where he had it. There had definitely been worse accidents at that corner. It's true that he was worried about safety that weekend, particularly after Roland's accident. He talked to me quite a lot about it and then again after the drivers' briefing on Sunday.

I went to the hospital to see Ayrton immediately after the race and that was a very heavy impact for me. He was dead, but on a life support machine and that's when I saw him for the last time. I went to both funerals - Roland's in Salzburg and Ayrton's in Sao Paolo and, OK, that's when you say goodbye in an official way.

But what you see at a racetrack when two of your friends die is what affects you the most.

Damon Hill

Grid: 4
#0 Williams-Renault FW16
Race: 6th (with fastest lap)

Imola 1994 was basically the most enormous experience and test of everything in my life, as a racing driver and as a person - certainly of my professional career. It was surreal. At the time it just didn't seem real and after seeing Senna, the film, I realise there were some bits that I had forgotten and some bits that were very uncomfortable. There were things, too, that I really didn't want to go into again and maybe had shut away.

So many things happened... little things... and then it became a weekend where everything happened and led to one big catastrophe. Everyone was stunned and after that weekend didn't know how to proceed.

We didn't realise immediately that Ayrton was dead. Nobody really knew. It had only just happened. Real information about Ayrton's condition wasn't available to anyone apart from Sid [Watkins]. It wasn't until the end of the race that we knew Ayrton had been killed. I'd heard that it wasn't good and the team tried to protect me to some extent. These things are so enormous it takes time for the enormity of it to sink in.

As for the race... does anyone really remember what happened? Just being a grand prix driver on the grid is a bit surreal anyway, you're so focused on what you've got to do. And when something goes as wrong as this, part of you is concerned about what happened. But then you realise there's not a role for you to play in it. So I felt that we had to go out there and get on with it. That was all I could do at the time.

It was the first European event of the season so there was an added buzz ahead of the weekend that wasn't there in the previous races.

I was still getting used to the added dimension that Senna brought to the event. The interest and intrigue that surrounded him was even more keenly felt when you got to Imola. So it just kind of built and built, and created a lot of excitement.

After his bad start to the season, there was pressure mounting on Ayrton to perform. And I remember Autosport the week before running a cover that added pressure on Ayrton.

Really we were at the start of a new era. We didn't really know who Michael Schumacher was. He was very much the new kid on the block and we were all readjusting to this new dimension. When you look back at it and think about it, it's apparent that there was a sense of a shift into a new era that started at Imola.

At the start of the season the mood was that Ayrton had got himself into the best car, in the best team, and another world championship - though it wouldn't be easy - would be a lot easier than it was actually proving to be.

Then on the weekend itself, to be brutal about it, when Roland was killed, it felt already that things had got as bad as they could get. It didn't seem possible that it could get any worse.

We all believed that we'd got beyond the time when drivers being killed was a regular occurrence. And particularly for people who had come into the sport after that time, or started following it, the fact that drivers were dying at a race was deeply shocking. It all seemed to be contributing to the power of what happened. It hit everyone very, very hard and made lots of people question why should they be doing something that had these consequences. And added to that it was beamed into people's homes.

The shockwaves had an enormous effect on the sport. From my point of view, my life completely changed at that point. My career was completely thrust into a different trajectory. Imola 1994 was a huge, seismic shift in the sport. And the good thing that came out of it, if anything can be seen in that light, is that car and circuit safety has improved immeasurably. The tragedy is that it took that weekend to make that happen.

JJ Lehto

Grid: 5
#6 Benetton-Ford B194
Race: DNF

Imola was my race debut for Benetton as I was still recovering from a huge testing accident at Silverstone in January, in which I broke my neck.

It was only 92 days since the accident, but we rushed a bit to get me back in the car and I was still in a lot of pain.

Before travelling to Imola I had dinner in Monaco with Roland, who was my close friend. The next day we drove together to Italy. I saw his fatal accident during qualifying on Saturday.

I started fifth, I think, but the race was the shortest of my F1 career, as Pedro Lamy's Lotus hit my car from behind, while I was stuck on the grid. The front tyre of Lamy's car was hurled over the barrier towards spectators. Four spectators and one policeman were hurt.

Then, later that day, Ayrton, my long-time idol, had his fatal accident at Tamburello corner. I had been training with him in the gym just the night before. Things like this cannot happen even in the most dreadful nightmares.

Nicola Larini

Grid: 6
#27 Ferrari 412T1
Race: 2nd

When we were on the podium, no one knew about what had happened to Ayrton. The race had been stopped, but there was no other information about him other than he was in hospital. But I was worried about my crew because Michele Alboreto had lost a wheel in the pitlane and hit three of my mechanics.

On the podium, we were thinking about what happened on Saturday with Roland Ratzenberger, so we couldn't use the champagne. But to imagine that Ayrton was lost? No...

Heinz-Harald Frentzen

Grid: 7
#30 Sauber-Mercedes C13
Race: 7th

I have tried many times to think back to this weekend and it always stands apart. It had an almost 'mystical' quality, if I can say such a thing.

Now when we think of it we paint it as such a totally depressing, disastrous weekend, but beforehand I can't remember any particularly bad feeling.

So it was quite a shock when Rubens went off in practice, but for me the real shocks started on the Saturday, when my friend Roland was killed, and there was a feeling that things were going to get worse every day and maybe without stopping.

I was close to Roland as we had spent 18 months together racing in Japan before F1 and you know he was really a good person, a great guy. It felt to me like everyone we lost at Imola was a special individual in some way. We'd had a few conversations that weekend and we took some pictures together in scrutineering. We were having some fun, you know?

"Senna wanted to know more about me, how I was getting to know the business, how I was 'settling in'. He seemed to have a real personal interest in all the young drivers" Heinz-Harald Frentzen

Ayrton spoke to me that weekend, too - I remember feeling quite proud that he took the time to have a conversation. He'd done the same in Brazil and Aida at the start of the year. It was my first season in F1 and he wanted to know more about me, how I was getting to know the business, how I was 'settling in'. He'd started having a chat even earlier, actually, back in pre-season testing at Estoril. He seemed to have a real personal interest in all the young drivers.

When he was killed it seemed all the bad things were coming all together and there were so many all at once. We'd had many accidents before - big ones with heavy damage, but drivers not suffering too serious injuries - then suddenly the worst ones altogether.

When we got to Monaco two weeks later, my team-mate Karl Wendlinger had his crash in practice and really, then, there was such a tremendously bad vibe. It was disastrous: it felt like this was never going to stop.

Everyone was so shocked and disappointed and it meant that all anyone could talk about was safety. But it did create a very big development in safety in all aspects. In some ways it went over the top, with what we did at circuits at the time, but we wanted to cover every possibility. It was a very fundamental time and it gave a lot of energy to everyone to make changes and improvements in Formula 1.

The accidents were a message for us, I think, that something had to be done and it meant, for example, that we got the Grand Prix Drivers' Association going again, which got the drivers involved in safety issues once more.

The thing I remember feeling during that period was that I didn't really know what to think or do. I was totally confused. It made me think back to one of the first times I ever went karting and one of the kids there was in a really serious accident and it was like a warning sign - like, 'My God, I only came here to have fun and something like this can happen'.

Imola and Monaco reminded us that there was always danger in motor racing and that something like this can happen and that basically you have to be really focused on what you're doing.

Mika Hakkinen

Grid: 8
#7 McLaren-Peugeot MP4/9
Race: 3rd

My first memory, of course, is what a horrible weekend it was. Just a black weekend. There is no other way to describe it; nothing positive from it, or to say about it. When I do think back to it though, I do have many positive, human memories of Roland and Ayrton and these guys will always stay in my thoughts.

All I wish is that we could turn back time and that it had never happened, but obviously that is not possible.

Really I think the race weekend should have been stopped when Rubens had his accident on Friday. It was obvious there was something about the track, or the combination of those cars on the track. They should have said, 'OK, something's wrong here'. And after Roland was killed, well obviously, then, that should have been it. We shouldn't have gone racing. It's easy to say these things now and sure it would have been a tough decision to take at the time, but...

Karl Wendlinger

Grid: 10
#29 Sauber-Mercedes C13
Race: 4th

The whole weekend is clear in my mind. Rubens had his big crash and wasn't badly hurt, so everyone said that in a modern F1 car nothing could happen to you. Then the next day we had the death of Roland Ratzenberger. It was a big shock, but it didn't really sink in.

On race day I remember passing the accident and thinking that must be a Williams. They stopped us before the grid and Tim Wright, who was my race engineer, told me that Senna had had an accident but he should be OK. Then after the race there was the shock news.

I couldn't really see what happened. You were passing that place at such speed that all I knew was that the car was quite badly damaged.

After the race I came back to the Sauber pit and there was a bad atmosphere. I said, 'Hey what's going on?' Mr Sauber told me the news with tears in his eyes: 'Senna is dead.' I don't have the right words in English to explain my feelings. The whole weekend was so strange. I couldn't believe it. Nothing had happened for so many years and then two guys dead. I just got my stuff and left.

Gianni Morbidelli

Grid: 11
#10 Footwork-Ford FA15
Race: DNF

It was such a tough and dramatic weekend that it is impossible to cancel from your mind. It was one of the worst and most difficult situations that I had in my career, starting with Barrichello's accident on Friday, then Ratzenberger on Saturday and then Senna.

The day after, many of us started to wonder if there was any sense in carrying on because we felt so bad. But of course you have to carry on in life. It's the same with the [skiing] accident we had recently with Michael Schumacher. You know that in every single moment in life something can happen so you have to live.

I always think about destiny. Everyone has a destiny already written, it doesn't matter if you make a life in a sport as dangerous as ours or if you are skiing on vacation or at home watching TV. Everything can happen.

After that weekend, F1 changed a lot because the FIA started to see things differently. They introduced very strict rules concerning the safety of the car. What they did was incredible. They made a big step forward in safety.

With Ayrton, I remember one thing: when I first arrived in F1 at Phoenix in 1990, he was walking through the paddock and I was there in my overalls. He came to me just to say welcome and I appreciated that. It was such a good emotion for me to have.

After the crash and the red flag, I went to the motorhome and there was Jackie Oliver, the owner of the team. I asked him, 'Jackie, how is Senna?' He said, 'Don't worry, drive your race, don't think about that'. But I understood that there was something strange because it was not the normal Jackie Oliver I knew.

We did the race with a bad feeling. It was a very sad weekend.

This is life, the bad part.

Mark Blundell

Grid: 12
#4 Tyrrell-Yamaha 022
Race: 9th

Obviously it was a weekend with very bad memories and bad vibes. It seems strange to say it now, but the atmosphere was very subdued all weekend, not like an Italian race at all.

I remember sitting in the drivers' briefing on Sunday with this very strong feeling that, even after what had happened already, it wasn't finished, there was more to come. There was a sense of realisation that 'yes, this can happen' and that we were risking our lives even if we chose not to think of it like that. We'd put it to the back of our minds, but events brought it to the front.

After Rubens' accident on Friday, there were conversations around the garage, but it wasn't something we chose to dwell on. We didn't want to keep talking about it. I remember saying to the guys, 'We don't know exactly what's happened. We just have to wait.'

Any racing driver at the top level will say the same if you can get them to admit it: we have to be able to put things in boxes and compartmentalise. We have a job to do and that becomes your focus, even in the most difficult circumstances.

The worst thing for me, actually, were the conversations with my family. My eldest was old enough to understand what had happened, but I didn't want to talk to him about it. I remember calling to talk to my mum and dad and that wasn't an easy conversation. Talking to them was quite an emotional release - certainly more of one than you can afford to have in the garage, or with your team. You don't open up like that unless you have to.

Martin Brundle

Grid: 13
#8 McLaren-Peugeot MP4/9
Race: 8th

My feeling that weekend was that it reminded me very much of the sportscar days in 1985 when we were losing lots of drivers and there was very much a feeling of, 'what's going to happen next?' and 'what's really going on?' and 'why are they all coming at once?'

At Imola there was Rubens' accident, then Ratzenberger, then Senna and two weeks later there was Wendlinger's massive shunt at Monaco.

We hadn't had a driver death since Elio [de Angelis] in 1986, but there had been a lot of big shunts, so that feeling of invincibility had started to creep in. That made Imola a pretty shocking weekend. I was with Senna in a lift in a little hotel we were staying in the night before his accident. He was pretty upset with the Ratzenberger news.

We had the drivers' briefing the next day and it was pretty emotional. I can't pretend to remember the detail super-clearly, but I can remember the room and I can picture myself sitting there. Seeing the Senna movie reminded me of some things I'd forgotten and even one or two things that I hadn't noticed at the time with my 'driver blinkers' on.

Things like the shunt at the start, then the hassle in the pitlane, leaving four mechanics needing medical treatment. And one thing that surprised me, watching the film, was how good Ayrton's car seemed to be. There was one lap of in-car footage before the accident that I hadn't seen before. That surprised me.

I distinctly remember getting back to the grid after Ayrton's accident. It was a big shunt: I remember ducking around bits and pieces that came back onto the racetrack. Initially I was under the impression that it was Damon. Then we heard it was Senna. Then all the TV screens in the garages were getting switched off. Then we were told he was OK and we'd all seen him move his head, but we all know now that was almost his last movement.

When we restarted I was thinking it had been a big shunt, but survivable. We'd seen bigger accidents at Tamburello - like Berger's [in 1989]. So off we went racing. We didn't know that Ayrton was effectively killed instantly. I was very disappointed that we carried on racing where there was literally a pool of Ayrton's blood sitting by the side of the track.

After the race there was this atmosphere in the paddock... The thing you noticed most was the deafening silence. People were just mooching about, going about their business. There was a lot of denial going on.

One of the first people to know what had happened was Keke Rosberg. He told me and soon after Ron Dennis asked me what I'd heard. I told him what Keke had told me and Ron said absolutely nothing. He was very close to Ayrton.

Later, I left the track for the airport with Giorgio Ascanelli, who was my race engineer at McLaren and had been Senna's. We got half way to Bologna airport with Giorgio saying absolutely nothing. And then suddenly he said, 'And what do you know about the accident?' And I said, 'I'm told he's dead. I'm told he didn't make it.'

That seemed to set the tone after that. We went a bit safety crazy for a while and got the GPDA reformed. Each of us was allocated circuits to go and look at with regard to the safety aspects. To an extent there was a knee-jerk reaction and we saw tyre chicanes in places like Barcelona. The thing was, we all knew, either consciously or subconsciously, that there were corners where you could well die if you got it absolutely wrong, or where if something went wrong there was a good chance you could die.

There was a feeling that, as racing drivers, we needed to take control of the safety element. There was definitely a sense of making a statement. Then it began to normalise a bit, but it was a time that forever changed F1. It was also a time when people seemed to become more aware of F1, bizarrely.

Pierluigi Martini

Grid: 14
#23 Minardi-Ford M193B
Race: DNF

It was a terrible, sombre weekend from start to finish. Most drivers have experienced the death or serious injury of a colleague before, but it doesn't make it any easier to cope with.

In Ayrton's case the worst part was the fact that we had even had a short exchange before the start of the race, when he said to me, 'Look, us older guys need to get together soon and do something about the Federation because yesterday when I went to see the place where Roland had his accident, I was actually fined...'

"I remember feeling absolutely furious with their insensitivity and lack of respect" Pierluigi Martini

As for Ayrton's accident, at the time, as a driver, you were just concentrating on what you were doing in the race. I think I was somewhere around the top 10, maybe ninth, and what I remember most clearly was just a wheel bouncing on the track and me doing my very best to avoid that. The way the sun was shining in my eyes meant that I couldn't actually see which car was involved but after the race was red-flagged [team boss] Giancarlo Minardi told me, 'It's Ayrton, but he's moving'.

So then the race restarted, and it ended for me about 20 laps from the finish when I went off. I was being taken back to the pits by ambulance and it was only there that I heard the ambulance crew joking with each other saying, 'Well, it doesn't look like this Brazilian is going to be on the grid again'.

I remember feeling absolutely furious with their insensitivity and lack of respect: I shouted at them and demanded that they took me to the medical centre so I could find out for myself what was happening. When I got there, the circuit doctor told me the simple truth: that Ayrton's brain injuries were incompatible with survival.

The first driver I saw after I heard the news was my team-mate Michele Alboreto. He was sitting at the back of our garage with his head in his hands, looking more downcast than I had ever seen him. He had retired from the race shortly after me when his wheel had come off in the pitlane and injured some mechanics.

'In this job, you also have to take into account the worst that can happen,' he said, which is horribly ironic when you consider what happened to him years later [he was killed in a sportscar testing crash].

Ayrton's accident really altered my approach to the sport and was ultimately what led to my retirement from F1 the following year: a greater awareness of the risks and what I had to lose. Once you start thinking that way, it's time to move on.

Christian Fittipaldi

Grid: 16
#9 Footwork-Ford FA15
Race: 13th

It was a hard weekend. Rubens had a pretty big one on Friday and then Roland's accident was devastating on Saturday. I remember going to bed on Saturday night and thinking 'a guy just got killed, it's not like he just broke his arm or leg'. Then the crash on Sunday just completed the black Imola weekend.

They threw a red flag for Roland's crash during qualifying so we came back into the pits and saw the images on the TV. As soon as he hit the wall and the car came to a stop you could see his head going to one side and we knew then that it was pretty bad.

As a driver, you have seen so many accidents in your life and you know when it's OK and when it's not. As soon as the safety crew arrived, they started covering up the car and instead of the TV image getting better, it just got worse. Maybe half an hour later, the news came back to the pits that he had passed.

It was difficult to race the next day, but life goes on in the same way as when there is an airplane crash. Does that mean you are never going to fly again?

On Sunday morning, if I woke up and felt really bad, I shouldn't be in the car. Being a driver, you are exposed to certain risks that other professions don't offer: more risks than a guy who works in a bank. If I'm not prepared to take those risks I shouldn't be doing what I do.

When Ayrton's crash happened, I remember vaguely that I passed by and it had just come to a halt and that was it. I was running 12th or 14th, something like that, so I went by a few seconds later and, to be honest, even when I stopped on the grid, it never crossed my mind that Ayrton had suffered a fatal accident. I thought maybe he's broken a leg or an arm and he'd be back in the car later but not for one second did I think it was that serious.

I did my race, but unfortunately I was fifth when I retired a few laps from the end. Frentzen stopped at the side of the track and I got a ride back to the pits with him. When I got back, it was a really sombre mood, everything was grey. It was a weird feeling and it started sinking in that this was a lot more serious than we had anticipated.

I remember I went to the motorhome to get changed and after that I bumped into Lehto and he was the one who gave me the news. That was, at the most, 40 minutes after the race.

He said, 'Did you hear about it?' and I said, 'Hear about what?', which again re-emphasised that it had never crossed my mind this could happen. Like everyone, I had this image of Ayrton as untouchable and everyone thought about him as driving for another 10 years and then retiring and being this great legend that had won so much. It never crossed my mind he could die in F1. Lehto said, 'I think he's died'.

At that point, I basically froze. You become suddenly static, especially inside. I think I looked at him and said, 'Dead what?' - I didn't realise. Then the news started spreading that it was fatal.

It was hard but the whole weekend was a disaster. We had lost another colleague as well, 24 hours before that, and because I was a Brazilian the emphasis was on Ayrton and us. But we must not forget that Roland passed on Saturday. Of all the racing weekends I have been involved with, it was the worst in my racing career.

Erik Comas

Grid: 18
#20 Larrousse-Ford LH94
Race: DNF

I sat next to Ayrton in the drivers' briefing on race morning and for the first time everyone was talking about safety. He said, 'We cannot carry on like this'.

Ayrton basically saved my life at Spa in 1992. The weekend before the Belgian Grand Prix was the Spa 24 Hours and they had removed the inside kerb at Blanchimont and forgotten to put it back for F1. After only three laps of free practice JJ Lehto put dirt and gravel all over the track. I was just seconds behind and went straight off. I had an accident just like Ayrton's. The right front wheel hit my helmet and knocked me out.

All the cars passed my car, including my team-mate [Thierry Boutsen], but Ayrton heard that my engine was still running, stopped and turned the master switch off. After that we had a close relationship and we were both shocked by the events of the first two days at Imola.

During the safety car situation at Imola, Eric Bernard bumped me and I had a huge vibration, so I decided to stop to get the car checked over. The team was concentrating on fixing the car and didn't realise Senna had crashed. When my car was fixed, I went to the end of the pitlane. There was a big confusion about whether I could rejoin but eventually the marshal let me go.

When I got to Tamburello I couldn't pass because there were ambulances and a helicopter there. I had to stop my car and get out. I could see my friend lying there but couldn't help. It was a terrible feeling. I didn't wait for the restart. I left the track and flew home to London.

At first I didn't want to race in F1 anymore but Gerard Larrousse and others persuaded me to do a test and then Monaco, and finally I decided to continue through the season.

It was a very traumatic experience for me; it was impossible for me to talk about it for more than 10 years.

Olivier Panis

Grid: 19
#26 Ligier-Renault JS39B
Race: 11th

It was the worst memory I have had in motor racing to be honest. Everybody was such big fans of Ayrton, and Roland also. This weekend was a nightmare really and it still is, even though it was a long time ago. It's a weekend that in some ways I would like to forget, but it happened and we cannot change that. I wanted to leave the circuit as quickly as possible to try to forget about it, but as a young Formula 1 driver, as I was then, at the beginning of my career [the 1994 San Marino GP was his third], there was no question of stopping. But still I felt very sad about everything that happened.

Afterwards the drivers did make a lot more effort with safety and the GPDA. It's always sad that it takes something like this to make people respond and to have a big change in safety.

Johnny Herbert

Grid: 20
#12 Lotus-Mugen-Honda 107C
Race: 10th

I was at Lotus that year and we were having a bit of a difficult time as we weren't really up to the speed that we wanted to be. From my point of view, with the Lotus situation, and having a frustrating time there, it was an added shock to the system as we were all feeling a bit low anyway. Very suddenly we'd lost a good friend.

Roland was someone I knew very well, as I'd known him since the Formula Ford days and he was one of the last people who used to do the whole lot himself: live in a Transit with his girlfriend, trailer his car, do the preparation, fuel it, change the tyres, be the mechanics... the whole monty. And of course he won the FF Festival in 1986, so it was very sad that he got his F1 chance only for it to be taken away so quickly.

He was a lovely, down-to-earth guy. The accident happened when he lost his wing and it tucked under the car at 200mph, then he was head-on into the barriers.

After all this, we were a bit sensitive in the warm-up. When we eventually started the race, we had the first accident with Pedro hitting JJ and the wheel going into the crowd. Then after the restart we weren't aware what had happened to Ayrton... We saw his crash in the race, but none of us knew what had happened to him.

It didn't actually look too bad. His car had just stopped moving when I passed it and I could see a crack in the chassis but basically it looked alright, so I didn't think so much of it.

When we found out it made us all very aware of how fragile life is. We knew he used to drive with God on his side and he was very calculated about how he did that: on the edge, with the belief that God was his protection. I knew Ayrton quite well and the way that it all happened was surreal.

It actually ended up being a whole month of incidents. There was Karl's accident at Monaco two weeks later and then, in the same month, Pedro's accident in testing at Silverstone.

That gets a bit forgotten about but I was Pedro's team-mate and we were the only two cars on track that day - in fact I was only 100 yards behind him. It happened just as he went out of sight into the old Abbey. After Imola we'd had the big diffusers cut back to the rear-axle line, so there was a lot more stress going through the rear wing mounting. Unfortunately Pedro's failed in a split second and as I went round Abbey all I could see in front of me was a smoking engine in the middle of the track. No bits, nothing, just engine.

I stopped and got out to see what had happened. I went up the banking at the side of the track and only when I got there could I see that he'd barrel-rolled into the pedestrian tunnel. I could see a little flame coming from the mouth of the tunnel and from about 20 metres away, the remains of a monocoque. I realised he was stuck in the tunnel, so I rushed in there.

The monocoque had broken in half hitting the handrail going into the tunnel and Pedro was in there, slumped forward with his legs sticking out, crossed, almost like he was sitting in a deck chair.

There was a little fire burning behind him where the refuelling cap was, and the paint on his helmet had started smoking. I remember thinking that I didn't know if he was alive, then that if I didn't help him, his brains were going to get burned.

Eventually a marshal found us and got the extinguisher going, but that just filled the tunnel with powder. Pedro was conscious by now and we got him out and his eyes were massive, out on stalks - he was in a total state of shock, not surprisingly. It all added to the surreal feeling of that time.

In F1 we'd sort of got used to feeling invincible but sadly it took an accident like Ayrton's to make the safety changes that have made such a massive difference today. I was one of only two drivers who went to both Roland's and Ayrton's funerals. It felt like the right thing to do as I didn't want Roland to be forgotten. Even after all the sadness it's good to remember that I raced both of them. They're nice memories.

Anrea De Cesaris

Grid: 21
#15 Jordan-Hart 194
Race: DNF

I clearly remember something was going wrong since the beginning of the weekend. Sometimes there is a connection between bad things and the pressure starts to build around that. So the weekend was an escalation of bad accidents.

When I started in F1, things were totally different. The thought of a fatal accident was in the mind of any driver. I first drove in F1 because of the death of Patrick Depailler in the Alfa Romeo, but since then a great job has been done on safety.

That weekend, it was not the loss of a great driver that made the difference. Actually, I am more sad for the death of a driver that did not have so much success [Ratzenberger] because it was more of a loss. At least Senna will always be remembered and did not die in vain.

De Cesaris was speaking prior to his death in a road accident in October 2014

Pedro Lamy

Grid: 22
#11 Lotus-Mugen-Honda 107C
Race: DNF

I was on one side, there was a car in front of me and I didn't realise that a car had stalled. I had just time to avoid crashing straight into the back of JJ and managed to hit him with my right-hand side.

People didn't realise at the time how big Ayrton's accident was initially. I was standing next to some Portuguese and Brazilian TV people and they didn't know how bad it was. Even when people were telling me that Ayrton was in trouble, I couldn't believe it. I think it was the same for everyone there: Ayrton could not die.

It was a difficult weekend. Rubens' accident, Roland Ratzenberger's death, my accident and then Senna's. It was a wake-up call for F1.

Olivier Beretta

Grid: 23
#19 Larrousse-Ford LH94
Race: DNF

It was a strange and sad weekend. I saw the big crash at Tamburello. I didn't know which car it was, but I knew it was a big one. We all knew the speeds there and that there were no tyres, no protection before the wall. I knew it was a big one, but I never imagined that it was Senna.

There was a red light and we all stopped. There was a lot of confusion. Erik [Comas] had stopped in the pits and gone back onto the track because there was no red light at the end of the pits. I could see on the faces of the mechanics that something had happened. I tried to find out and they said they thought something bad had happened to Ayrton.

Just before the race restarted, I heard on the radio that Erik would not take the restart. The team said they couldn't find him. I knew something bad had happened.

I did my race and when the engine failed I went to the marshals. They said it is a very sad day today. They told me what had happened; there was nothing more to say. It was an extremely sad moment that's difficult to explain.

Ayrton was such a nice guy. I remember at my first GP in Brazil, he saw me in the drivers' briefing and said, 'Ah, a new face here'. I said, 'Yeah, it's my first GP'. He told me that if I needed anything, I just had to pop by and see him.

I had a small problem with the engine, which delayed me, and that saved me from a big accident. In those days you had a foot clutch, and it wasn't perfect. I had a little delay and that was just enough to save me. Lamy hit Lehto and I was just behind. I can't remember everything; all I know is that because I didn't do a perfect start, I was saved a big one.

I also had a big crash just after Barrichello. It was almost exactly the same accident, but I went in backwards. During free practice Hakkinen broke an engine and there was oil at the chicane [Variante Bassa]. I am sure that Barrichello went out because of the oil. There was a red flag, but they didn't see the oil. I was the first car to restart and I arrived at the chicane and went off. I have a picture of my car a metre up in the air, but going backwards.

David Brabham

Grid: 24
#31 Simtek-Ford S941
Race: DNF

It didn't start off as a good weekend, and it just got worse and worse. I had to deal with Roland's accident, not just as an individual but also because I had my pregnant wife there. Not just that, with the team being so young and so stretched financially, there was a lot of shit going on. You don't quite know how to deal with the situation like that because you've never experienced it before.

"Nick Wirth swore on his life that the front wing was a lot stronger and perfectly safe. I took his word and did the race" David Brabham

Normally you wouldn't race in that situation: you would pack up and go home. I was asked on the Saturday night if I wanted to go on. Because I hadn't been in that situation, I didn't really know how to answer it. I said that I would do the warm-up and see how I felt.

For whatever reason, we were halfway up the times, which wasn't normal. I came into the pits and I could just sense this massive black cloud that had been over the team starting to lift. I did the race for the team, not for myself. I felt that it was the best way for the team to move forward.

The front wing did have a problem and they beefed it up, and Nick [Wirth] swore on his life that it was a lot stronger and perfectly safe. I took his word and did the race.

We took off after the safety car and I was at the back. By the time I got to Senna's accident, the dust was beginning to settle. I thought it was a Tyrrell, not a Williams. We ended up stopping and word went around who it was. At the time I didn't know how bad the accident was; there was no information coming to us.

I only got word that Ayrton had died when I got home and looked at teletext. I must admit that I didn't feel like hanging around [after going out of the race early]. I got a flight that night. It was a massive shock having gone through all the stuff with Roland. I sat there with my head spinning.

Bertrand Gachot

Grid: 25
#34 Pacific-Ilmor PR01
Race: DNF

The first shock was Barrichello. He only got away with it because he was so small. A bigger driver would have suffered more.

Then what happened to Roland was terrible, I knew him very well but we had a big crash at Zandvoort in 1987 and only made friends again at the Pacific GP.

There was so much debris, I thought Senna and Schumacher had gone off together. When I parked on the grid, I spoke to an official, who said Senna only had a broken leg. My engine broke in the race and I got to the airport as fast as I could. I met Max Welti there and he told me what happened. I remember the sad sight of Ayrton's plane on the runway as I took off. What happened to him showed it could happen to anyone because it was a corner that was easily flat, effectively a straight, even in the wet.

Rubens Barrichello

Grid: DNQ
#14 Jordan-Hart 194
Race: DNS

I had a good start to practice and we were really well set in the morning. I remember being eight tenths up on my previous lap, when of course as I was coming up to the end of the lap I crashed going into the Variante Bassa.

All I remember about the accident itself was that a very young and very silly Rubens Barrichello tried to go too fast into the corner. Pretty much as soon as I did I said: 'Oops...' It was such a big shunt I don't remember the impact. I just remember the 'Oops'.

I can't remember Senna visiting me in the hospital. I don't remember the hospital at all, in fact. But I do remember coming back to the circuit the next day with my broken nose and it was still very hard to breathe.

Thinking about it now, it was a really big shunt - it was measured at 95G. But because I was basically OK, I went back to England to stay with a friend and watch the race before going back to Brazil. That's where I saw the accident.

The atmosphere was already very sad after what happened to Roland. Then with Senna's accident, when he crashed, he moved his head and to us it was a sign that he was still alive, although of course it was the very opposite. It was all so very sad, in every aspect.

Ayrton was the first person whose funeral I attended - it hadn't happened to me then with family, even. There was something wrong about that whole weekend, you know. You may or may not believe in spiritual things, but that weekend the spiritual feeling was all wrong.

Paul Belmondo

Grid: DNQ
#33 Pacific-Ilmor PR01
Race: DNS

Barrichello's accident on the Friday was a big one, but we knew pretty quickly that he was OK and the weekend went on from there pretty normally. It was the kind of accident that we were all used to.

I think it was the same even after Ratzenberger was killed on the Saturday. It was difficult for a driver like me with a small team - and we were in the pit next door to Simtek - and a very painful situation. But for many drivers it didn't change that much.

People were talking about Roland, of course, but everyone was just getting on with their weekend. I would say that Ayrton was the only one of the top drivers who was very tense about it.

Senna's death was different, because he was one of the biggest names in our sport and such a charismatic guy. I had experienced deaths in motorsport in the Paris-Dakar Rally, but I think that everyone felt that nothing could happen to you in F1, that you could hurt yourself but not die.

Imola was a big shock. All of a sudden two people - one a big name and the other a really nice guy - were not there anymore.

More insights into the great Brazilian's remarkable life are included in our Senna celebration magazine, available from May 1 in selected WH Smith's stores or from Autosport.com/senna.

Interviews with Senna throughout his career, recollections from his former rivals, technical insights on his successful cars, and a look at the three-time world champion's legacy are all part of the 172-page special.