No Verstappen domination without Imola 1994? How Senna's death is still influencing current F1

Formula 1 will soon be wrestling with the next stage of its constant business evolution. That’ll play out against the boring backdrop of predictable race results.

It’s such a familiar part of the championship’s history, but, really, the first such example on the commercial rights-holding watch of Liberty Media. It made its mark with the (delayed) switch to ground-effect cars from 2022 but given the scale of failure in anyone else matching Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s dominance, F1 is back to old ground, stumping around to improve its racing spectacle.

Liberty’s decision to allow Netflix in to capture the Drive to Survive docuseries, plus its massive expansion of F1 social media use, has rather changed the landscape. There’s now a growing debate on how much DTS has actually swelled F1’s fanbase, but there can be no doubt it registered the championship in the modern zeitgeist – with some hefty assistance from the COVID-19 lockdowns.

This makes today – the 30th anniversary of that awful weekend at Imola in 1994 – all the more interesting.

Because while Ayrton Senna’s genius and Roland Ratzenberger’s tenacity were tragically taken from F1 and its fans at that event, and they so are rightly foremost in being remembered this week, so too should the championship reflect on how those events changed F1 and wider motorsport.

Plenty of what F1 is also witnessing in its current racing product can be traced back to Imola 1994. These points vary in depth, but they’re there nonetheless. And so, for the long-term fan or recent convert alike, they’re worth examining.

The biggest grouping concerns the improvement in overall safety standards. Thankfully, in F1 alone, there has only been a single driver death since that infamous weekend, and Jules Bianchi’s crash at Suzuka 10 years ago led to a very visible development in this sphere: the cockpit halo structure.

Bianchi remains the only driver to have died in F1 since Imola 1994 and the following transformation in safety standards has continued non-stop

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The list of changes that followed Imola is famously lengthy.

Afterwards, F1 quickly got its first pitlane speed limit, mechanics were banned from watching the action in the pitlane, the wooden floor plank was adopted to eliminate illegally low ride heights.

The last listed was a part of how Senna crashed and the term will be worth recalling again when it comes up as part of the story from the Miami Grand Prix this weekend. This is another 2024 sprint event, where getting ride height set-ups wrong can lead to plank infringements, a la Austin last year.

The HANS device – long in development before 1994 – is credited with saving even more lives since its use was written into F1’s rules in 2003

Back in 1994, post-Imola cars were slowed in knee-jerk changes that included slashing downforce generating bodywork and stifling engine power via air-intake holes – but the combatting speeds ethos endured.

The data behind safety drives became the forefront – with cars soon logging accident data in greater detail, along with the information gathered via the later developments of in-ear accelerometers and biometrics-gathering.

Barriers got safer and track design evolved – Imola itself a much-altered course in the aftermath of those awful accidents.

The HANS device – long in development before 1994 – is credited with saving even more lives since its use was written into F1’s rules in 2003. Subsequent accidents, such as Felipe Massa’s at Budapest in 2009, took the next stage of helmet safety development that had been turbocharged by Senna’s death to the new creations of Zylon strips and overall stronger designs (from 2019).

The Hans device has become commonplace in motorsport

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When F1 drivers unite as they did in Jeddah 2022 and the aftermath of the Houthi rebel missile attack, this can be traced back to the resurrection of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association post-Imola 1994.

The specifics don’t end there.

There is much chat these days about the size and weight of modern F1 cars – how their more cumbersome movements in certain aspects detract again from the modern racing experience.

Part of this comes from additional weight added by the impressively comprehensive side-impact structures, which, along with the science of nose placement to reduce danger in a T-bone collision, again can be traced back 30 years.

Then there’s Jos Verstappen’s accident at Spa in 1996 when the Dutchman was racing for Footwork.

Back on the 20th anniversary of losing Senna and Ratzenberger, then technical director of the FIA Institute for Motor Sport Safety Andy Mellor was quoted in Autosport’s 2014 commemoration highlighting one element of "the watershed year" that was 1994.

This was the subsequent change in F1 cockpit side heights. These were increased from 1996 along with the adoption of energy-absorbing headrests.

1996 F1 cars featured far higher cockpit side heights than previous models

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"That year, the first accident where the headrest made a difference and possibly saved a life was that of Jos," recalled Mellor, no longer working for the FIA as an advisor after the FIA Institute closed in 2016.

"The headrest was destroyed, so instead of the energy going into the helmet and the head, we have now managed to put all of that energy into the headrest."

It’s therefore tempting, given how there’s more than enough time between his father’s enormous accident at Stavelot and his birth, to see Max Verstappen’s current era of success in part stemming from the tale of another F1 dominator: in Senna’s loss.

How F1 continues to evolve and with safety firmly at the forefront is the ultimate legacy

To some, understandably, that would be a stretch. But it at least emphasises how long this all stretches back and how what transpired that awful weekend saved subsequent lives, which can be extended to the many developments in road car safety, famously by the FIA-endorsed Euro NCAP safety assessment.

All these changes and what they led to completely matter. The push to begin them goes back more than 30 years. But Imola 1994 galvanised and focused the resolve.

How F1 continues to evolve and with safety firmly at the forefront (think the new roll hoops post Silverstone 2022) is the ultimate legacy.

The 1994 San Marino Grand Prix weekend was perhaps the most important in F1 history and will never be forgotten

Photo by: Motorsport Images