Ayrton Senna - Death of a Racing Driver - video Dailymotion

May 1 marks 30 years since the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola

Transcript

00:00You know, he means a lot and Ayrton, up to one point, was one of these drivers, he was

00:06immortal.

00:07And it was a big shock for me, for Brazil, and for all the Ayrton fans all over the world,

00:16for sure.

00:17Imola, to my memory, it was the most horrible racing weekend.

00:32Rubens Barrichello crashed on Friday, where he could easily be killed.

00:38There was Roland Ratzenberger on Saturday, where he sadly lost his life.

00:43Ayrton Senna was killed by a very unfortunate series of circumstances.

00:51The cause of Ayrton's death was the front wishbone broke when he hit the wall.

00:59The impact that Ayrton gave us was not a very hard impact, it was just, you know, it was

01:05very unfortunate, this wishbone hit him right on top of his eyes and it was like a bullet.

01:15So I think if you repeat this accident ten times, he will survive every single time.

01:22The physical death that happened on the 17th is something, the physical death, so beyond

01:30the concern and gravity of the impact, which was more or less known to everyone.

01:37In fact, one of the difficulties I had in managing the Gran Premio was that I had to

01:44reassure both Moretto and Martini that things were serious, but there was still some hope.

01:51In reality, the hopes were zero.

01:55After Ayrton, it was a long time with no fatal crash in Formula One.

02:00It just happened the same weekend in Imona.

02:03It was a tough weekend to everybody.

02:08I think this tragedy has hit, I mean, everybody at different degrees, but definitely the team,

02:15those who were working in the car.

02:17It must have been horrible.

02:21They had to deal with the sorrow, with I don't know to which degree sense of guilt if they had.

02:29I don't know, and I really tried a lot to think about that, but I don't know if anybody

02:36besides them really know what went on in their head and definitely I was on their side.

02:45At that time, we all knew the risk was very high.

02:48I lost from the time I started Formula One to my last Indy race.

02:54I lost 37 colleagues that raced with me on the track.

02:59Every day I thank God to be here.

03:02We are survivors.

03:04That's exactly the feeling we have now.

03:08We are survivors from a very tough time.