F1 | Imola 1994: Ayrton's last race

That Sunday, May 1994, XNUMX, Ayrton Senna knew that the race he would face would be the most difficult ever held. Twenty-nine years have passed but that weekend in Imola has remained indelible and after all this time there remain many questions that will never be answered. The day before, Austrian pilot Roland Ratzenberger lost his life.

It was a dramatic event that shook the drivers, first of all Ayrton who ran to the scene of the accident and was even fined for it.
“Come on, I'm retiring too, and we'll go fishing together,” Sid Watkins, official Formula 1 doctor and great friend of the Brazilian champion, told him.
“You know I can't,” Senna replied, still shaken by what happened to Ratzenberger.

And so Ayrton decided that he would race, he would also do it to pay homage to Roland who until the day before was considered just anyone. He brought the Austrian flag that would have waved in the event of victory into his cockpit, to show solidarity with that driver who, like him, was racing for a dream.

But the two drivers, so far apart in terms of career numbers, were dramatically close in destiny: Ayrton will never wave that flag which will be found with the signs of the violent impact at the Tamburello curve. The last image we saw of "Magic" was the look of him on the starting grid, almost resigned and ready for the fate that awaited him.

Senna lost his life that day in Imola but achieved the greatest victory: the affection of millions of people, being the idol of young drivers at the beginning of their careers and being remembered as the strongest driver in the history of Formula 1.

“If a person no longer has dreams, he no longer has any reason to live. Dreaming is necessary even if reality must be glimpsed in the dream. For me it is one of the principles of life".

Keep flying high Ayrton, we won't forget you!