There has been a lot of attention, and quite correctly so, on the 20th anniversary of the death of Ayrton Senna which falls tomorrow but sadly rather less commemoration of the other casualty of that awful weekend at Imola.
Roland Ratzenberger died 20 years ago today, the hugely talented Austrian’s Formula One chance coming after a long and varied career which was cruelly cut short in qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix.
A race winner in touring cars and sportscars we’ll take a moment to recall his best result in our part of the sport, 5th overall, and class winner at Le Mans in 1993 aboard this Toyota 93C-V which he shared with Mauro Martini and Naoki Nagasaka.
Sky TV have produced a very good film – The last Team-mate – which brings Damon Hill and David Brabham back to Imola – It’s available on YouTube and is well worth a watch.
And one final postscript – Whilst many nowadays forget Roland, one man that weekend didn’t. When the wreckage of Senna’s Williams was examined a small furled Austrian flag was found, the enigmatic Brazilian had apparently planned to commemorate his fallen colleague post race.
