From 1984 onwards, already in Formula 1, they traveled together around the world for Grand Prix races and became increasingly close. “We were always together [nas provas]and when he was here in Emilia Romagna, he was always at my house.” Orsi’s residence, near Imola, became a kind of “home away from home” for Ayrton Senna.
The accident
May 1, 1994 is, for Orsi, a day he would rather not have lived. “Do you have friends? It’s hard to say… When you have a friend, it’s a person with whom you share thoughts, words, divide time. You feel good when you’re with them. From that day, I can say that I remember of having lost a friend.”
That Sunday, Orsi made an unusual choice: recording images of the race from the Tamburello curve, a place where photographers rarely stayed. “Saw [o acidente] I looked out of the corner of my eye at the exit from the runway, but all I could see was the dust of the escape route; I didn’t know who it was. The stewards told me that an accident had happened 100 meters away and that it could be Ayrton. I left my post, took the motorcycle that was there and quickly went to the location. I arrived when they were taking him out of the car. I had a feeling it wasn’t a good thing.”
Everything that happened in the minutes in which Senna was being attended to was erased from the Italian’s memory: “I couldn’t see exactly what [os socorristas] they were doing, because they covered him. When the doctors were moving, I thought I saw blood, but if I had to say exactly what I saw, I can’t remember because I was so nervous.”
The photos that no one else has seen
Orsi’s camera was programmed to continue taking photographs automatically and recorded the pilot’s assistance. “When I returned to the newsroom, Ayrton had already died. I found out while I was driving back. I looked at the photos I took on that roll of film and there were four that, in my opinion, could have been avoided from being seen.”
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