Senna, 30 years old – Chapter 5: Rubinho’s serious accident causes apprehension | formula 1

Ayrton Senna, shaken, went to visit Rubinho Barrichello, who had been seriously injured, at the Imola circuit hospital and then at the Bologna hospital.

Shall we do a quick review of what we’ve seen so far? First, the F1 regulations changed radically in the 1994 season. Two: Senna’s Williams-Renault FW16 model was very unstable, difficult to drive and in the first two stages of the championship, Brazil and Aida, in Japan, the driver, big favorite to be world champion, he hadn’t scored a single point.

On the other hand, his main opponent, Michael Schumacher, from Benetton-Ford, won the first two stages of the calendar.

In the previous chapter we already entered the San Marino GP, where we described the atmosphere of tension that surrounded Senna. Due to the unpredictability of FW16, the lack of results and his personal moment, assuming responsibility for several important businesses.

Rubens Barrichello talks about the loss of Ayrton Senna and remembers his victory in F1

Right after the first free practice of the race in Imola, on Friday, Senna had the least tense moment of the weekend. The car was better. Adrian Newey, the designer, remained in seclusion in England, studying what he could do to adopt a less rigid suspension in FW16 without, however, losing aerodynamic efficiency.

– The front spoiler is a little different and we have a new front suspension geometry – explained Senna. As he had not required everything from the equipment, as it was his first free training session, the assessment was not conclusive:

– I have the impression that the car is less critical – he told us.

From that moment on, Senna was also able to work his hands and arms better when driving. The steering wheel of the FW16 model had been lowered a few centimeters and now he no longer hit his hands on the walls of the cockpit, next to the steering wheel. “It got better”, Senna simply said.

He rarely gave details of what had been done to the car. When he told what Newey did in FW16, he surprised those who listened. Everything for Senna was a “strategic secret”.

I never heard anything in depth from him about the car, the news, for example, and we know that much of its development was guided by him, so Senna knew the new components of his single-seater and what objectives they had like few others.

Break for lunch, between the free session in the morning and the qualifying session in the afternoon. At that time there was training to define the grid on Friday and Saturday.

Senna’s concentration to get out of that disadvantageous situation against Schumacher and Benetton was total. His statements were almost always monosyllabic, a typical sign that he was focused on something bigger. Senna was like that: a series of behaviors revealed what he was looking for.

I remember once he told us a story:

– When you see me tilting my helmet to the inside of the curves, know that both me and the car are at the limit.

Another password was your reaction in a few words. If he just said yes or no, or even didn’t answer at all, then something was bothering him.

In that GP, specifically, we already saw that there were many things that disturbed him and not just one.

Since 1987, he has covered F1 races professionally as a journalist, although it was only in 1991 that he started following them on a regular basis, going to almost every stage.

I only had two chances to talk to Senna in a deeper, informal way, outside the racetrack environment. Address topics that were not related to motorsport.

One of them was on a flight back from Barcelona to Brazil, in 1992, and the other the following season, in Miami, in the office of a friend of his, Tony, owner of an electronics store. We were returning from Canada.

Ah, an occasion also in England, at Silverstone, on a Wednesday GP week, in 1990, when he, like me, went to check up close the major renovation that had been carried out on the layout of the fast English track.

Other than that, the contacts were always just professionals. Senna maintained friendly relationships, able to share his challenges with few people. One of these people was Galvão Bueno, who as you well know was the announcer for TV Globo, which owns the TV rights to F1 in Brazil.

The atmosphere of apprehension for Senna at the San Marino GP grew even more at the beginning of the qualifying session on Friday afternoon. Right at the beginning of the training, the images on the circuit’s TVs focused on a car with its wheels up, in a location that has not yet been identified.

When a single-seater rolls over, there is always a natural tension due to the fact that the pilot’s head, despite the santant, is exposed, even after 2018, the year in which the halo was introduced, that type of cage installed over the cockpit.

In Imola, it was impossible to know who had had such a bad accident at that moment. We could only see the underside of the floor of the overturned car.

I mentioned the term santantônio. It is a high bar positioned behind the driver that is also intended to protect your head in the event of a rollover. In F1, the air intake, above the driver’s head, also performs this function and is long before the halo, as its first version dates back to 1961.

Then, the TV exposed the VT of what had happened. It was Rubens Barrichello, known as Rubinho, a young 21-year-old Brazilian driver, considered in F1 as a natural talent at that time. His flight on Variante Baixa was terrifying. He was unconscious during the initial moments of medical assistance, and the consequences of what had happened were serious.

Everyone in F1 feared the sudden cut in electronic resources that season.

– It is a risk to make cars less drivable without reducing the power of the engines – said, at the time, the renowned designer John Barnard, author of champion cars at McLaren and creator of several technical solutions still used today in F1, such as the pioneering use of of composite materials, such as carbon fiber, and the concept of gear levers behind the steering wheel, among many others.

Just to remember, the FIA ​​banned the use of several electronic resources in F1 cars from 1994 onwards, such as active suspension, traction control, and self-adjusting limited-slip differential. Components that helped the driver to have control of the car. Suddenly, all that ceased to exist, but the power remained practically the same.

Barnard in the coming days would understand that his words were prophetic. That accident, as well as others in the pre-season, had immediately raised the issue of reduced safety. We will talk about these accidents.

Senna, like many people in the paddock, went to the medical clinic located very close to where Rubinho crashed, before the first pit. I was about 20 meters from the entrance, on the edge of the area isolated by the organizers, when I saw Senna pass me towards the doctors.

His expression was very tense. She walked quickly. The owner of the Jordan team, Irishman Eddie Jordan, had passed by moments before and I could hear him telling Geraldo Rodrigues, Rubinho’s manager, to call the driver’s father to inform him of the accident.

Until then, it was assumed that something more serious had happened to Rubinho, after all, he crashed into the wall at around 200 km/h, with the car flying over its tires. It didn’t take long, about 10 minutes, and Senna quickly left the clinic.

I had already experienced a similar situation, in 1990, in Jerez de la Frontera, when Senna went to the track to provide medical assistance to Irishman Martin Donnely, from Lotus, who had suffered the most impressive accident I have ever seen in person in F1.

As in Spain in 1990, Senna also cried in Imola, because of Rubinho.

– Please let me pass, he seems to be fine, he’s fine – he simply told us. We were at the door of the clinic.

Training was interrupted for 22 minutes. “The show must go on” is the F1 motto, that is, the “show must go on”, and so it was done. The news about Rubinho was reassuring, to the surprise of many. There was no evidence of neurological injuries, the most worrying, or even significant bone injuries.

The drivers returned to compete for the classification. It was hot, 28 degrees. At the end of the session, Senna managed to be the fastest, as he had already been in Brazil and Japan: 1min21s548 compared to Schumacher’s 1min22s015.

– We had a chaotic training session, Rubinho’s accident affected everyone. I didn’t manage to do a single good lap, when I got it right here, I got it wrong there – said Senna. -In the end, being the fastest is great, above what I could have expected, he added.

Rubinho was transferred to the Maggiore Hospital in Bologna, around 50 kilometers from Imola, for more detailed examinations. Senna rushed his meetings with the Williams team, after qualifying, to go to the hospital to visit his friend.

To this day, Rubinho describes the pleasure he had in getting to know Senna more intimately at the beginning of the year.

– We had a lot of laughs at Disney, they wouldn’t let him walk in the park – remembers Rubinho. – That contact was important for me, Ayrton was my biggest idol.

Geraldo Rodrigues, the host of Rubinho’s visitors at the hospital, told me that night, when I was there, that Senna was interested in finding out details about Rubinho’s condition and seemed apprehensive. The Maggiore Hospital in Bologna is public. Rubinho shared the room with two other patients.

When I entered the room, early in the evening, I was surprised by the presence of these patients in the same place. Rubinho was sleeping. His face was quite swollen from a broken nose. I called Estadão from a public phone, in order to send a text over the phone. There was nowhere to write there in the hospital. In fact, it was a concentration of impressively rude people, even with those who communicated in Italian, like me.

There was no cell phone yet, at least not popular, and the internet was something that in practice did not yet exist.

I immediately imagined how the Europeans would react if, at GP Brasil, an injured pilot was taken to the Emergency Room at the Hospital das Clínicas in São Paulo and then remained under observation in the infirmary, along with other patients. The race would probably no longer be held in the country.

Friday ended for Senna even worse than it started. Rubinho’s accident had visibly affected him. I was able to follow his work at Williams, then, as far as we are allowed to go, in front of the garages. He was definitely shaken. He himself confessed, as I wrote, to having made several mistakes on the track.

But if Friday was bad, Saturday would be even worse. Roland Ratzenberger died after colliding at 300 km/h with his Simtek at the Villeneuve curve. If the emotional situation experienced by Senna was already difficult, due to everything that surrounded him and the scare with Rubinho, the day before, it had now gained dramatic connotations.

This is what we will see in the next chapter.