Saturday April 30th
San Marino Grand Prix, Imola Circuit, Italy

The great Ayrton Senna da Silva puts his Williams-Renault on pole position for a record 65th time of his career*. He and his team-mate, the rookie Damon Hill, had been struggling with the car all season, but Senna, the fastest man ever over a single lap, of course managed to top the time sheets in this, the 3rd race of the season. During the qualifying session a young Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was killed in a crash. This tragedy deeply affected the 3 time world champion Ayrton Senna. No body managed to beat his time for the rest of the afternoon and he started at the front of the grid on Sunday.

Sunday May 1st

Although he was distraught, Senna decided to race on Sunday. His mood was sombre during the build up to the race, for the first time in his 10 year career in F1 he faced his own mortality. The race started but shortly after the start, an incident brought out the safety car. The safety car led the brazilian round the circuit for several laps. The safety car pitted and the race restarted led by Senna who was closely followed by a young German, Michael Schumacher in his Benneton. the cars powered down the straight into the first corner, Tamburello. Senna's car speared off the track, across the grass and slammed into the concrete wall. in those few seconds Ayrton Senna slowed the car by 60 mph, but that wasn't enough, he hit the wall at 134 mph. Senna twitched then slumped down in the seat. As the marshall reached the wreckage of the car, he looked into the cockpit and heard Senna sigh and breath his last. He was rushed to hospital in Bologna where he was pronounced dead at 6:40 pm. The sport was devestated. Williams-renault released the statement "Williams will find a replacement driver, Formula 1 won't"

On Sunday 1st May 1994 Ayrton Senna da Silva, probably the best driver that ever lived died tragically.

"too young to know fear, too green to imagine failure, if all you've got is courage and desire, we've got a place for that kind of fire."

* a record only just beaten by Michael Schumacher, ironically in Imola. Senna held the record posthumously for 12 years.