There are moments that we cannot erase from our memory. When we think of certain dates, a place, a gesture, a feeling comes out of nowhere and passes through us in a fraction of a second. The death of Ayrton Senna had this effect on anyone old enough to understand what was happening on Sunday, May 1, 1994, at the exit of the Tamburello corner of the Imola circuit. Philippe Brunel, then in the area for a report on Enzo Ferrari, was at the forefront of what he calls a “Shakespearean drama”. From the pilot’s hotel the day before the accident to the hospital room where Senna took his last breath, the writer was a hidden witness to a tragedy that he had foreseen.
You were in Imola that famous weekend of May 1, 1994…
I worked at The Magazine Team and I went to Modena to do a portrait of Enzo Ferrari. At the same time, I told myself that I would go see the F1 Grand Prix, I had never seen one. I wasn’t there to follow the race at the start. There was incredible heat, I remember Italy was deserted. Everyone is on the Adriatic coast. Except there was this news from the San Marino GP.
What was the atmosphere like at this San Marino Grand Prix?
There was the accident of Roland Ratzenberger, an Austrian driver, who was killed the day before in qualifying. But there was also another driver, Rubens Barrichello, who rolled over on Friday. From day to day, something was happening. The morning of departure, there was a morbid climate, plus there was this crushing heat. Something had entered into the minds that made everything heavy. I said to myself “a pilot will die today”. I did something very morbid: I went down the starting grid and I went up it driver by driver, staring at their faces to know who this premonition corresponded to.
And your gaze fell on Ayrton Senna…
I arrived in front of Ayrton Senna, pale, livid, with his helmet placed on the car like a funeral mask. And I said to myself: “He should not start”. A hand grabbed me and threw me from the starting gate. By the time I got back to the press box, Ayrton Senna had gone straight into the Tamburello wall.
Do you think he was troubled by the accidents of the previous days?
When Ratzenberger died, Ayrton Senna started crying. Certainly, it is the sensitivity of the pilots, they knew each other. But maybe he already had this feeling that something was wrong. He probably had a presentiment of his own death. Even in that he was going fast.
He also had problems with…
