By Damon Hill
It is the San Marino (or Emilia-Romagna, as it now known) Grand Prix weekend. Better known simply as ‘Imola’. May 1st has passed, but its roughly close enough 30 years since this photo was taken on what was to be Ayrton’s last Sunday morning. We were at a sponsor function and we had lost Roland the day before so the mood was pretty heavy. I think we’d also already done the Driver briefing where Ayrton had asked me and Gerhard to challenge the FIA Race Director on the suitability of the Safety Car. He had a penalty hanging over him so he didn’t want to draw fire directly from the FIA by being the lone agitator. But he surely waded in after us to make his point clear. The Safety Car – an Opel Vectra – was sub-standard. The Safety car driver, Max Angelelli, had already complained about it, but they didn’t want to change the car for their own opaque reasons. Predictably, the ironically titled Safety Car came into play in the race. Ayrton pulled up along side the car gesticulating angrily for it to speed up. But it couldn’t. It was already at its, and its driver’s, limit. The rest is history.
Two weeks later we were at Monaco. We had already been to Senna’s highly emotional funeral in Brazil. I opened the cupboard in the Williams motorhome to get changed and, still hanging up, exactly where he had left it two weeks before, was Ayrton’s T-Shirt. The one he was wearing in this photograph.
We can all put on a brave face. But the little things that you weren’t expecting always catch you out.