Thursday,
30/4/1994, Roland Ratzenberger dies.
I first met Roland Ratzenberger back in 1982, I was racing in Formula Ford 2000 and he was wokring as a mechanic for German gentlemen drivers to finance his own first steps in Formula Ford 1600 in Austria. I was happy to learn that he’d won the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch in 1986 and got a BMW factory touring car drive as a result. But trying to finance a season in British F3 failed, so Roland accepted to race in Japan as a well paid professional in Formula Nippon and sports car racing. With the support of Barbara Behlau, a Monaco-based sports manager, Ratzenberger was able to sign a deal with the new Simtek team at the start of 1994, hoping to raise money to complete the season as he went along. We had a chat in Interlagos about how that whole deal had come about and I couldn’t believe the story that got him the drive. He didn’t qualify for the Brazilian GP with the brand new chassis that hadn’t even seen a propore roll-out, but managed to get onto the grid of the Pacific GP at Aida. We last spoke on Saturday morning in the Imola paddock, he was cool, perhaps a bit more serious than usual. A couple of hours later I was among those assisting Roland being placed in a rescue helicopter. Little did we know, while ingeniously hoping for a positive outcome of the horrifying high speed crash he had suffered in practice for the San Marino Grand Prix, that our friend had left us upon impact at the Villeneuve bend.
Born: 4th of July 1962 in Salzburg, Austria;
Died: 30th of April 1994 at Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy.
Well……15 years gone by. Incredible how that weekend is still vivid in my mind after all this time. Too bad that most people would remember him as the guy that died the day before…..
Anyway….sad memories.
30 April 2009 at 2:50 pm
I was barely 7 when this all happened.
But I still remember what I was doing all this weekend long.
I was having lunch when my dad told me Ratzemberger had died.
And we were at a barbecue, when Senna’s death was confirmed. You know a kid, I just didn’t believe, I was just watching TV waiting till someone would arrive and say “oh no it’s a miracle Senna hadn’t died”.
30 April 2009 at 4:51 pm
I don’t remember the weekend, we didn’t have qualifying live on TV and I was waiting for the morning paper to see the grid. So I just remember the Sunday, and it started with MTV in the bed(we had just 5 channel – 2 local, MTV, RTL and Pro7). I was 11 and I understood about Ratzenberger’s death from MTV News in the morning. I couldn’t understand English, but there was a black screen with Roland’s picture and his birth and death dates.
That’s how the day started!
1 May 2009 at 6:53 pm