Bernie Ecclestone has revealed he was informed Ayrton Senna’s demise in a Method One race 30 years in the past “can be the top of” the game.
The former F1 boss mentioned Max Mosley, then president of the game’s governing physique the FIA, made the prediction after the Brazilian driver died on the San Marino Grand Prix on 1 Could 1994.
Senna, a three-time world champion and one of many greatest names in world sport, died immediately when his Williams automobile ran off the street at 190mph and hit a concrete wall on the seventh lap of the Imola circuit.
The 34-year-old was the second driver to die that weekend after Austrian Roland Ratzenberger crashed his Simtek automobile right into a wall throughout qualifying.
Talking on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of Senna’s demise, Ecclestone mentioned: “Max Mosley mentioned to me afterwards that he believed it could be the top of Method One. I mentioned, ‘I feel you’re mistaken and we should see’.
“We hoped it would not trigger what Max had urged would possibly occur, nevertheless it was only a catastrophe. It wasn’t weekend, and it appears to me loads longer than 30 years. He was simply so unfortunate to die in that accident.”
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Senna’s fellow Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello additionally survived a sickening high-speed crash throughout observe, two days earlier than Senna’s demise, on the notoriously harmful race monitor.
Ecclestone, who ran Method One for 4 a long time, mentioned: “It was only a disastrous weekend.
“If you concentrate on all of the issues that occurred, with Roland crashing and by no means getting out of his automobile, after which Senna, I actually do not suppose it could be potential for it to occur once more.”
The race restarted lower than 40 minutes after Senna’s crash, with Michael Schumacher successful.
Former F1 driver Martin Brundle, who completed eighth, has since mentioned he was “offended” that “we raced previous a pool of Senna’s blood for 55 laps”.
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Senna celebrates successful the Japanese Grand Prix in 1993. Pic: Reuters
Ecclestone – who obtained a suspended prison sentence for fraud final 12 months – mentioned: “Ought to we’ve stopped the race? I do not suppose so. It would not have helped him (Senna) in any method, form or kind.
“When these items occur, all of them occur so rapidly that you do not actually have that a lot time to suppose. Legally, it ought to have been stopped, as a result of we now know he died on the circuit.
“However in the long run, it got here all the way down to industrial issues, individuals who would have needed refunds and all these types of issues. And the opposite aspect of it, wasn’t actually considered.
“However I hope we are going to by no means see one thing like that once more, and I feel in the present day, with the best way all the pieces has improved with security, thank God, the probabilities are a lot smaller.”
The fifth spherical of this 12 months’s F1 championship is at Miami this weekend, with the game anticipated to pay tribute to Senna on the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola later in Could.
A 2010 documentary titled Senna charted his rise to fame and his epic battle for F1 supremacy with Alain Prost.