Remembering Ayrton: Roland and the Austrian Flag

 Abstract

1^st May has come around again and, as always, I want to pay my humble tribute to Ayrton. This year, the heart of the article is a gesture that, unfortunately, was never completed. On the morning of 1^st May 1994, before climbing into his Williams, Magic had tucked a small Austrian flag into the sleeve of his racing suit. He intended to wave it after the finish line, in memory of Roland Ratzenberger, who had lost his life during qualifying on that same circuit the day before. The flag was later found by the medical staff at the Maggiore Hospital in Bologna. This article tries to tell that story, and to explain why it still matters so much.

Saturday, 30th April 1994

Roland Ratzenberger left us doing what he loved most, on Saturday 30^th April 1994, during qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix. He lost control of his Simtek at the Villeneuve corner when the front wing failed and hit the concrete wall at full speed. He was 33 years old and had reached Formula 1 late, after years of racing across three continents on a budget that had forced him, at times, to shave two years off his age just to remain attractive to potential sponsors. Imola was only his third Grand Prix start.

Senna was affected in a way that went beyond the grief any driver might feel. He had already spent Friday watching over Rubens Barrichello, after the young Brazilian had hit the barriers violently at the Variante Bassa and been airlifted to hospital. When Ratzenberger suffered his fatal accident, Ayrton seized a staff car to reach the crash site. The FIA summoned him and fined him. He walked away in fury.

That evening, he called his girlfriend Adriane. He told her that if he won the race the following day, he would wave an Austrian flag on his victory lap in memory of Roland. He had already planned what the gesture would look like and that it was not optional. He had always fought for safety, but now that fight had taken on a different weight, something closer, more personal. He had always seen himself as an older brother to the newcomers, and that role was now pushing him to ask whether it still made sense to go on. It was Dr. Sid Watkins himself, with whom he spoke after the accident, who suggested that perhaps the time had come to "go fishing together" and leave the Circus behind. Ayrton said no. He would not quit at that moment. That was not who he was.

 

The plan

On the morning of 1^st May, Angelo Orsi was in the paddock at Imola. Orsi was a photographer for Autosprint[1] and had been close to Senna for over a decade, a friendship built through shared time in the paddock and ten years of complete mutual trust. That morning, Ayrton found him and explained what he had in mind.

He wanted Orsi to be waiting at the Tosa corner after the chequered flag. He would stop the Williams there. Orsi would climb onto the car and photograph him from above, with the Imola crowd as the background, while Ayrton waved both flags: the Brazilian and the Austrian. They had already thought through the framing. They had already checked where the light would be favourable.

Orsi hesitated. Getting onto a Formula 1 car during a victory lap was not something that the FIA would accept easily, and he was not keen to lose his paddock accreditation.

Senna's answer was immediate: "I am Ayrton Senna. If they take your pass away, I will not race." Magic had already thought about this too. He was not asking Orsi to take a risk. He was telling him that he would take it.

They had a plan. They had reached an agreement with the track marshals at Tosa, who would let Orsi join them trackside during the final lap. The marshal at that corner had been informed. Everything had been arranged, and, as he always did when something truly mattered to him, Ayrton had insisted until every last detail was settled.

 

Sunday, 1st May 1994

At 14:17 on 1st May 1994, on the seventh lap of the race, Senna's Williams left the racing line at Tamburello and struck the concrete barrier. Orsi, who was positioned at the trackside with his Canon, was among the first to reach the scene. He took photographs, not to capture an exclusive, but simply because the photographer's instinct took over — something natural, almost involuntary. Meanwhile, his rolls of film had already reached the Autosprint newsroom, brought by Arturo Rizzoli at 17:00, while Angelo was still at Imola. Before returning, he called the newsroom in a voice that Franco Nugnes, who was there, described as metallic and unrecognisable: "There must be one shot, just one, that I don't want to go anywhere. When you find it, put it aside. No one can see it. Tell Cavicchi immediately." The shot was found. When Orsi returned to the newsroom that evening, the slide was destroyed, cut apart with scissors.

"I did not want to betray my friend", Orsi said afterwards.

The Austrian flag was found by the medical staff at the Maggiore Hospital in Bologna, hidden in the sleeve of Senna's overalls. Soaked with his blood. It had not been waved. It had not even been taken out. It had been carried there, in silence, as a private promise that the race never allowed him to keep.

 

What he carried

When we remember Ayrton, the temptation is always to start with the numbers: three world titles, sixty-five pole positions, Monaco in the rain. Those achievements, the ones that bring a man close to mythology, are milestones of the sport. But the Austrian flag we are talking about today is a different kind of testament.

Senna was in the middle of a season he needed to win. He had retired from the first two races and Michael Schumacher's Benetton was pulling away. The Williams wasn’t as good as it had been the previous year, and Ayrton knew it. His season was really due to get underway at Imola.

And yet, in that context, his first thought after Roland's death was not the championship. It was finding a flag, hiding it in his sleeve, and making sure that someone with a camera would be at the right corner to record what he was about to do for a man he barely knew. He was not close to Ratzenberger the way he was to Barrichello. But Roland had died chasing the same dream, on the same tarmac, in the same profession that Ayrton had spent his life mastering. For Senna, that was enough.

The photograph that Angelo Orsi was supposed to take at the Tosa found life in a painting by the artist Alessandro Rasponi. An image planned in every detail and never taken. The flag folded and never opened. There is something in that incompleteness that tells us more, about the man Ayrton was, than any finished gesture could. He had prepared everything and thought of everything, but then the corner took him before that act of remembrance and courage could happen.

Thirty years later, Sebastian Vettel did what Ayrton had wanted to do. At Imola in 2024, driving Senna's McLaren MP4/8, Vettel waved the Austrian flag alongside the Brazilian one in front of the Tosa crowd. He said that pulling out that flag had felt like completing something that belonged to Ayrton, and he was right. It was exactly that.

 

Like every year and always,

Obrigado Ayrton!

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[1] Autosprint was the magazine that conducted the investigation that brought to light the truth about what happened to Ayrton on May 1, 1994, at Imola.