We Lost a Hero 28 Years Ago on This Day, and His Name Is Ayrton Senna

The Brazilian racer had made his mark on the sport, and his driving is still referenced today by some F1 commenters. But it is not only commenters who mention Ayrton, but also F1 drivers, as well as team owners. Other racers, who compete in less well-known championships, also reference Ayrton as the reason they started competing.

To this day, Ayrton Senna is remembered across the world, and it is safe to believe that his greatness will live on for decades to come. Senna is to be remembered not just for his driving skill but also for his empathy. Back in 1992, at the Belgian Grand Prix qualifying, Senna was first on the scene of Érik Comas' crash at massive speed.

Senna stopped his McLaren MP4/7A single-seater past the crashed Ligier JS37, ran towards the wreck and shut off the Frenchman's engine.
Unbeknownst to everyone else, Comas was left unconscious by the force of the impact with one of his car's wheels, which separated from the vehicle after hitting the wall at about 200 mph.

The Ligier's engine was still running, and the unconscious French driver had his foot on the throttle, which posed a safety risk because it could have exploded or caught fire from a fuel or oil leak. After all, it was involved in a serious impact just earlier, and all bets are off when that happens.

Footage from that day shows other cars driving past the incident while Senna ran into a cloud of smoke, risking his life in an attempt to help another racer. Many years before, at the 1976 Nürburgring race, a racing driver named Arturo Merzario pulled Niki Lauda out of his wreck in the race that changed his life.

Similarly, Senna had the inspiration to keep Comas' head upright until medical personnel arrived. While Comas does not remember the accident itself, nor the minutes after it, he credits Ayrton Senna for saving his life that day in 1992. Formula 1 also has the same view of the situation.

In a cruel twist of fate, Érik Comas was also the last driver to see Ayrton Senna after his crash in the Tamburello corner. Comas' car was stopped at the last moment by stewards with red flags, and the French driver witnessed Ayrton being put on a stretcher, and he did not speak of the events that day for another decade.

In a video interview made about a decade after the incident, the French driver recounted both incidents. In the Frenchman's words, the scene of Senna's crash was like "an atomic bomb deployed in Tamburello," and he noted that Senna's death was "the end of the book for F1."

Unfortunately, we will never know what would have happened if the FIA had listened to Ayrton Senna's request for the implementation of better safety devices. Earlier that weekend, Rubens Barichello had a severe crash during practice, which flipped his car.

Thanks to the on-track work of the late Sid Watkins OBE, Barichello lived on to have a lengthy career in the sport. What is not that well known is that the first person Barichello saw when he woke up in the hospital after his crash was his mentor, Ayrton Senna.

The day after Rubens's crash, Austrian racer Roland Ratzenberger, who was just four months younger than Senna, but entered his third F1 race, died after suffering several life-threatening injuries. One of them was a basilar skull fracture, which is believed that it could have prevented his death or at least the official cause of death for Ratzenberger.

After the death of Roland Ratzenberger, the remaining drivers had agreed to reform the Grand Prix Drivers' Association. Its first directors should have been Senna, Berger, and Schumacher. Sadly, later that day, Ayrton passed away in what is hoped to be the last fatal accident in Formula 1.

Upon searching Senna's Williams FW16, an Austrian flag was discovered in the cockpit. Senna intended to wave it on his victory lap in memory of Roland Ratzenberger.

Ever since the early 1980s, the HANS device had been developed by an American Scientist and researcher, Dr. Robert Hubbard. Sadly, its use only became mandated by the FIA in 2003, although many lives could have been saved ever since its invention.

It is unclear why it took so long to make a safety device mandatory, while NASCAR and CART made the HANS compulsory back in 2001. HANS devices became mandatory in the WRC back in 2005. In some countries, there are national or local racing series that still let competitors race without them.

Hopefully, we will never get to see another racing driver die on the track ever again, and Ayrton's death is one of the reasons why the most expensive branch of motorsport is constantly working to improve its safety.