How to Build a Car

What you see next on the on-board footage is the rear of Ayrton’s car step out to the right. For a heartbeat the car is pointing to the left, then suddenly it snaps right and disappears off in that direction, out of the camera’s field of view.

At the time we were watching coverage on the pit wall and what we saw was that there had been an accident involving Ayrton. A big accident. Damon, who had raced past the crash site, later said that it never occurred to him that the accident might be fatal, not until the red flags started waving. There on the pit wall we were all on autopilot, as David Brown, Ayrton’s race engineer, radioed him again and again, but got no response.

I remember snippets. Ayrton sitting perfectly normally in the car, upright with his head against the headrest – but not moving. I can recall seeing Sid and the medical crew arrive. I remember seeing Ayrton being pulled out of the car, motionless on a stretcher. All this on the monitors, of course. Over the radio, Damon was calling for information: ‘What the hell’s happened? How is he? What’s happened?’

But we didn’t know. The only information we had came from what we saw on the screens lining the pit wall. Our driver on a stretcher. No movement. No information.

Another thing I remember, something burnt into my brain, is the noise from the spectators. The horns, klaxons and tambourines. All this excited frenzy of noise that carried on despite the terrible tragedy unfolding at Tamburello. The sound, a trademark of Italian Grands Prix, still to this day sends shivers down my spine.

‘We don’t know, Damon,’ I told him, as the cars were reformed on the grid. From over our heads came the sound of a helicopter. ‘We just don’t know.’

The race began again and we were forced to refocus. The helicopter took Ayrton to hospital. Schumacher won, Damon finished sixth.

The news came through at the airport. Ayrton was dead.

That said, there’s no doubt in my mind that his major preoccupation was the fact that he hadn’t yet won a race. He wasn’t one to apportion blame. If anything, he was too quick to take responsibility for things that weren’t his fault. But this was his championship bid and he was yet to score a single point.

Ayrton didn’t have many close friends within the Formula One paddock, but Roland was one of them. He’d jumped into an official car to take him to the scene of the accident the moment he heard about it. Later, when Roland was pronounced dead, he wept on Sid Watkins’ shoulder. The two were great friends, but when Sid asked Ayrton not to race the following day – ‘Give it up and let’s go fishing,’ he’d said – Ayrton could only say that he had to race. He had to go on, no matter how shaken he was. He had to go on.