Senna and Berger were great friends. In that grand prix Gerhard arrived in Imola together with a compatriot to whom he was very close. Autosprint wrote it in 2019 in the special dedicated to the twenty-five years since Ayrton's death. I have a small archive on the drivers paulista, in which I included an article by Paolo Ianieri in the Sport Week issue of 26 April 2014.
Who, two decades after those events, also told something else: the fact that he became an instructor in a small driving school, then investing the money he earned to participate in the first car races at the wheel of a Formula Ford 1.6. In that piece in the weekly Gazzetta his father Rudolf revealed: “Roland had almost given up on F.1, he was earning good money in Japan but he didn't want to spend that money to earn a seat."
As chance would have it, in Monte Carlo he met Barbara Behlau, owner of a sponsorship agency, who found the budget to finance his first 5 races of '94”. Rereading these words a little anger returns, thinking back to the many sacrifices made to achieve the dream of a lifetime.
![Roland Ratzenberge](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Roland-750x375.webp)
And let's remember that in F.1 at the time "those last in qualifying were more than seriously at risk of being cut off the next day, of not starting for the Grand Prix", as reported in that Autosprint special mentioned at the beginning. This is why Roland did not immediately return to the pit lane for a prudent check after having become unsettled on the previous lap.
From that San Marino Grand Prix I take other lines, those of the late (also) Giorgio Faletti: "They left in the exact same way, perhaps with a last glimmer of sun in the visor of their helmet, their bodies immersed in the colors of that twisted metal, with their heads bowed like a child when they doze off and start to dream.
“Behind a wall and a broken dream, for one just begun, for the other never sufficiently satisfied. I don't want, at this moment, to think of them differently than perfectly and humanly equal, the Great Champion and the Last Arrival“. On 30 April 1994, the day before Ayrton Senna's death, Roland Ratzenberger died in Imola.
Crediti foto: F1
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