The Blackest day in F1

Minichamps 1/43 Williams Renault FW16
Ayrton Senna 1994

For the first time, Minichamps have decided to put tobacco liveries on their Rothmans cars. One of those cars were the Ayrton Senna FW16 car. This is a reissue of the Williams FW16 that Minichamps released a long time ago. It's surprising that this car, the reissue, is more valuable than the original release. Probably because of the tobacco livery and the rarity of this car.





The legend of Ayrton Senna drives on at Imola, where the memory of his death still casts a shadow over the track. Ten years after his tragic death at Imola, the legacy of Ayrton Senna lives on from the Sao Paulo slums to the streets of Monte Carlo. Imola 1994 was a watershed for grand prix racing, shocking the world and robbing the sport of a three-times world champion still considered by many to be the greatest man who ever graced a race track.

"He was the one driver so perfect that nobody thought anything could happen to him," said former McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger after a terrible weekend that also claimed the life of Austrian Roland Ratzenberger. "He was the only driver I respected," said four-times champion and old rival Alain Prost.

The painful memories, present every year at Imola, will remain even if the circuit has changed and teams treat next week's race, coming a week before the May 1 anniversary, as business as usual. "I'll try to keep my head low, as will Patrick," said Frank Williams, the team boss who faces another trial in Italy along with technical director Patrick Head and former designer Adrian Newey as a result of Senna's death in their car.

All will remember a hugely talented driver and may wonder, as many have over the past decade, what might have happened had Senna lived. Would Ferrari's six-times world champion Michael Schumacher, now heading for his fourth win in a row to match the best start of his career in 1994, have been the same record-breaking phenomenon that he is today? One can only imagine the battles the two might have had. Senna was 34 and at the height of his powers just as the 25-year-old Schumacher was emerging with Benetton.

Could Senna have equalled Juan Manuel Fangio's record of five titles before Schumacher did in 2002? Their rivalry might even have matched the intensity of that between Senna and Prost, a feud fuelled by controversial title-deciding collisions at Suzuka in 1989 and 1990. "He felt that there was a part of formula one that was prepared to win at all costs," said McLaren boss Ron Dennis, whose cars took Senna to his titles, when asked what the Brazilian had thought of Schumacher.

"It was a group of people that fell into that category, not just drivers, but elements of teams or whole teams. And he felt that certainly Michael fell into that category and that was never his way of going into formula one." Whatever the conjecture, it only heightens the mystique of an absent champion whose charisma, intelligence and talent combined the spiritual and the sporting to a rare degree. Dennis spent more than an hour talking to reporters about Senna at the last Bahrain Grand Prix.

"His legacy is moments like this." he said. "Even 10 years after he lost his life, there is still a tremendous interest in him. I do not think Ayrton would change anything that happened."He lost his life doing something he was passionate about. It was his life to the exclusion of many things that other drivers and individuals enjoy."