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The morning after Ayrton Senna died in Imola, we left our rooms above the small pizzeria on Via Antonia Graziadei and crossed the bridge over the Santerno River to enter the race track. The world had looked at this place in horror and mourning the day before and now it was calm and sad and we wandered through the open double doors onto the track.
We turned right and walked down the track towards Tamburello, where Senna’s Williams-Renault had crashed into the wall at the start of the San Marino Grand Prix. There was already a sanctuary for the three-time world champion.
Brazilian flags had been attached to the wire fence over the scar that identified the point of impact. In the forest behind the wall, groups of fanatics had come to pay their respects.
It’s time for Lewis Hamilton to get the respect he deserves as one of Britain’s greatest sportsmen.
We stood there for a while, still struggling to accept what had happened, still trying to accept that a man who seemed invincible was dead. As we lingered, a car with tinted windows pulled up and pulled into the circuit. A woman dressed all in black came out, leaned over, put a wreath of flowers on the gravel, and then left. I never knew who she was.
I have been back several times since that day. The hills behind the curves at Tosa and Rivazza were my favorite places to watch Formula One anywhere in the world. Imola was always my favorite circuit, despite what happened there on that damn weekend in the spring of 1994. It summed up all the passion and all the history I loved about Grand Prix racing.
Sometimes it seems that the sport cannot bear the brunt of what happened in Imola and has thus moved away from the charming old circuit.
A monument to Ayrton Senna has been erected in Imola after the driver’s death in 1994
Formula One hasn’t raced there for 14 years, but the new king, Lewis Hamilton, was driven down its undulating track for the first time last week as part of preparation for Sunday’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
When his car took him past Tamburello, he felt the sting of what had happened there. He felt that the air was still charged with tragedy and looked at the statue of Senna that was sitting on a pedestal in the infield as if it were Senna himself sitting on the wall of the shaft. And like the rest of us, he felt the past of the sport.
Hamilton is the best now. He moved away from the record of 91 racing victories set by Michael Schumacher when he won the Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao last week and now, at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, he is going for victory No. 93.
By the end of the race, he may be on the verge of equaling Schumacher’s record of seven world titles that many believed would never be equaled.
His 92nd victory fueled a new round of debate over who is the greatest driver of all time. There is no correct answer to that question. It is even more difficult to argue the case of a man in F1 for the simple reason that many of the greats were killed in pursuit of the sport they loved. Senna was 34 when she died in Imola. Jim Clark was 32 when he died in an F2 race at Hockenheim. You both have to be part of any conversation about the best that ever came.
Hamilton, who is 35, is also part of that conversation. Of course it is.
Hamilton broke away from the 91-race won record set by Michael Schumacher last week
What can be said is that it is the greatest of this era and that it rises above its contemporaries. Inevitably, there are those who say that his record is distorted because he drives the best car, but that is sophistry. Hamilton earned the right to be in the best car, the Mercedes, and being the best, he has remained in the best car.
That applies to all team sports. Most of the great scorers played in great teams. They had great players around them. That doesn’t diminish his accomplishments, and driving for Mercedes shouldn’t diminish the scale of what Hamilton has done either. He’s an incredible driver with an incredible brain, a bold and rambunctious driver who can be calculating as well as fearless.
He is the largest active sportsman in Britain. There is an argument that he is the biggest active sports star in the world. Lionel Messi, Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Simone Biles, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic and LeBron James are part of that equation, but Hamilton is more dominant.
For whatever reason, it still doesn’t rank high in the hearts of the British people.
Some say it’s because he’s a tax exile, but that never seemed to be a deterrent to Nigel Mansell’s popularity. He’s in the pantheon of the biggest stars in British sports and it’s time he started getting the credit he deserves.
The least we can say as he runs through Imola on Sunday is that he is a worthy heir to the man who died in Tamburello so many years ago, whose memory still burns with such intensity.
Being a tax exile did not appear to be an impediment to Nigel Mansell’s popularity.
Nobby was the best team man
Nobby Stiles will always play a prominent role in our soccer culture. He did not seek individual glory. He submitted to the needs of the team. And in the process he became one of only two Englishmen to win the World Cup and the European Cup.
He embodied selflessness as a player and humility as a man, and the warmth of the tributes that followed his death last week are good indicators that his values inspired others.
World Cup winner Nobby Stiles epitomized selflessness as a player and humility as a man
United must use Donny
When it was suggested last week that it was strange that Manchester United would pay £ 40 million for Donny van de Beek in the summer only to leave him on the bench for game after game at the start of the Premier League season, many pointed out: correctly, that Fabinho faced the same problem when he arrived at Liverpool and asked where all the fuss was when that happened.
The difference, of course, is that Liverpool had just reached the Champions League final when Fabinho arrived and they were one of the two best teams in the country. So it was no wonder that a player of even Fabinho’s quality didn’t jump straight to the side.
United were in 15th place before Saturday’s games. They are fighting. Leaving Van de Beek on the sidelines feels like a luxury they can’t afford.
Leaving £ 40m man Donny van de Beek on the bench – a luxury Manchester United cannot afford
Finish this Eddie
This week I noticed that the substitutes for England’s Six Nations game against Italy in Rome were named in the official RFU press release as Finishers. I thought rugby players were made of harder material than that and would be able to accept the fact that they hadn’t made the first XV.
But Eddie Jones’ strange insistence on pretending there is no difference between starting the game and continuing later has taken hold.
I was wrong at the World Cup in Japan last year when I asked England coach Jones if George Ford had been “knocked out” for a match. Jones was horrified. He said that just because Ford was no longer in the first XV didn’t really mean they had dropped it. Only they had repositioned it.
Actually, they had dropped it. Finalists are substitutes, no matter how much someone wants to pretend otherwise.
