This week marks 30 years since the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, the most tragic race weekend in modern Formula 1 history. The deaths of rookie Roland Ratzenburger and three-time champion Ayrton Senna shook the sport to its core and fundamentally shifted the championship’s efforts to improve driver safety. It’s easy to overlook that Ratzenburger’s and Senna’s fatal wrecks were foreshadowed by a crash that nearly killed Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello during Friday’s qualifying session.
In 1994, Barrichello was still six seasons away from becoming Michael Schumacher’s teammate at Ferrari. The 21-year-old Brazilian was racing in his second F1 season with Jordan and secured his maiden podium finish just two weeks before in Japan. Expectations were high for Barrichello as the championship made its way to Imola. However, his weekend effectively ended on Friday.
During his first qualifying lap, Barrichello dramatically ramped his Jordan 194 off the Variante Bassa chicane’s exit curb at 140 miles per hour. The car violently slammed into a tire wall, rolling before coming to a rest upside down. The 95g impact knocked Barrichello out cold. In a 2018 retrospective on Imola ‘94 published in Autosport, Barrichello said:
“All I remember about the accident itself was that a very young and very silly Rubens Barrichello tried to go too fast into the corner. Pretty much as soon as I did I said: ‘Oops…’ It was such a big shunt I don’t remember the impact. I just remember the ‘Oops’. I can’t remember Senna visiting me in the hospital. I don’t remember the hospital at all, in fact. But I do remember coming back to the circuit the next day with my broken nose and it was still very hard to breathe.”
Yes, the young Brazilian survived and returned to the track for Saturday. He only broke his nose and sprained his wrist. The most dangerous part of the incident for Rubens was when his tongue blocked his airway when he lost consciousness. Barrichello was fortunate enough to fly into a tire wall instead of concrete walls like Ratzenburger and Senna.
Barrichello would return to competition for the following round, the Monaco Grand Prix. He would go on to have an extremely lengthy career. The Brazilian retired from F1 in 2011 with 322 race starts, a record at the time. He still races professionally in Brazil’s stock car racing series at 51 years old. Thankfully, his last words didn’t have to be, “Oops.”