May 1st 1994, San Marino Grand Prix in a corner called Tambarello. Ayrton Senna died. The next year the infamous corner is replaced with a chicane. Although this chicane is still quite quick, it has always bothered me that they changed it just because of a freak accident. For some reason I have always felt that this does some kind of disservice to Senna. This corner, although very fast, was in no way any less safe than say turn 1 at Indy. They should only have repaved it to remove the bumps and changed the wall layout to make it safer. It was a very exciting corner and is now just a boring chicane. I have wanted to vent on this since the next race at the track the following year. I'm grateful that this forum has granting me the opportunity. Aryton Senna was then and will always be one of the hero's in my life.

Steve

I can understand your sentiments as we all have our favorite racers and tracks. Combine those two with the death of a favorite racer and you have combustion on the emotional level! Good to get this off your chest!

I watched the race there today, at home sick instead of racing with NCRC at Reno-Fernley, and enjoyed watching one of the best F1 races I have ever seen! Michael was sensational charging from behind to get second, and Fernando Alonso won his third race holding off Michael, very impressive! Felt really bad for Kimi (sp?) Raikonnen who was having a splendid race and his car gave out on him.

I saw a large portion of the race today also, and it ranks among one of the best F1 races I've ever seen also! (I haven't seen that many <20) It was a lot better than the soap opera kind of racing NASCAR has become.

It was the best F1 race I've ever seen, and I have been watching on and off since '97.

I agree that it was a very exciting race, but it still points out the flaws in F1. When a car that is lapping at 1.5 - 2 seconds a lap faster can't get by in 10 laps you still have problems.

I agree, one of the top 5 races in the last 7-8 years.

On the passing issue, I also think something really needs to be done. It's kind of crazy though, that with all the technical expertise in F1 they are going at it in completely the wrong way. They keep trying to limit tire adhesion (first with grooves, now with requiring one set for the entire race) when they should be going in the opposite direction: More mechanical (tire) grip, and less aero grip. They somewhat tried to address that this year with new aero regulations, but over the off season the teams developed the new cars to have just as much downforce as last year with the new regs.

IIRC they initialy tried to change the runoff area for the corner. The greenies had too much to say about the trees that would have to go to make this possible. Enter the chicane.

I agree that they should work on increasing mechanical grip.

How much run off area does Indy have? None. I realize that run-off is better than a wall but F1 seems to dead set on it sometimes.