Patrese during his final 1993 season
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1993 was set to be Riccardo Patrese’s final season in Formula 1 – having scored six career victories and 37 podiums across 256 grand prix starts in motor sport’s most elite category. A highly successful career by most standards.
Nevertheless, despite falling out of his seat at Benetton, the Italian was far from hanging up his crash helmet and instead turned to Frank Williams for an opportunity to continue his long career into 1994 as a test driver.
But, as he explains in this months Motor Sport magazine, his feelings quickly changed after F1’s darkest race weekend.
After consecutive title success with Nigel Mansell (1992) and Alain Prost (1993), Williams were on the back foot in ’94 after becoming the victim of new technical regulations that banned the use of its active suspension system – a technology which had made the car the class of the field. As a result, even the great Ayrton Senna – who had replaced the departing Prost at the beginning of the season – was struggling to find performance in the ‘passive’ FW16. Help was desperately needed.
“I went to Imola and spoke to Frank and Patrick [Head], offered my services to do some testing for them,” Patrese tells Motor Sport. “I was the last person to drive the Williams with passive suspension, Damon Hill only had experience with the active car because when he was the test driver it was always with the active car.
“I wanted to keep driving, to be involved, so when I spoke to Frank at Imola he was quite keen on this idea, and Ayrton was also very positive.”
Patrese and Senna had shared the podium many times before but would now work as team-mates
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Ahead of the ‘94 San Marino Grand Prix – for which Imola was the host – Senna had failed to finish both the season opener in Brazil and the Pacific Grand Prix in Japan. Despite the struggles, there were signs of promise in Imola after qualifying: Senna putting his car on pole, two tenths clear of Michael Schumacher‘s Benetton. However, a pall had been cast over the paddock following the death of Roland Ratzenberger who was killed earlier in the session.
The following day, the Brazilian suffered an identical fate: killed in a high speed impact at Tamburello corner.
Having agreed to help the team with some testing, Patrese had left the circuit on Saturday afternoon but was called into action for the season’s remaining races after the dust began to settle.
“Frank said that now he needed a race driver and he asked me if I was ready to come back,” recalls Patrese. “I said yes, I was ready.”
However the Italian then reveals that internal conflict started to creep in.
“I had all these bad feelings about the death of Ayrton, they were so bad, I couldn’t sleep properly.
“After 17 years I had had many accidents, and thank God I had survived. Ayrton was in a safe car, and I knew how much attention Williams always gave to safety.
“Ayrton was the most expert driver, and I thought this could happen to me, so now I had all these doubts and I told Frank it was over, that I don’t want to drive F1 any more, that I have too many doubts to perform as well as I have in the past.
“So that was it, I was out of the circus, and decided it was time to retire.”
