I'm a bit late with the anniversary, but I've just seen a thing on the internet saying it's thirty years since the death of Ayrton Senna. I was a Senna fan in 1994 (despite having been a fervent supporter of Prost in the classic season of 1988), and it wasn't a very popular side to be on in those days. The rest of the gang at school delighted in jeering Senna's lack of success in the early races of the season, and were downright triumphant when I came into the sixth-form common room on the Monday after his death. Which is a little unkind, since I was genuinely upset by it...
But the death of the famous world champion completely eclipsed the death the previous day of a driver very few people had even heard of - and again, I was one of the rare people who kept an eye on Roland Ratzenberger and hoped he'd do well. He was new to Formula 1, but he'd been around a long time before getting there (so long, indeed, that he apparently lied about his age so as not to seem so old), and I well remembered the name from his classic appearance with a coincidentally similarly-named TV superstar, many years earlier.
Two tragic losses. Maybe three if you count the decline of Roland Rat's TV career. Give Kevin the Gerbil his own series, someone!
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