The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Thirty years after his death at the San Marino Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna is still adored in Formula One, a sport his fatal accident reshaped. The 34-year-old Brazilian was leading at Imola on May 1, 1994, when he went off the track at the Tamburello curve and smashed into a concrete wall. It was the second death of the weekend. Since then, there has been only one driver, Frenchman Jules Bianchi in Japan in 2015, who has died in a Formula One crash. In the 2013 film 1: Life on the Limit, British journalist Maurice Hamilton observed that Senna’s death “was broadcast into the living rooms of millions of people who didn’t know much about motorsport but knew who he was and wanted to know who the culprit was”. Investigations into Senna’s death laid the blame for the crash on the steering column on his Williams. In the collision, the right front tyre tore off and flew into his head. A suspension arm also pierced his helmet. The day before, in qualifying, Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger had died in a crash. Senna commandeered a course car to rush to the scene. Formula One’s doctor, Sid Watkins, wrote later in his book Life at the Limit that he told the distraught Senna: “Ayrton, why don’t you withdraw from racing tomorrow? “In fact, why don’t you give it up altogether? What else do you need to do? You have been world champion three times, you are obviously the quickest driver. Give it up and let’s go fishing.” Watkins wrote that Senna replied: “Sid, there are certain things over which we have no control. I cannot quit, I have to go on.” Senna had already hurried to a stricken driver the previous day when his young compatriot Rubens Barrichello crashed. Watkins prevented the driver choking on his own tongue. “Three big crashes,” Frederic Vasseur, now Ferrari team boss, said. “I think that shocked F1.
“I don’t know if it was a trigger, but I think it’s true that it’s often when there’s an accident that we change. After Jules, we made the halo, for example,” he said, alluding to the hoop above the cockpit that now protects drivers’ heads. While Formula One had already begun to pay more attention to safety, thanks to the initiative of drivers such as three-time world champion Jackie Stewart, Senna’s death prompted renewed efforts to improve cars, equipment and circuits. Senna’s fierce rival and sometime teammate Alain Prost remains inextricably linked to the Brazilian. The Frenchman had retired as a driver at the end of the previous season with a final world championship title and became a broadcaster. He said he got to know Senna in that period. “I keep the last six months in mind,” Prost told Motorsport.com in 2018. “That’s when I knew Ayrton much more than ever before. “I understood who he was and why he was acting sometimes.” When Senna crashed, Michael Schumacher, in his third season, was just a few metres behind. In 2000, when asked about his feelings after equalling Senna’s then record of 41 Grand Prix victories, the German broke down in tears. Lewis Hamilton also has emotional memories of the fateful day. He said that, aged nine, he was helping his father Anthony repair his kart at a British junior race meeting. “Someone told him that Ayrton had died,” Hamilton recalled at Imola in 2020. “And I remember I had to walk away from my dad because he would never let me cry in front of him so I had to go to a different place. It wasn’t easy. “I remember trying to channel that sadness into my driving and I think I won that weekend, but the following weeks were very tough.” The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
Tags:
The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Portugal will not pay reparations for atrocities committed during the transatlantic slave trade and the colonial era, the government said last Saturday. The statement was in response to remarks made earlier in the week by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who said his nation should “assume full responsibility” for the colonial-era and find a way to pay compensation. Local media reported the statement as indicating there were no plans for a “process or program of specific actions” to provide restitution. Portugal’s colonial era lasted more than five centuries. The decolonization of some African countries only occurred in 1974 after the ‘Carnation Revolution’ led to the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime. The territory of the Portuguese Empire in Africa included present-day Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and the island nations of Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe. The country is widely thought to have been the first European state to play a major role in the African slave trade. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, almost six million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into servitude. Most went to Brazil, which was a Portuguese colony until 1822. In September, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is also a former Portuguese prime minister, urged former colonial states to consider financial reparations among measures to compensate for the enslavement of Africans. In a report, he said that up to 30 million people were violently uprooted from Africa over a span of more than 400 years. “Under international human rights law, compensation for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, may also constitute a form of reparations,” Guterres said.
The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
Tags:
The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Colombia wants to join BRICS4/18/2024 Colombia is seeking to become a full-fledged member of the BRICS group as soon as possible, and Brazil will promote its candidacy, according to a joint statement from the leaders of Brazil and Colombia, published after their meeting in Bogota.
BRICS – which previously comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – has seen a major wave of expansion. Four more countries – Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates – joined the group at the start of this year, and further additions are expected in the future. “President [Petro expressed Colombia’s interest in joining BRICS as a full member as soon as possible, and President Lula welcomed this initiative and promised to promote Colombia’s candidacy,” the statement from Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro reads. Several other nations have expressed an interest in joining the group of non-Western economies, and some have already formally submitted applications, including Venezuela, Thailand, Senegal, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Bahrain, and Pakistan. In February, Venezuela announced it is hoping to secure BRICS membership at the group’s next summit in Russia in October. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has stated that the emergence of a new multipolar world is “irreversible,” describing the group as the “future of humanity.” Nigeria in March announced its plans to join BRICS within the next two years, viewing membership as a way to make its voice heard on the global stage. Some 25 countries are expecting to apply for membership during the group’s summit in the Russian city of Kazan in October, the South African ambassador to Russia, Mzuvukile Jeff Maqetuka. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), BRICS currently accounts for as much as 36% of global GDP in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), compared to just over 30% for the G7 group. The head of the New Development Bank (NDB), Dilma Rousseff, said in February that the BRICS member states will overtake the G7 in their share of nominal global GDP within the next four years. According to her, the group’s share of global economic output will rise to 40% by 2028, while that of the G7 group of developed nations will decline to 27.8%. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
Tags:
The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
|
Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|
4/30/2024
0 Comments