Since the death of Roland Ratzenberger in qualifying training for the San Marino GP Formula 1, in Imola, keeping his son’s memory alive remains an important issue in the heart of his father, Rudolf. Now, 30 years after that fateful April 30, 1994, the 90-year-old from Salzburg spoke about his memories in an interview on the channel Formula1.de on Youtube.
After 30 years, the memory is “naturally a little weaker,” Ratzenberger’s father said. But: “I still have the images, from Eurosport, in English, watching the practice session and then seeing the car, which at first I didn’t realize was Simtek.”
Rudolf was not a big fan of F1 in 1994. He worked for a pension insurance company and had many interests, but motor racing was not one of them. On April 30, 1994, he and his wife Margit had just returned from vacation in Mexico. Ratzenberger turned on the TV and watched the qualifying live in Imola.
“When he stopped at the bend and I saw Roland’s red-white-red helmet and his head moving, I already knew: ‘It’s over’. It was a terrible moment for me,” he recalled.
Ratzenberger also remembers one of the rare phone calls between Roland, who lived in Japan, and the driver’s mother, who wished her son hadn’t raced. Roland was already a star in Japan and used the money he earned there to buy the apartment where his parents still live today. And he told his mother that everything would be better in F1.
Ratzenberger remembers the conversation just before entering F1: “They talked on the phone, and when he told her that he was now entering F1, he said: ‘Mom, don’t worry!’. Shortly afterwards, Roland was dead.”
In the Ratzenberger household, only Rudolf initially noticed the terrible events. Margit was in the kitchen, as he recounted in an interview on Roland’s 55th birthday. “I couldn’t tell her until it was already on the radio,” he said. “It took my wife longer to come to terms with the whole thing.”
For Rudolf, “Roland is not forgotten.” Even if it was “a terrible memory” for the family, for example “in the hospital in Bologna, where I had to go to identify Roland. That’s probably the most terrible memory of all.”
