Haunting Portrait of Senna During His Final Race Weekend Is Available One Final Time
One of the last known private photographs of famed Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna is available now as a limited-edition print for one final time.
Photographer Jon Nicholson captured the striking, ethereal portrait of Senna on what would tragically become his final Grand Prix weekend. Nicholson was working with racer Damon Hill to document Hill’s time racing alongside Senna that weekend during the Imola Grand Prix in Italy.
While a great side profile portrait of Senna in his racing suit, Nicholson’s image took on a much more significant weight given what happened during the race that weekend at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari circuit.
On the seventh lap of the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix — this race is now called the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix — Senna crashed at high speed at the Tamburello corner and was killed.
Nicholson’s photo takes on a particular poignancy because it shows Senna watching a video monitor in a debrief room, watching fellow driver Rubens Barrichello crash at 140 miles per hour during a practice session that weekend. While Barrichello survived the terrifying wreck, race car driver Roland Ratzenberger was not so fortunate during qualifying the following day. It was arguably the darkest weekend in modern Formula 1 racing.
After watching Barrichello’s high-speed wreck and Ratzenberger’s fatal crash that weekend, Senna told Nicholson on Sunday he did not want to race. Two hours later, Senna was dead.
This final private photo and others that Nicholson captured of Senna during that fateful San Marino Grand Prix weekend sat untouched for 24 years. Nicholson long thought that the pictures were best left forgotten.
On a recent anniversary of Senna’s death, however, Nicholson changed his tune and decided to dig them out and share them with the world in an exhibition.
Now, alongside Classic Driver, Nicholson’s final photos of Senna will be available to purchase one last time.
“When I first saw this image again after 24 years of it being in a drawer, I thought that he had already left this world. To me, he looks like an angel — so calm, so at peace. I’ve decided that this will be the last time the image is available for purchase. Now is the time to let the photograph rest,” the photographer tells Classic Driver.
Image credits: Original photograph by Jon Nicholson.
