The stopwatch marks the time of the races. It establishes who goes fast and who goes slower, with a burning that does not stop. Yet there are very rare cases in which the time machine can be stopped for a moment, a fraction of a second, before everything resumes that path of the tick tock that accompanies every existence. Magical moments that shake each one in the depths of the soul and make one remember, reflect. In silence, without the need for words.
The Historic Minardi Day has a fundamental characteristic: it gathers in the Enzo and Dino Ferrari paddock those who are true racing enthusiasts. F1 connoisseurs and not those who just want to be there in the hope of becoming a co-star of the show by looking for a selfie in the paddock or on the grid with a VIP. In short, people who know what they are talking about and who also bring their families to Imola to let the younger generations breathe a genuine, clean air. Smelling the culture of motorsport, rediscovering the roots without repudiating the present or the future at all.
In the Italian “Goodwood”, Gian Carlo, together with his brother Giuseppe and his niece Elena, tried to increase the cultural value of the Minardi Day by giving greater visibility and space to books that tell stories of engines.
Angelo Orsi, Franco Nugnes and Gian Carlo Minardi during the presentation of the book “Senna. The truths”
Photo by: Motorsport.com
On Saturday, Minardi gave me the opportunity to talk about the book “Senna, the truths” after the presentation on May 1st right at the racetrack. And I found the Media Center once again full, with different faces, but with the same passion. There was no need to “explain” the work done for Minerva, there was an experience to share. With Gian Carlo who honored me with his presence and with Angelo Orsi, photographer and colleague at Autosprint for many years, the… true friend of Ayrton.
I tried to portray Senna the man rather than the three-time world champion, aware that those in the press room were accomplices to the story and not just listeners, however interested. We talked about the destroyed photos of Beco that Angelo had not wanted published and we talked about the image that was never taken.
“Angelo,” Orsi explained, quoting Senna, “I’ll wait for you at Tosa where I’ll stop. I want a photo of you taken from the car with the Imola crowd in the background while I wave the two flags: the Brazilian one and the Austrian one in memory of Roland.” “Ayrton, you can’t,” Angelo replied, “the FIA will take away my pass if I dare climb on the hood of the Williams. And do you know what that means? That I won’t work in Formula 1 anymore, without knowing what they could do to you too. You saw what happened to you in the past! Nobody’s stopping you from waving the two flags on the in-lap, but I won’t be able to climb into your car to photograph the lap from Tosa to the parc fermé.”
The South American champion would not listen to reason: “I am Ayrton Senna, if they take away your pass I will not race. Don’t worry, they will not take your pass away. We will do that extraordinary thing!”. A very precise plan had been discussed and drawn up. “He had insisted so much – continues Angelo – that he had convinced me: I gave in because I saw how much he liked the idea and the more he talked about it the more I began to like it too. Undoubtedly it would have been something unique that could have given us a lot of prestige. In short, I had moved from words to action because I had made an agreement with the Tosa course marshals that they would allow me to go to the edge of the track with them when they greet the winner of the GP by waving the flags. Ayrton would have stopped and I would have sat on the belly of the Williams, with one leg stuck in the cockpit”.
Not an easy operation to complete… “I was very nervous about this photo, because in the past I had already done laps astride an F1 and I knew it wasn’t a walk in the park. Taking a lap in a car driven by a friend who had just won the San Marino GP would have scared me a bit. And Ayrton had also thought about the shot: him waving the flags with the backdrop of the very passionate Imola crowd. We had also looked at where we could get the light to work for us”.
Angelo Orsi and Franco Nugnes with the painting by Alessandro Rasponi entitled: “The Missing Photo”
Photo by: Motorsport.com
An emotionally powerful moment was created. There was a religious silence in the room even though the end of the presentation would have suddenly brought us back to reality, to Minardi Day. However, Alessandro Rasponi, the artist who painted the masterful face of Senna that is on the cover of the book, got up from the audience and came on stage with a surprise for Angelo Orsi. Unexpected. Unexpected. For me it was an emotional punch. A thunder in the soul. Once the wrapping was unwrapped, a canvas came out: Angelo astride Senna’s Williams while the Brazilian waves the two flags. The idea? A masterpiece, worth as much as the beautiful painting.
The missing photo materialized in a symbolic image that in that precise moment erased time. Today as if it were thirty years ago. A long, warm, participatory applause accompanied a “Magic” moment. And Angelo, the man with a tough character, melted into tears of an emotion he could no longer control. Shivers. It was worth being there. And maybe in a corner, however invisible, there was also Beco.
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