The first two rounds were in Brazil and Japan. Roland didn’t make the qualifying cut for the first race, but he did at the second. I finished the first race, which was a massive achievement in itself, just having a car that got to the finish.
We were starting to build momentum, starting to build data and information about the car, because we didn’t have the budget to go testing. We never had any spare cars or anything like that, which teams at the front had, meaning all our testing was done at the races, so the more laps we did the more we learned.
READ MORE: From the Stewarts to the Schumachers: The brothers who raced in F1
A tragic Imola weekend unfolds
We headed to Imola with a lot more knowledge about the car and some of the changes we’d made. We were excited to go there.
Roland was feeling more comfortable in the car, but he was struggling a little bit with the brakes. On the Friday, I actually drove his car.
The team asked me to try it for a couple of laps, saying, ‘You’re the one with the experience of carbon brakes, can you just see whether or not what Roland’s saying is accurate?’. I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll jump in’, so I jumped in, did like three laps, came in and commented, ‘These brakes are s**t, you’ve got to change them’.
News Summary:
- IN TRIBUTE: David Brabham remembers his former team mate, Roland Ratzenberger, 30 years on from the Austrian’s passing
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