Imola remains one of F1's greatest thrills despite its tragic past

Imola has always been one of my favourite tracks – and favourite places.

Fast, rolling, demanding and dangerous despite being neutered by safety changes after Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994, it remains challengingly old-school – and resolutely loved by the sport’s cognoscenti.

Despite dozens of attempts and billions spent worldwide, F1’s track designers are yet to recreate this chemistry of twists and turns.

The circuit is on the edge of a city of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants. Maranello is 90km north, Monza and Milan a few hours further in the same direction and F1 heads to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix this weekend of the first visit to Europe this season.

The days are immersed in the region’s motor racing obsession and the nights consumed with its other love; pizza. Well into the early hours, boy racers would roar up and down outside on their vespas, the tinny sound echoing through rooms with wall-to-wall tiling and showers that leaked continually.

Much as I, like so many others, was profoundly affected by the death of Senna, my love for this place and Autodromo Dino e Enzo Ferrari has been unrelenting.

Even in my time Tamburello, a flat out left-hander, had seen significant accidents before Senna’s. There had been warnings. Nelson Piquet knocked himself senseless there, Gerhard Berger was hospitalised by an inferno he was lucky to escape. And, of course, a little further down the track the day before Senna’s demise, poor Roland Ratzenberger became a victim too, just three Grands Prix into an F1 career he had worked so hard to achieve.

No-one who was there will ever go to Imola without vivid memories of a bleak weekend, even as the 30th anniversary approaches.

And yet it is great to see the circuit persists in a