May 1st 1994... You've got me thinking about that day now. Of course, it was much more than a day, because it was an entire weekend of tragedy. It all started on the Friday, when Rubens Barrichello had that alarming, violent accident at the Variante Bassa. It was one of the moments when things go silent and alarm bells start jangling.

As a commentator, I have long ago learned not to assume anything, that the person concerned is unharmed or hurt. You just don't know, so better not to say anything. You just say that there has been an accident, the medical services are in attendance, and you will give out news when you have it. We did quite a lot of that that weekend.

Of course, by the next day, we knew that Rubens hadn't been badly hurt, but then came Roland Ratzenberger's accident. Again, there was the silence and I seem to remember that clearing up the accident didn't take long. That rings alarm bells: if the person isn't hurt, OK, but if injury has taken place, then the medical services take a long time, being ultra-careful, as they did the next day. This was all too quick, almost final.

In this instance, the worst had happened. The regular TV coverage showed the car going off at high speed, but at Imola, there are further pictures from a local university, which trains students to cover outside events by televising the Grand Prix for an internal channel. Their footage was from a slightly different angle and here you could see the front wing buckling under the car, which caused it to go off. We discovered Roland had died instantly.

For some of my colleagues in the press box, this was the first time that they had been to a motor race where someone had died. After all, no one had been killed in Formula One for years. (The last fatality during a GP weekend prior to Imola 1994 was Canada 1982 when Riccardo Paletti was killed in a startline accident - Ed). It was tragic, a very horrible new experience. Worse was to come.

I remember the morning of May 1st trying to get a brief interview with Ayrton. I had been asked by some TV station or one of the circuits to get his comments on perhaps the Australian Grand Prix - I can't remember. Because of the incidents of the day before, we hadn't tried on the Saturday, so early on Sunday morning I hung around the Williams motorhome hoping that I might ask him before the warm-up. It was a long shot, because Ayrton didn't like doing that kind of thing before a race. Not surprisingly, he waved me away. It was the last time I saw him.

The race is a blur, really. There was the startline accident, right in front of me and then I began to wonder if things could get any worse. Then came Ayrton's accident, and again, it was just a matter of keeping quiet. The medical services took a long time, so there was hope that he was alive, but that's just an intuition. My notebook makes little mention, just that a helicopter landed on the track. I don't even know how long it was before the race was restarted. Later, I note that Michele Alboreto hit someone in the pit lane.

After the race, I was told that 'it was very bad' so there wouldn't be a celebration on the rostrum. I prepared my notes for the post-race press conference: could one be pleased on a day like this? It was particularly hard for Nicola Larini, second, as he had longed for a day when he could end his 43 race points drought with celebration - but not today.

Afterwards, the rumours began to fly around about Ayrton's condition. Someone had announced at the hospital that he was dead, but still there was nothing official at the circuit. But that seemed to be the case. We began to accept that the story was true. We were, perhaps, unaware of the wordwide repercussions, that a star, a hero, was gone.

On our way to the airport, we had all kinds of thoughts. One was who would/could replace Ayrton in the team. A colleague suddenly did a Nigel Mansell impersonation: "Hallo Frank. It's me…" There wasn't much humour that evening. The Williams mechanics on the plane to Gatwick were in a state of shock, not saying much, mainly sleeping.

An abiding memory was the bravery of one person when we got to England. Ann Bradshaw was the team's press officer. She arranged for all the team personnel to avoid the waiting press and TV cameras in the arrivals hall, while facing the battery of cameras and questions herself.