Villeneuve

The character of the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari has changed significantly after 1994: Where there used to be a flat out run to the Tosa hairpin all the way from Variante Bassa, the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix showed how dangerous this had become at this point. Not only did Ayrton Senna lose his life at Tamburello, but Roland Ratzenberger became the first fatality at an F1 race weekend since 1982 when he suffered a terrible accident at the right-hand kink preceding Tosa.

Roughly at the site of each accident, a chicane was added as Imola underwent extensive renovations between 1994 and 1995, and while the Tamburello chicane is not a bad one either, the Villeneuve chicane is arguably the more exciting one of the two: Depending on the car, the first left hander of the section is almost flat out, but needs a perfect approach in order to avoid compromising the run through the second part.

Taking enough kerb is also a very important part of this chicane that can gain or lose drivers massive amounts of time, depending on their exit. If you get it right and can go full throttle at the apex of the right-hander already, you can even set up an overtake into Tosa despite the short straight between the two.

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1: Variante Ascari
2: The Chase
3: Inner Loop
4: Veedol-Schikane
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