Bruno Grotti, a former track marshal at Imola, after secretly keeping for 32 years a fragment of the sideboard from the rear wing of the Williams FW16, has decided to donate the relic to the Don Sergio Mantovani Foundation. It will be displayed to the public once the museum dedicated to the “chaplain of the drivers” is completed.
Stories are never truly finished. There is always a new page added to the book. When it seems that everything has already been written, here comes the twist. Nothing that changes the known narrative, but suddenly a new detail emerges that enriches the story. Imola, May 1, 2026. Thirty-two years have passed since the tragedy of Ayrton Senna at the San Marino Grand Prix, and at the Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit, which opened its gates in the early morning hours, a wave of fans arrives. These are enthusiasts coming from every corner of the world.
Their goal? To gather at the Tamburello corner at 14:17 and take part in the minute of silence. There were many people. Far more than the previous year. The phenomenon is truly difficult to explain, as it is a spontaneous gathering, not organized by anyone.
The inauguration of the new headquarters of the “Ayrton Senna Italy Fan Club”, which the IFA of Faenza, the Municipality of Imola, and the circuit entrusted to Alessandro Rasponi and his friends, did not justify the incredible turnout that developed throughout the day. It was a hot Saturday anticipating summer, which could have been a perfect opportunity to go to the beach: instead, 7,000 people chose to pay tribute to the three-time world champion Brazilian driver.
In the Senna Room, important memorabilia celebrating Ayrton’s legacy has already been collected, but the completely unexpected surprise was the donation made to the Don Sergio Mantovani Foundation by Bruno Grotti of what can be considered a… relic.
After the seizure was lifted by the judicial authority on March 14, 2002, the wreckage of the Williams FW16 had been returned to the Grove team and, as Adrian Newey wrote in his biography “How I designed my dream. The greatest engineer in F1”, he confirmed that “… dismantling the car was the only thing to do. It makes me sick when I hear about cars in which the driver died being ‘found’ and rebuilt for personal profit, even though the team would probably have had to dispose of them.”
There had been no trace of any remaining debris until the former Imola marshal, Bruno Grotti, approached Alessandro Rasponi to offer what remains of the side panel of the rear wing of the FW16 number 2 to the Don Sergio Mantovani Foundation, which has been working for a year to set up a museum in Modena dedicated to the man everyone called the “chaplain of the drivers”.
Grotti, a 78-year-old retiree from Monterenzio, a municipality in the Bologna area and a restaurateur by profession, expressed his passion for racing by working as a marshal at Imola from 1974 to 2002: “On that cursed May 1st I was not on duty because we had two communions,” Bruno recalls, “while I had been at the circuit from Thursday to Saturday. Senna was my idol and having met him personally brought me even closer to the Brazilian champion.”
“After the tragedy I felt the call to go to the Tamburello corner. I wanted to dedicate a moment of reflection and prayer to Ayrton. But outside the track I couldn’t exactly understand where the impact point was. So I went inside, where today there is the statue dedicated to Magic, and after seeing the tire marks on the wall, I went back to where I had been before. Beyond the track fencing there were small fragments of carbon fiber, but my gaze went a bit further because in the grass you could read the white Goodyear writing on a blue background.”
“To my great surprise I found myself in front of a piece of the Williams. I picked it up and kept it carefully hidden all these years. Those who learned about the existence of the side panel looked for me, offering exaggerated sums for that piece of torn carbon fiber. I always refused to sell it because it was… delivered to me by Ayrton.”
There is no doubt that it is a portion of the right side panel of the Williams FW16: “Through Rasponi I learned that a museum dedicated to Don Sergio Mantovani is being prepared,” Bruno concludes, “and I gladly made the donation, with the awareness that the last fragment of the car can be shared with Senna’s fans and will not end up in the hands of those who might have seen it as a form of profit.”
A commendable initiative that needs no further words…
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