<I>SPEED</I> to re-examine Imola tragedy.

Ten years on from one of the darkest days in motorsports history, the US-based SPEED Channel will re-visit the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix as part of its F1 Decade series, a year-long look back at Formula One races from 1994.

The current on-air team will be able to offer their unique perspective on the events of San Marino, as F1 analyst Steve Matchett was a Benetton mechanic for championship-winning driver Michael Schumacher in 1994, and pit reporter Peter Windsor penned the definitive article on the cause of F1 legend Ayrton Senna's death for UK newspaper The Times.

"I'm not normally taken by such thoughts, far from it, but I can't help feeling that the world of grand prix racing was visited by some sort of evil presence that weekend," Matchett admits, "It was a black time, and God forbid that such things should ever befall us again."

Veteran motorsports broadcaster Bob Varsha, who called the race from the United States with Derek Daly, will offer a retrospective on Senna's career and Brazilian F1 driver Rubens Barrichello, involved in one of the accidents on the Imola circuit, will also comment.

Barrichello began the tragic chain of events when he crashed his Jordan on the Friday. Though his injuries turned out to be relatively minor, it didn't look that way immediately following the crash. On Saturday, young Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was killed when his front wing came off at high speed sending his Simtek into a concrete barrier.

That was the first fatality at a Formula One race weekend since 1982, but worse was to follow on race day.

At the start of the race, JJ Lehto stalled his Benetton on the grid and was hit from behind at great speed by Pedro Lamy's Lotus. Debris was sent in to the stands injuring four spectators. The race was not red-flagged, however, and the safety car was deployed instead.

On the second lap after the race was restarted, three-time F1 champion Senna crashed his Williams-Renault at Tamburello while leading. He left the road at an estimated 180mph, hitting a concrete barrier with barely diminished force. Although many would perhaps have survived the impact, the Brazilian was killed by a freak occurrence, when a piece of suspension pierced his helmet.

The race was later resumed, but there was another accident in pit-lane when a wheel came off Michele Alboreto's Minardi, and several crew members in the Lotus and Ferrari pits were injured.

SPEED insists that there will be no graphic or gratuitous shots included in the programme, but revealed that viewers will see the accidents as millions of people worldwide saw them ten years ago.

"It is our belief that these events are a part of history," said senior co-ordinating producer Frank Wilson, "A three-time world champion and a rising star were lost, and we will present these events as they were shown at the time."

Much like the safety moves, with the introduction of head and neck restraints and soft walls, after the Daytona death of NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt in 2001, the incidents at San Marino led to changes in F1 as well. The cockpits of Formula One cars look drastically different now to how they did in 1994, with the driver's head and shoulders better protected. There is now also a pit-lane speed limit, and the mechanics must not stand in the lane until it is time for their car to pit.

F1 Decade kicks off a weekend of F1 racing from Bahrain on SPEED Channel, with the San Marino retrospective airing on 3 April.