Meanwhile, Senna went out for dinner at the Romagnola. The meal had been planned for Josef Leberer’s birthday but few felt like celebrating. Instead he questioned Leberer about Ratzenberger as they were both Austrians. The mood of the evening was very sad, and it was clear that it had stayed in Senna’s mind.
When he returned to the hotel he found a message under his door from Frank Williams asking him to pop down to his suite for a chat. He went downstairs and talked to his team principal, who found him a lot calmer than he had been earlier. Leberer offered to do his massage before he went to bed but Senna said he simply wasn’t in the mood.
When Adriane finally arrived at Quinta do Lago, after nearly 24 hours of travelling, she made straight for the shower. As she got out the phone rang – it was Senna. He told her he had decided to race after all and when he won he would uncoil an Austrian flag and fly it on his victory lap in honour of Roland Ratzenberger. During the call, his housekeeper Juraci shouted to Adriane to tell him she was preparing his favourite meal of grilled chicken and steamed vegetables for when he returned on Sunday evening. She handed the phone to Juraci, who told him the meal would be waiting for him when he got back. He then said to Adriane: “I want to spend the night awake. We will talk until morning comes. I want to convince you I am the best man in your life.” As the conversation got lighter, she laughed and said to him: “But you don’t know the others.” He said: “I will prove to you I am the best.” She said: “If necessary, I will join the queue like any other fan.”
Her last words to him were that she had news for him. The news was that she had been training and would be running with him on the first day after the race. During their conversation, Senna said he had changed from being deeply depressed to being happy again. He asked her to come out to Faro airport with Juraci when she picked him up on Sunday evening and told her to be there at 8:30pm. They were the last words they ever spoke.
On Sunday morning Captain O’Mahoney rang Senna at 7:30am in his suite and asked him what time he could pick up his bags at the hotel. It was a wake-up call – something he did every race day morning at that time. Senna got up, threw his things in his bag and went downstairs where a helicopter was waiting to take him to the track. By the time he arrived the sun was shining and a beautiful day was developing. In morning warm-up he was once again faster than the rest of the drivers. He sent a short greeting over the Williams pit radio to Alain Prost, who was at his first Grand Prix of the year and was in the Williams pit. “Hello my friend, I’ve been missing you,” he said.
When he returned to the pits, he told David Brown not to touch the settings on the car – finally he was happy with the set-up.
During the half-hour he was driving, his press spokeswoman Betise Assumpcao had dropped her guard and told journalist Karin Sturm that the race officials were trying to intimidate Senna by censuring him over the commandeering of the safety car. She said: “But it’s like that the whole time. That suspended fine because of Irvine – they only did that because they wanted to put him under pressure, because they knew what he wanted to do about a drivers’ trade union.”
Meanwhile, Hill found practice difficult that morning, especially going past the point where Ratzenberger had crashed. As he remembers: “I could imagine the force of the impact because I was actually travelling at the same speed he had been doing before he went off. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have given it a second thought because, even though speeds reach 200mph, it is not a part of the circuit where you come close to the limit; it is not a place you worry about. You are relying entirely on the car and, in the light of Roland’s accident, it brings it home that sometimes you are just a passenger, putting your faith in the components.”
Senna was again fastest in warm-up by nine-tenths of a second. Afterwards he climbed out of the car, changed and wandered into the Williams motorhome, where he spotted Alain Prost sitting at a table.
When he saw Prost he sat down with him for a quick breakfast. The pair talked animatedly for 30 minutes and Senna lobbied him to help with safety improvements. Prost agreed that they would meet before the Monaco Grand Prix in two weeks’ time. He later recalled: “For the first time in ages we had a really normal conversation – we set aside the differences between us.” In fact Prost was wholly surprised at Senna’s attitude towards him that weekend, as he said afterwards: “I was very surprised as normally he did not even say hello if I crossed his path.”
Afterwards Senna recorded a lap for TF1, the French television network, for whom Alain Prost was working. During the recording Senna said: “I would like to say welcome to my old friend, Alain Prost. Tell him we miss him very much.”
When he got out of the car he wrote a letter to Roland Ratzenberger’s parents and asked Assumpcao to fax it.
At 11am Gerhard Berger called by the Williams motorhome to collect Senna for the drivers’ briefing. On the way Senna asked him to bring up a safety point about the pace car on the formation lap. He didn’t want to do it himself because he believed there was personal animosity between him and race official John Corsmit.
At the briefing the talk was all of the events of the day before. The drivers stood in silence for a minute in memory of Ratzenberger at Bernie Ecclestone’s suggestion. Senna took no direct part in proceedings and sat at the back sobbing.
Then Berger raised the point about the introduction of a pace car during the final parade lap leading to the start. He said that he felt it was nothing more than a gimmick and contributed little else apart from making the cars run far too slowly and therefore less able to put heat into their tyres. Berger said: “Going that slowly increases risk, as everybody’s tyres and brakes are too cold at the start.” He demanded forcefully that it shouldn’t happen in future. The other drivers supported Berger and Senna and the race officials agreed to abandon the idea.
After the briefing Senna chaired a brief discussion about safety with his colleagues, notably Michael Schumacher, Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto. They agreed to hold a meeting on safety issues with all drivers in Monte Carlo on the Friday before the next race.
There was no dissent but Hill believes that the talk of a drivers’ meeting about safety to take place before Monaco rang alarm bells with the Formula One organisers. He said: “Whenever drivers group together there is the potential for trouble. We were all together in the pre-race drivers’ briefing as usual, and we weren’t happy.”
Then it was on with the show. Senna went to the Paddock Club to talk with Williams’ sponsors and their guests for half-an-hour. Team-mate Damon Hill went with him – it was a situation he was very used to and carried out with relish, despite being less than enthusiastic about life that morning.
At midday he ate a light lunch, then shut himself away in the motorhome with his thoughts. Afterwards he picked up his spare overalls from the debrief room and went off to the Ferrari motorhome to see Gerhard Berger. It was the last Frank Williams saw of him.
Half-an-hour before the start, Senna went to the Williams garage. Everybody there said he was different from usual. He paced round the car, examining the tyres, and rested on the rear wing, silent and alone. Betise Assumpcao says: “He usually had a particular way of pulling on his balaclava and helmet, determined and strong as if he was looking forward to the race. That day you could tell just from the way he was putting on his helmet that he didn’t want to race. He was not thinking he was going to die, he really thought he would win, but he just wanted to get it over with and go home. He wasn’t there, he was miles away.”
At 1 o’clock Sid Watkins climbed into his medical car and ordered his driver Mario Casoni to drive round the circuit on his normal inspection lap to make sure the medical intervention cars were in place and the people manning them alert. When he returned to the pits he inspected the medical centre. Everything was perfect. Roland Bruynseraede, the FIA delegate in charge, then did the same.
The cars gradually left the pit garages, did a lap and formed up on the grid. Senna’s style was
to sit quietly belted up in his car for the 15 minutes or so before the start with his helmet on, preparing mentally for the first corner and playing it in advance over and over in his head what he was going to do. This time he broke his usual routine by taking his helmet off, removing his nomex fireproof balaclava and loosening his seat belts whilst remaining in the car.
On the grid Williams technical director Patrick Head talked briefly with him and there was a hint of a smile as they spoke.
As usual the circuit commentator announced the grid and when he came to Gerhard Berger’s name, because he was a Ferrari driver, the San Marino crowd cheered wildly. Senna turned around and smiled at Berger alongside. Berger remembers: “It was the smile of a friend who was pleased to see the people’s support and love for me. That is the last thing I remember of him.” Josef Leberer was standing by Senna’s car as he usually did on the grid ready to hand him his helmet. he gave him a last drink and then Senna put his helmet on for the last time. With the helmet on he checked Senna was happy. The mechanics started the engine and Leberer waited a few moments before running back to the Williams garage to watch the start.
Meanwhile, at Senna’s home in Portugal, Adriane and Juraci settled in front of the television to watch the race eating their lunch.
In the medical car four men were belted in their seats waiting to follow hard on the heels of the pack of cars on the opening lap in case of an incident. In the front was Watkins and Casoni. In the back seat, Dr Baccarini had his IV infusions ready, the cervical collar, and the paraphernalia of resuscitation. Next to him was Dr Domenico Salcito, deputy chief medical officer for Imola.
Up in the BBC commentary box Murray Walker made his customary preamble to British TV viewers: “Ayrton Senna in pole position, Michael Schumacher next to him on the grid. So now with just seconds to go the grid is being cleared and you will see the cars going around in less than 30 seconds’ time.”
At exactly two o’clock the cars pulled away on the pace lap and straddled back to the grid. The procession of Formula One cars went past Watkins’ medical car and took their places. The race started bang on time as the lights went red, then four seconds later turned green and the cars streamed into the first turn.
Almost immediately yellow flags were waving everywhere. Pedro Lamy’s Lotus had run into the back of JJ Lehto’s Benetton, which had stalled on the start line. It was a violent accident similar to that of Riccardo Paletti all those years ago. But this time Lehto survived, albeit hurling bodywork everywhere as a wheel of his car became detached and went into the crowd.
Casoni drove the medical car straight through the debris with wrecked cars on each side. When Sid Watkins observed that the drivers were out of their cars uninjured, he tailed the main pack while others cleared up the mess. He expected a red flag to stop the race while the track was cleared. But it didn’t come and instead at 2:03pm the safety car came out while the debris was cleared.
Senna led the cars round with Michael Schumacher, Gerhard Berger and Damon Hill following. The medical car finished its lap uneventfully, and as it reached its permanent position in the chicane, the leading Formula One cars were completing their second lap. The marshals cleared the circuit in less than six minutes and swept up.
At 2:15pm David Brown told Senna over the pit radio that the safety car was about to pull off. Senna acknowledged him in the last words he ever spoke.
When the safety car peeled off Senna put the hammer down. With a fully loaded car he clocked 1m 24.887secs on the sixth lap on full tanks and cold tyres. It was a very good time and only two drivers bettered it by the end of the race – Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher.
Schumacher couldn’t keep up that speed and fell behind immediately. The pace worried Sid Watkins – he remembered a premonition, turned to Mario Casoni and said: “There’s going to be a fucking awful accident any minute.”
At exactly 2:17pm Senna approached the Tamburello curve for the second time after the restart and the seventh time overall. His car veered off the track just after the apex of the bend at a speed of 190mph and slammed sideways into the unprotected concrete wall. As he braked he slowed the car to 130mph on impact. The next moment the red flags were out again and Casoni put his foot to the floor and steered towards Tamburello. Sid Watkins said: “Somehow I knew it was Senna.”
At exactly 2:18pm Watkins’ Alfa-Romeo pulled up at Tamburello behind the wreck of a blue and white car. Life had suddenly gone wrong for one of the best drivers the world had ever seen. He had driven his last lap.
CHAPTER 2
1960–1980: Early Life
Against all the odds
Ayrton Senna was born on 21st March 1960, the first son of Milton da Silva and Neyde Senna. When he was born they nicknamed him ‘Beco’. In Brazil it was very common for a son to have a family nickname. It was also common to combine the names of husband and wife to form his family name, and that is what da Silva and Senna did, to create Ayrton ‘Beco’ Senna da Silva.
The Senna da Silvas were a prosperous family who lived in Santana, in north São Paulo. They were attended to by servants and enjoyed all the advantages of wealth. But São Paulo had a population of 15 million people, and was very competitive for a young boy dreaming of a big future.
Milton da Silva’s father had been wealthy, even though his son had started out lowly. The family business made parts for cars, employing nearly 1,000 staff. It also distributed soft drinks. But the family crown jewels were cattle farms covering over 90,000 acres, on which more than 10,000 cattle were said to roam.
Senna’s childhood is not well chronicled, even in Brazil, but it was well ordered and, some say, idyllic. Senna was the second child, arriving two years after sister Viviane, and was followed by younger brother Leonardo. He attended the local Colegio Santana school.
Astonishingly, given what happened later, Senna had a coordination defect. A neurologist diagnosed a motor-coordination problem. He ordered an electroencephalogram to be done, but could find nothing seriously wrong that would warrant medical attention.
However, something was certainly different about him. His mother would have to buy him two ice creams since he invariably dropped one on the ground. He apparently also had difficulty doing even simple things like walking up a flight of stairs.
In addition he was diagnosed as hyperactive and, conversely, introspective. It was obvious early on that he did not make friends easily and preferred his own company. Accounts differ of his academic prowess. Some say he was good in school, others not. But there is plenty of evidence to indicate he was not a diligent student and showed no real sign of being bright in an academic sense.
His one passion, from very early on, was cars. His father was directly involved in the motor industry through his spares business. At three Senna was bought a pedal car, and a year later a go-kart was made for him for his fourth birthday. The machine was powered by a one-horsepower lawn-mower engine with a plastic bucket seat and a crude aerodynamic fairing at the front. The kart never went fast enough for the fairing to be any use, but it was all the young boy ever wanted.
The tiny kart put together by his father was all it took for Senna to discover his passion. Almost overnight his neurological problems were cured and he became a normal young boy.
It was clear that driving cars was what he wanted to do, and any problem that got in the way was solved. Early on his calling had been answered, and his talent discovered. Driving his little kart was an outlet for his energy, and he showed extraordinary application. But his academic career suffered.
He was allowed to enter junior races in the kart and remembered later: “I was then about eight years old and the majority of people there were 15, 18, 20, and the way to decide the grid position was by drawing, so they put papers with the numbers inside a helmet, and as I was the youngest I drew first and I pulled number one so I was on pole position for my first event.
“I was small, light, so my go-kart was the fastest one with the weight advantage I had. I stayed in
the front for many laps because people just could not overtake me – they were quicker than me in the corners but on the straight I was going away from them. I was third with three laps to go and the guy behind me, who was always trying to overtake me, touched me and I went off so I didn’t finish the race, but it was really good fun.”
His father applied the carrot and stick, denying him the pleasures of the car if his homework wasn’t done. It worked in a limited way. Young Ayrton loved and respected his father, and wanted to please him.
At the age of seven, his father caught him driving a jeep on one of the farms without permission. Far from punishing him, he was astonished at his skill in controlling the giant vehicle when he could barely reach the pedals. He couldn’t reach the clutch and changed gear by listening for the right time in the revs.
His extracurricular driving came to an abrupt halt when, aged eight, he borrowed the family car and was caught by the police for driving under age on São Paulo’s public roads. His mother had known all about it and turned a blind eye. Milton berated her for being so foolhardy. Luckily for Ayrton his father was a motor racing fan, and smoothed it over with the police.
The Life of Senna Page 4