The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  I wasn’t a journalist or a writer, I just wanted to help him because I saw the talent and thought by helping him it would help me. Occasionally he sent me a cheque for £100 for my troubles. I think it covered the postage and my petrol.

  I was only nine months older than him and we both had the same ambitions, although in totally different directions. He wanted to be the best driver in Formula One and I wanted to be the best photographer. We both knew it would take time, so we followed the same apprenticeship. As he competed in Formula Ford 1600, Formula Ford 2000 and Formula Three, I photographed him, moving up the various formulas in tandem until we both arrived in Formula One in 1984.

  We used to discuss everything from God to girls. I laugh today when people whisper to me that Ayrton didn’t really like girls and that he was gay. I know better. It brings back the days when we travelled to the European races and I shared a room with him and we talked non-stop. Many a time he would quietly ask me if I would go and share a room with his mechanic for the night because he had met a Danish girl or Dutch girl or French girl and wanted to entertain her.

  I remember on a return flight to England when he told me he had split up with his wife Liliane, and met another Brazilian girl who was studying in Brussels, Belgium, who he wanted to be with. Many things he told me about his life I can never repeat – they were intimate moments and he trusted me.

  At his first Grand Prix, he invited me to Brazil with Toleman and took care of the airfare and my hotel room on Copacabana beach. I couldn’t believe it. We had finally got there. He was so happy to go to Brazil, his home country, and I had always wanted to visit after hearing so much about it from him.

  I had a great time there but it also marked the moment we went our separate ways. We had both achieved our first ambition: to get to the arena. And then his focused and selfish side, which we would see so many times in the years ahead, came out. He wanted me to end my business and work for him full-time as his personal, private and exclusive photographer. He knew where he was going but so did I. I told him I wanted to form my own agency and couldn’t achieve my ambition of becoming Formula One’s top photographer just working for him. He understood and accepted my decision, but from that moment on we were never close again. He was such a focused man and emotionless about his work. He just moved on to the next thing and the next photographer.

  As I stand photographing the cars at the Imola circuit and remember back to that tragic weekend on Sunday 1st May 1994 the memories start flooding back and I remember the great times we spent together in the early days and what a huge influence he had on so many lives, including my own.

  When he won the world championship in 1988, I had never seen him so thrilled, happy and emotional, and we exchanged glances and a few knowing words. I knew what it had taken in the early grinding years of racing round Britain, every weekend in the freezing cold circuits, the sacrifice of his marriage and friends, to get to that point. And as he looked into my eyes, I knew that he knew I knew.

  Keith Sutton

  Imola Circuit

  San Marino, Italy

  20th April 2003

  PREFACE

  A Chance of Fate

  But for a simple row of tyres

  The basic facts are clear. On Sunday 1st May 1994, Ayrton Senna was leading the San Marino Grand Prix when suddenly his car veered inexplicably off the track at Tamburello curve. His Williams Renault crossed over both the grass and concrete run-off strips before finally impacting the concrete wall. It killed him. It is known for certain that a piece of the Williams’ front suspension broke off during the impact with the wall and flew like a bullet to Senna’s forehead; it impacted and broke through his helmet, forcing his head back against the car’s carbon-fibre backrest and causing multiple fractures to the back of his skull. The piece of suspension was never officially identified.

  Italian law necessitated an official investigation into the cause of Senna’s fatal crash. The legal system came to a conclusion that simply wasn’t credible and the world waited for a proper explanation, but never got one.

  This book covers all the possibilities and has its own theories as everyone did. But in reality the theories and explanations are all wrong and in honesty not even relevant. The reason he died was clear: the solid concrete wall was not protected by a tyre wall, as it indisputably should have been. And why it wasn’t is one of life’s unanswered mysteries.

  Ironically, on 9th March 1994, Ayrton Senna was in a position to save his own life. Barely two months before he met his end, at the same place, he stood at the apex of Tamburello corner with Imola circuit director Giorgio Poggi discussing the safety of Tamburello.

  Poggi adored Senna and would have done anything he asked. But all Senna wanted was a bump smoothing out that had caused him some trouble in testing. As fate would have it, the two men were filmed by an amateur photographer, and the videotape appeared four years later in the trial of the people the Italian authorities believed were responsible for Senna’s death.

  The gaping deficiency at Tamburello bend was the lack of tyre wall protection. Whilst Senna and Poggi discussed bumps in the track, they missed the big picture. Senna merely had to say to Poggi: ‘Put me a row of tyres along that wall will you Giorgio’ and it would have been done. Two or three rows, if he had asked. But he didn’t. In that way he was responsible for his own death. He had the means to prevent it.

  He also realised, while testing that same day, that he had got it wrong on driver aids. He had campaigned vigorously for a ban on electronic driver aids, such as traction control and active suspension, mainly because his McLaren team, at the time, didn’t have them and its main opponent Williams did. Ironically, they were banned the year he arrived at Williams. Stripped of its driver aids, the new Williams was a very difficult car to control.

  In fact Senna disliked the new breed of car from the start, and by the time he reached Brazil he was extremely worried. Presaging something terrible, he warned: “The cars are very fast and difficult to drive. It’s going to be a season with a lot of accidents and I’ll risk saying we’ll be lucky if something really serious doesn’t happen.” As Gerd Kremer of Mercedes-Benz, Senna’s close friend, recalls: “The last time I saw Ayrton was in Brazil, at the Grand Prix. It was his birthday and he told me that he was worried. He was afraid something would happen to him. He was frightened for the young drivers, and that there was nothing he could do if something went wrong with his car.”

  His words were prophetic – by the end of the season, two drivers were dead and one disabled.

  Whatever other reasons there were for Senna’s death that day – the track, the car, his own driving skills (and no one really knows to this day) – he sealed his fate by not asking for a tyre wall. So when the inevitable loss of control happened, he was unprotected. Ironically, the Friday before the race, Rubens Barrichello’s life was saved by tyres when he flew off the circuit and plunged into them. They dissipated the forces of the accident and he miraculously survived intact. No one has ever been able to invent a better way of absorbing impact than used tyres tied together in multiple rows. If a tyre wall is damaged by an accident no more racing is allowed until the tyres are repaired.

  Now, Tamburello bend is smothered in tyres, three rows of them. Drivers going off, however fast, will bounce into them and walk away. And tyre protection has mushroomed at every track in the world, saving drivers from death or serious injury every day of the year. But Ayrton Senna had to die to save them.

  The FIA insists on three rows of tyres at every danger spot. Two drivers lives have been saved by tyres in living memory, Michael Schumacher at Silverstone in 1999 and Luciano Burti at Spa Francorchamps in 2001.

  And that is the deep irony of Ayrton Senna’s death: he has saved many other lives since in all categories of racing. So many drivers now hit soft, absorbing rubber than cold, unforgiving, solid concrete. And that is all down to Senna. It is his real legacy to international motor racing.

  He has also doubled the pop
ularity of Formula One. And the effect of the publicity and drama that surrounded his death, and the money his memory has raised, have made literally thousands of poor homeless children in São Paulo happy, housed and fed again.

  So much good has come out of his death that it begs the question: did it happen for a very good reason? Senna believed in God, not through the often-hypocritical church-going or public displays, but the basic believing. His death, at a similar age as Princess Diana when she died, had a reason and a meaning. He will always be remembered for what he was at that point; he will always be a legend; and his legacy will endure for many hundreds of years.

  And before that, he had a life of such pleasure to enjoy, and which he did enjoy, that he would have seen the value he got from God in his life.

  Tom Rubython

  London

  England

  28th November 2003

  CHAPTER 1

  Life: 2:17pm

  Sunday 1st May 1994

  Thursday 7am to Sunday 2:17pm

  Thursday 28th April 1994 was destined to be a busy day for Ayrton Senna. He woke in his villa in Quinta do Lago in the Portuguese Algarve as usual and went for an early morning run around the sand dunes and golf greens. His Portuguese housekeeper, Juraci, was already up doing errands and fussing around him. He hated leaving his Portuguese home. The four-bedroomed, white-walled villa sat in its own grounds set in a dream resort of around 2,000 acres. With golf courses and lakes on one side and a beach on the other, this paradise was still a well-kept secret as far as Senna was concerned. Only people who had been there understood the unique atmosphere and climate. The resort had a five-star hotel, four championship golf courses and many top restaurants and a nightclub.

  But most of all Quinta do Lago gave him the anonymity he craved.

  The people also spoke his language, Portuguese. It was the only place in the world outside Brazil that he felt at home. André Jordan, the developer of Quinta do Lago, had employed Brazilian architect Júlio Neves to design much of the infrastructure. And over the European winter, when he had been in Brazil, the house was remodelled and redecorated. In 1994, for the first time, he planned to spend the entire European season in Portugal and not return to Brazil at all.

  His one servant was Juraci, who was in permanent residence. Her duties were to cook, clean and chauffeur and she did them all admirably.

  In fact Senna felt good every time he drove past the rainbow-coloured ‘Q’ logo statue that rotated slowly inside a fountain at the main entrance to the complex. He felt he was entering a unique environment where nature was in complete harmony with his design for living a Brazilian lifestyle in Europe. His garden was a breathtaking vista of exotic, tropical plants – palms and banana trees, giant hibiscus, vivid yellow mimosa, whole walls of bougainvillea, orange, lemon and avocado trees. The area, legally protected since 1987, was a unique natural habitat for more than 200 resident or migratory birds, including a number of rare and endangered species. The lakes were a rich repository for shellfish and other marine life.

  When he wanted he could jet-ski or windsurf on the lakes and run for hours along the nature trails. It made his fitness regime more bearable in the wonderful climate and beautiful surroundings. And when he needed a social life he went to the golf club, where the locals and residents knew him but, more importantly, knew not to bother him. At the restaurants and nightclubs on the complex, the same rules applied. And he regarded the security firm that looked after the site as his own personal one. It was so effective that petty crime in Quinta do Lago was virtually non-existent.

  And things were about to get even better. On Saturday afternoon his girlfriend, Adriane Galisteu, a 21-year-old model, was arriving to join him for the whole of the European summer. It had been a month since she had seen him off at the airport in São Paulo, when he left to start his challenge for the 1994 world championship. They had been together for 14 months and she was everything he liked in a woman, good-looking but ethereal rather than beautiful, blonde, small-breasted and long legged but not too tall and with no attitude. In fact her naiveness was refreshing and their sex life was stimulating and compatible. She was also intelligent in an unobvious way, with a perception of things that weren’t always clear. She understood the things that mattered. He was really looking forward to Sunday evening, when he would return from Italy and they would be reunited.

  He packed a small overnight bag himself for the three nights he was going to spend in a hotel in San Pietro near Bologna, whilst competing in the San Marino Grand Prix. There were no formal dinners or commitments that weekend, so his clothing needs were minimal. As he packed he remarked to Juraci that life couldn’t get any better than it was that bright sunny morning in the Algarve. But he was always saying that to the people around him, reminding them all, and not least himself, how lucky they all were to be sharing the life Formula One had given him.

  But there was a small irritation in his life that glorious morning. His brother, Leonardo, was staying until Sunday and would be coming with him to Imola. Leonardo was on a mission from his family to try and persuade him to give up Adriane. For all sorts of reasons the family, with the exception of his mother Neyde, who loved what he loved, detested Adriane. They regarded her as little better than a peasant girl, and not good enough for their son, the hero of Brazil. The truth was that it was none of their business, and Senna loved the girl and would probably ask her to marry him when this summer was over. But this family was tight, very tight, and usually everything was everyone’s business within a circle of six people – Milton his father, his mother, his sister Viviane, his brother and his sister’s husband. Adriane’s arrival marked the start of a long period living together when he would not return to Brazil for six months, something he had never done before. This decision had precipitated a family feud, and Leonardo had been dispatched to try and change Ayrton’s mind. Over that week, it had led to some rare harsh words between Senna and Leonardo. But Senna would not be moved. He was staying put for the summer, even if it meant seeing far less of them, especially Leonardo, as he knew his brother would not return to Portugal whilst Adriane was around.

  Senna spent his time between two tight groups: his family, with whom he congregated in Brazil; and his private circle of friends, which was just as tight as his family group, and with whom he spent time in Europe. Adriane was part of this group which consisted of around a dozen people headed by Antonio Braga, a wealthy Brazilian who also divided his time between Brazil and Portugal. The second group had embraced Adriane, unlike his family, and many would hang around with him at races. He liked having them around. The upcoming race at Imola would be no different.

  The family dispute had annoyed him as it meant that Adriane could not join him at Imola for the weekend when Leonardo was around. If she did there was a danger of a public row and Ayrton Senna did not wash his private family linen in public.

  After his run Juraci prepared a light breakfast for him and Leonardo, who was returning to Brazil after the San Marino Grand Prix. She then delivered them to Faro airport, where Captain Owen O’Mahoney was waiting in Senna’s own BAe HS125 jet to fly them to Munich for a morning meeting with executives from Audi. Senna had been negotiating to take over the Audi franchise in Brazil. This was a meeting to finalise the terms. A few hours after landing they were ready to take off again this time for Forli airport near Bologna. From Forli the brothers would go by helicopter to Padua and the Carraro bicycle factory. Senna had a new deal with Carraro to manufacture a carbon-fibre bicycle called the Senna that would carry his famous double ‘S’ logo. It had been planned for some time and was one of many new products under the famous ‘double S’ Senna brand. He was also to import the Carraro bicycles into Brazil. Annoyingly, the argument about Adriane continued on the aeroplane. As Leonardo got older, he seemed to get more fractious and emotional about things. Senna could not understand why his family was so upset.

  After arriving at the factory to formally sign the contract, he would go on to t
he Sheraton Padova Hotel on the highway from Milan to Venice.

  At around 4 o’clock he arrived in Padua and landed his helicopter in the grounds of the Carraro Industria factory. After signing the contract he went with Giovanni Carraro to the hotel for a press conference. It was part of the start of a new life for him as an entrepreneur when he retired from racing. He wanted to talk about it but there were hardly any journalists he recognised at the press conference and naturally all they wanted to talk about was motor racing, not bicycles. Senna told the press conference: “The world championship is just beginning for me in Imola, with a handicap of two races.”

  Even though the journalists present were not Formula One veterans, they were enthusiastic Italians and wanted to ask him questions about Benetton’s supposed traction control. Senna was surprised about their depth of knowledge. He said: “I really can’t say much about it,” and then said, in a way that revealed both very little and yet a lot: “It’s difficult to talk about things one cannot prove.”

  At around 5:30pm he left the Carraro factory and flew to the Imola circuit. On the way he collected Mike Vogt, marketing director of TAG Heuer. Senna and Vogt, who knew each other from his McLaren days, discussed a new Senna watch the company was developing. Even though Senna had left the McLaren family, of which TAG Heuer was a part, Vogt still wanted to do business with him. He knew he could sell plenty of Senna watches at $2,000 apiece.

  At six o’clock the helicopter landed on the infield at Imola. Senna wanted to show his face to the team on the Thursday, when the cars did not run. He also wanted to see the results of a whole programme of aerodynamic modifications that had been planned from the last test session the week before in France. He checked in with his engineer, David Brown, and chatted to Williams’ marketing chief Richard West about how the Carraro launch had gone, before getting back into the helicopter for the short flight to Castello, a typically Italian hotel in Castel San Pietro, a spa town about 10 kilometres west of Imola.