The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  The hotel was run by Valentino Tosoni, whom Senna had known since he first started staying there with McLaren in 1988. It was the McLaren team hotel and 1994 was his first year there without McLaren. But he had still booked the same room he occupied every year – room 200, a small suite. Interestingly, Frank Williams was staying in the suite directly below him and Ron Dennis in the one directly above.

  That weekend there were seven male friends and colleagues staying with him at Imola, a popular race on the calendar. His brother, Leonardo, Julian Jakobi, his manager, his close friend and neighbour in Portugal, Antonio Braga, Galvao Bueno from TV Globo, Celso Lemos, managing director of the Senna brand licensing company in Brazil, Josef Leberer, his personal physio, and Ubirajara Guimaraes, head of his new import company.

  Soon after he checked in Leberer arrived to give him his regular massage.

  That evening they all dined together in the hotel. Senna was back in his suite just after 10 o’clock. He picked up the phone and dialled his apartment in São Paulo, where it was just after seven o’clock, to speak to his girlfriend, Adriane. She was packing to prepare to fly out to Portugal the following day and couldn’t disguise her excitement on the telephone.

  In the morning Senna caught a helicopter to the circuit at 8:30am, ready for the start of practice and qualifying. In-between Japan and Imola, Williams had been testing intensively at the Nogaro circuit in south-west France to find the source of the Williams car’s problems. A number of changes were promised for Imola but Senna was sceptical that the modifications would work. The car had been consistently slower than the Benetton despite a much more powerful engine. Both Senna and his team-mate Damon Hill had said openly it was horrible to drive. Hill remembers: “We were always changing the set-up of the car in an attempt to find that perfect combination which would turn the promise of a great car into a reality. But it is difficult to become familiar with a car if it is constantly being changed – it becomes a vicious circle.”

  It was clear from the difference in Senna’s and Hill’s times that Senna was driving through the problems. As Hill admits: “Ayrton had enormous reserves of ability and could overcome deficiencies in a chassis.”

  At just after 9:30am Senna climbed into his car and completed 22 laps, posting a fastest time of 1m 21.598secs, more than a second quicker than his team-mate. Hill was pleasantly surprised by the behaviour of the modified chassis. Senna was not. He thought the team was going in the wrong direction with the car and spent a lot of time with David Brown afterwards.

  At 1pm, the first qualifying session began and Senna was soon fastest. But 15 minutes into the start of the session the Jordan of Rubens Barrichello hit the kerb in the middle of the 140mph Variante Bassa chicane. It flew through the air, hitting the tyre barrier before smashing against a debris fence. The crash was horribly violent but the tyres had taken some of the pace out of it as Barrichello bounced around upside down. He put his hands over his helmet and waited for the car to stop. He ended up suspended unconscious in the car. Immediately after the accident nobody dared to believe that he had got away with just a broken nose and bruised ribs.

  Senna did not see the accident but Betise Assumpcao, his PR chief, went off to investigate Barrichello’s condition. Senna got out of his car and went straight to the medical centre. Finding his way barred he went in through the back and climbed over a fence. Barrichello regained consciousness minutes after the accident and found Senna looking over him. He told Barrichello: “Stay calm. It will be all right.” As Barrichello remembers: “The first face I saw was Ayrton’s. He had tears in his eyes. I had never seen that with Ayrton before. I just had the impression he felt as if my accident was like one of his own.” He shed a few tears, the first of many that weekend.

  Once he made sure Barrichello was all right he returned to his cockpit and was back on track at 1:40pm when the qualifying session resumed. Senna bettered his time immediately and just before the close set what was to prove the quickest time of the weekend: a 1m 21.548secs lap at an average of 138.2mph.

  In the emotional aftermath of Barrichello’s accident, it was a repeat performance of what happened in 1990 when Martin Donnelly crashed. Senna was the only driver to stop at the scene of the enormous accident at the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix when Donnelly’s Lotus car disintegrated against the barriers. After that accident he had gone faster than ever, and won yet another, his fiftieth, pole position, but he found such bravery came at an emotional price, as he said: “As a racing driver there are some things you have to go through, to cope with. Sometimes they are not human, yet you go through it. Some of the things are not pleasant but in order to have some of the nice things you have to face them. You leave a lot of things behind when you follow a passion.” As one observer put it: “It was an emphatic reminder of Senna’s supreme skill and courage.”

  Damon Hill remembers the shock of Barrichello’s accident: “What shook us most was the rate at which the car took off; at one stage it looked as if it was going to smash through the fence and fly into the grandstand. The Jordan, more by luck than anything else, finished on its side, upside down and against the barrier. That was bad enough but the marshals promptly tipped the car over and, as it crashed on to its bottom, could see Barrichello’s head thrashing around in the cockpit.”

  Hill continued: “I was astonished that the marshals did that, particularly in view of the neck and spinal injuries received by JJ Lehto and Jean Alesi during test sessions earlier in the year. Barrichello could have sustained similar injuries. He should have been left as he was or, if there was a risk of fire, then at least the car should have been put down gently.”

  At the end of the session Senna climbed out of the car and left the pit garage for the motorhome to do some prearranged press interviews. As he walked a few fans shouted to him from the Paddock Club balcony above the Williams transporter. They said: “Now’s your chance to show Schumacher who’s the champion.” He acknowledged them but didn’t stop.

  Inside the motorhome he greeted the waiting journalists but told them there was a problem with his car and he needed an hour with David Brown. They agreed to wait. In with Brown, Senna produced the usual two-page hand-written A4 list of jobs he believed needed doing on the car. For all the speed, he was clearly not happy with it.

  An hour later he joined the journalists and briefed them on the business interests he was building for when he retired. Shadowing him for the weekend was Mark Fogarty of the new Carweek magazine, who also had a photographer inside the Williams pit. He said afterwards that Senna was not focused at all: “Usually if Senna agreed to do an interview, he would give it his full attention. This time he just wasn’t focused. His answers were halting and he looked glazed, as if he was mentally worn out.”’ When RTL reporter Kai Ebel asked him about Rubens Barrichello he began a sentence three times, but kept losing the thread of his thoughts. He then ominously changed the subject and told the journalists that Imola was a dangerous circuit, that there were a few places that were ‘not right as far as safety is concerned’. They asked him why the drivers hadn’t done anything about it and he told them: “I am the only world champion left – and I have opened my big mouth too often. Over the years I have learnt that it’s better to keep my head down.”

  His pilot Owen O’Mahoney was also surprised at some of his actions over the weekend. He had often pestered Senna for some signed photos of the two of them together but he had never got around to it. So he was very surprised when Senna called him over as he passed by the Williams garage, fished them out of his briefcase and signed them for him. O’Mahoney says: “The odd thing was that he gave them to me in the middle of practice. It was so out of character for him to think about anything other than racing. It was almost as if he wanted to tie up loose ends.”

  When the journalists left it was down to work with Brown again and they were together for two hours. It was eight o’clock by the time he left the circuit and returned to San Pietro. Again Josef Leberer arrived in his suite for the re
gular massage. The two men were great friends and chatted about Barrichello’s accident. Senna told him he thought Barrichello was very fortunate not to have more serious injuries. Leberer found Senna more distressed about it than he would have expected.

  That night he dined with his brother and friends at the Trattoria Romagnola restaurant but was interrupted throughout by autograph seekers once word got out he was there, albeit in a private alcove at the back.

  Afterwards he walked quickly back to the hotel to telephone Adriane before she got on the Varig flight to Lisbon that night. He told her: “I can’t wait for you to get here.” Adriane said later they had a long discussion about their relationship and she told him she was no longer scared of being his girlfriend, as she had been at the start. Then, according to her, he burst into tears and started recounting the details of Barrichello’s accident. She says: “Can you imagine what it is like to receive a phone call from Ayrton Senna when he bursts into tears?” She said the call showed his despair at what had happened. She said of the moment: “I felt absolute panic and kept asking him what happened, what happened.” In the end she had to break off the call in order to catch her flight.

  The next morning he followed the same routine and at 9:30am was on the track in unofficial practice completing 19 laps, this time with a best of 1m 22.03secs. Both he and Hill agreed the car had been much improved overnight and Senna’s work the previous day had paid some dividends.

  Soon after the first unofficial practice Rubens Barrichello arrived back at the track from Maggiore hospital, where he had been kept overnight for observation. His front teeth were chipped, his lips cut, his broken nose swollen and his right arm bandaged. He told Senna he was flying back home to England and would watch the race on television. His weekend was over but he told journalists he would be back for the next Grand Prix in Monaco in a fortnight.

  At one o’clock the second qualifying session began. In the early minutes Hill increased his time and dragged the car up to fourth on the grid.

  At 1:18pm Formula One’s good safety record ran out after eight years. Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was competing in his second ever Formula One race for the hopeless Simtek team, which relied on rent-a-drivers to survive. He crashed heavily after his car lost its steering and took off at 314.9kph when the front wing became partially detached. The Simtek car slammed into a concrete retaining wall on the inside of the Villeneuve curve before being thrown back into the middle of the track.

  TV cameras caught Ratzenberger’s head slumped lifeless on the side of the cockpit. Viewers could clearly see he was unconscious. Bernie Ecclestone was sitting in his motorhome chatting to Lotus team principal Peter Collins when the accident happened. He turned to Collins and said: “This looks bad.” Ecclestone grabbed his walkie-talkie and headed off as Collins went back to his garage.

  Senna had watched replays of the accident on the monitor in the Williams pit garage. He knew it was bad. He rushed into the pitlane, grabbed a course car and told the driver to take him to the scene of the accident. They drove down past the Tamburello bend to the scene.

  Unlike Senna, Hill was on the track when the accident happened and ran past the wrecked car and the debris. He also realised it was bad, as he said: “I could see where the debris had started and, judging by the distance travelled, it was obvious it had been a very big accident. As I went by, I had a strong sense of foreboding about his condition because there was so much destruction. With Barrichello we had been lucky. This time it was clear that poor Roland was not going to be let off so lightly.”

  The medical team of Professor Sid Watkins, the FIA’s medical director, was at the accident 25 seconds after it happened. They cradled Ratzenberger’s limp head in their hands and frantically cut his chin strap to remove his helmet. But he was already clinically dead, having suffered massive head injuries. When Watkins arrived he glanced at the driver’s pupils and realised the situation was grave. He ordered his men to extricate him and try resuscitation. They were successful in getting his heart going, an ambulance arrived seven minutes later and he was quickly taken to the medical centre before going on to Bologna’s Maggiore Hospital by helicopter. The resuscitation team managed to keep his heart beating long enough to get him to the hospital but he was gone.

  By the time Senna arrived at the accident scene Ratzenberger was gone in the ambulance so he inspected the wrecked Simtek car. He then got the driver to take him back to the pitlane and immediately marched off to the medical centre for the second time in two days. He went thorough the same scenario – he was not allowed to enter the front way so jumped over the fence at the back. He found Sid Watkins, who took him outside and told him Ratzenberger was clinically dead. Senna was devastated. Watkins said: “Ayrton broke down and cried on my shoulder.” The two men were extraordinarily close and Watkins regarded him as family. He realised then that Senna had not been in close proximity to a death before. Watkins was one of Britain’s most famous surgeons and was used to it but he was still deeply upset.

  Watkins said to him as he was crying on his arm: “Ayrton, why don’t you withdraw from racing tomorrow? I don’t think you should do it. In fact why don’t you give it up altogether? What else do you need to do? You have been world champion three times, you are obviously the quickest driver. Give it up and let’s go fishing.”

  Watkins recalls Senna’s response in his book Life at the Limit: “Sid there are certain things over which we have no control. I cannot quit. I have to go on.” Watkins recalls that those were the last words he ever spoke to him. On his way out Martin Whitaker, then press officer of the FIA, brushed past him. He says: “I asked Senna if he knew what had happened. He didn’t reply. He just looked at me and walked away but I won’t forget that look.”

  After leaving the medical centre Senna went straight to the Williams pit garage and signalled to Damon Hill and Patrick Head to join him. He told them Ratzenberger was dead. He said: “From what I witnessed there is no doubt about it.” Frank Williams asked him to carry on qualifying but he refused. Afterwards Williams said he had asked him ‘more as a matter of form than expectation’.

  Then Senna went into the transporter to change out of his racing overalls. Hill could not decide whether to go out again or not. In the end the decision was made for him by Williams – the team withdrew from the rest of qualifying.

  Michael Schumacher was also deeply affected and JJ Lehto was crying. He said: “I drove up here with Roland from Monaco.” Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who raced with Ratzenberger in Japan, went straight back to his hotel and said: “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

  Fifty-seven minutes after the accident, at 2:15pm, Ratzenberger’s death was announced at the circuit, although everyone in the paddock already knew. It was the first fatality at an actual Grand Prix since Riccardo Paletti was killed at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal in 1982. The last Formula One driver to die had been Elio de Angelis in 1986 during private testing.

  After changing out of his overalls, Senna ran the few yards from the transporter to the Williams motorhome, where he found Damon Hill and his wife Georgie with Betise Assumpcao. She remembers: “His spirits were so low. I just stroked his head and talked to him a little, but he was very quiet.”

  Andrew Longmore, a Times journalist, wrote in an article published later that Senna broke down again in the Williams motorhome and had to be picked off the floor by Damon Hill. His mood was bad enough for Frank Williams to be concerned about his emotional state and he asked Assumpcao to arrange for a meeting with him later that evening.

  No one bettered Senna’s Friday time so he was on pole for the race the following day but he seemed not to care and told officials he would not attend the obligatory press conference. That should have attracted a fine but in the circumstances the FIA officials declined to punish him, although he was called out of the motorhome in front of the race stewards for illegally commandeering a course car to take him out on the track when Ratzenberger crashed. Senna was in no mood to accept
the censure of the FIA and that of the permanent FIA steward, John Corsmit, and a row ensued. Senna stormed off in disgust and the stewards took no action. Corsmit said: “He seemed bothered by lots of other things.” Senna was privately disgusted with Corsmit’s attitude.

  Outside Niki Lauda buttonholed Senna and told him the drivers had to present a united front on safety issues. Lauda told him he planned to hold a meeting at the next race at Monaco in two weeks’ time. Senna left the track shortly before 5:30pm and nobody dared go near him. People who saw him said he had an aura of absolute isolation and inapproachability about him after the meeting with Corsmit.

  Hill decided to stay at the circuit and eat in the Williams motorhome but found it difficult to think of anything other than the accident. He said at the time: “Look, I’m not going to stop racing; I’m looking forward to the Grand Prix. I enjoy my motor racing just as Roland did. Every second you are alive, you’ve got to be thankful and derive as much pleasure from it as you can.” That night every one of the drivers had the same thoughts and came to the same conclusion.

  When Senna arrived back in San Pietro at the Castello, he found the inevitable Italian Saturday night wedding in full swing having taken over the whole hotel. He was so upset that when he was asked to pose for a picture with the bride and groom he uncharacteristically refused.

  As soon as he got back to his suite he telephoned Adriane, who by then had arrived at Antonio Braga’s house in Sintra near Lisbon and was with his wife Luiza. She asked him how he was and he replied: “It’s like shit. Shit, shit, shit,” before he started to cry again. Adriane thought he was still upset about Barrichello’s accident the day before until he told her about Ratzenberger’s death. Then he broke down completely and told her he was not going to race the next day. He said: “I have a really bad feeling about this race, I would rather not drive.” Adriane had to catch an 8:30pm flight to Faro that night. When Josef Leberer arrived at his suite for his regular massage he sent him away. Leberer had introduced Senna to Ratzenberger earlier that year during a test in the winter. Senna said he was too upset about Ratzenberger and even more upset by the callous attitude of the race officials. He was furious at the treatment he had received from the stewards. He told Leberer: “How dare they tell me what I could do. I am driving the car and they tell me about safety.”