The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  Whispers went around the hospitality suite that Ayrton Senna, having qualified third for McLaren, would be arriving. Senna was a hero in his homeland and it was well known that he was single again. He had finally split up with his long-standing girlfriend Xuxa the year before and there were already rumours that the Shell models had caught his attention. Even the experienced models got excited and rushed to the bathroom, crowding around the mirror. Adriane, however, was non-plussed. She wasn’t a Formula One fan and Senna held the least interest for her. That was until she saw him.

  He arrived in a frenzy, surrounded by fans and photographers. All Adriane could see was his blue cap. She was immediately impressed with the way he managed to greet everyone personally and take the whole scene in. He made a short speech and looked over at Adriane. None of the girls could tell who had caught his eye. She remembers: “I felt he looked at me. But was it me or Nara who was just behind me? Or was it just an empty gaze?” By then she was very interested.

  Ten Shell guests were allocated to each girl and Adriane visited the pit garage with her guests. But she didn’t see Senna. Then, on Sunday, as she was walking through the pitlane with some more guests, a man called Jacir approached her and said: “I am Ayrton Senna’s personal assistant. He has asked me to get your phone number.” She gave him her home number and Elite’s office number. Then Antonio Braga came up and asked her for her fax number. He hinted at Senna’s interest in her. Braga, who was a banker and lived in Portugal, was attending the race as Senna’s guest. It was the start of a lifetime friendship between Adriane and Braga, his wife Luiza and their daughters, Joanna and Maria.

  Jacir, meanwhile, had also asked half-a-dozen other girls for their phone numbers. Later that day, before the race, Senna went to the hospitality suite again. Shell was a very important McLaren sponsor. He made another speech and told the assembled guests: “I can win.” The girls were all lined up right in front of him in a protective cordon as he spoke. Adriane got her first close-up look at him. This time his gaze caught hers and he gave her a smile. She admits that she was hooked on him from that moment, but was determined not to show it.

  In the race, after Alain Prost retired, Senna stormed to victory at his home Grand Prix. It meant a celebration party that night at the Limelight Club in the middle of São Paulo. Adriane went along reluctantly and feigned tiredness, making out she was exhausted after her hectic three days. In truth she was frightened by what was happening to her. She says: “As if it was an invented Cinderella story he arrived when the clock struck 12.” For some reason she had not expected him to attend, and had dressed down in jeans and a black top, with a red silk scarf.

  She resolved to say hello to Senna and leave. She found him in a padded banquette with his 27-year-old brother, Leonardo, talking to Brazilian footballer Pelé. The younger Senna was also popular with women and the table was surrounded by at least a dozen girls, dressed to the nines, crowding out the three men. As it happened because she was dressed down and, had made no effort, she stood out. She shook his hand and said she was just leaving. But Senna pulled her towards him and persuaded her to stay for a drink. She was scared and retreated to her role as Shell’s representative. He grabbed her hand as she babbled some PR-speak. Looking back, it was comical, as Adriane remembers: “I said, ‘You were great. I am here on behalf of Shell’. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. Only briefly, to get a glass of champagne which he handed to me.” But Adriane had never drunk alcohol and asked for a regular Coca-Cola.

  From this point accounts of that night vary. Adriane insists she left immediately afterwards whilst others insist they remember her dancing the night away with Senna. But it appeared that the eye-witnesses mistook Adriane for another blonde model with whom Senna did indeed dance the night away.

  Adriane says she turned to him and said: “I have to go, you have my phone number.” She simply wasn’t prepared to stay and compete with all the other girls. It wasn’t her style. By then she wanted him quite badly and knew that walking away was a risk. But walk away she did.

  Jacir followed her at Senna’s behest and invited her to a barbecue that the driver was holding at his beach house in Angra a few days later. It was a going-away party before Senna returned to Europe for the European season. Adriane didn’t give Jacir an answer and rushed off home.

  Back at home, her mother’s maid woke her early the next day and told her Ayrton Senna was on the phone. Annoyed, she went to the phone thinking it was Jacir. She rasped ‘So?’ into the phone, in the best sarcastic manner she could manage. To her intense surprise, it was Senna himself, virtually cooing down the phone. She says: “The sweet and calm voice in which he answered me back was like a cold shower cooling me down.”

  He had rung to invite her to his barbecue. Continuing her ‘hard to get’ stance, she was non-committal and told him she had to rush for an audition. He asked her to call him when she had finished and gave her his direct phone number.

  She admits that she melted from that moment on, and couldn’t resist calling him back as soon as she got the chance, as it happens, from a call box. Senna took her call and was very interested in the TV commercial she had been shooting – and which, ironically, starred his great track rival Nelson Piquet. Still attempting to play hard to get, when Senna mentioned the barbecue again, she changed the subject. She asked him his star sign. “Aries,” he replied. “Me too,” she said.

  She told him she was unsure of the barbecue because she didn’t know him. He replied that everyone knew him. To get to know him better, he invited her to dinner with his friends at a famous restaurant called The Place in São Paulo. But later that evening she heard other girls had been invited and furious she upped the stakes dramatically, and stood him up. Nevertheless, just in case he called the next day, she packed a small weekend bag and put it in the boot of her car ready to go to Angra.

  Senna had indeed invited one of the other girls from Shell, named Daniela, to dinner. Daniela was a blue-eyed blonde from southern Brazil.

  The following morning he dropped her off at the Elite model agency where Adriane was waiting to go on a job. Inside Daniela referred to Senna as her new boyfriend and left no one in any doubt as to what had happened the night before.

  Adriane was insanely jealous and decided she had probably overplayed her hand and that she had nothing to lose by calling him. When she did he asked her to Angra again and, amazingly, she told him she was still thinking about it. She admits now that she was desperate to say yes.

  What happened next was that Adriane found herself in Senna’s 17th-floor apartment in São Paulo, in circumstances she admits she couldn’t control. He had invited her over and she had gone straight away. She remembers he was wearing cream-coloured slacks and no shirt. When she arrived he was doing grass slides across the two-inch-thick shagpile carpet in the cavernous apartment he shared with his brother Leonardo.

  When they had finished they sat on different sofas, silent and shy. He finally said: “I am pleased to meet you. My name is Ayrton Senna da Silva. I am 33 years old and I do not have a girlfriend.”

  She asked him about Daniela and he pretended he couldn’t remember who she was. He admitted he had got drunk the night before.

  They talked for an hour-and-a-half. Then she got her bag from her car in the basement car park and jumped into his black Honda NSX to go to his offices in the suburb of Santana, where his helicopter was waiting on the roof. As she had suspected also waiting on the roof were Daniela and another model who had also worked for Shell at the Grand Prix, plus Senna’s personal photographer Norio Koike. Senna had hedged his bets and Daniela was as shocked to see Adriane as Adriane was to see her.

  It was Adriane’s first trip in a helicopter and once the girls’ shock of finding each other on the trip subsided the atmosphere was good as they all looked forward to a weekend at the sea.

  They were greeted at Angra by housekeepers Maria and Matesus, along with Senna’s dog Quinda. She also found out that Senna was called ‘Beco’ by h
is Brazilian friends.

  Adriane discovered Angra was a paradise on earth and was Senna’s private playground. It had a wonderful pool and was situated directly on the beach. The waves came right up to the bedroom windows. By day the resort was swamped in sunlight, by night it was bathed in moonlight.

  Senna’s brother Leonardo and his assistant Jacir were also there.

  On the first evening, Senna and Adriane danced the night away in his private discotheque and afterwards he showed her to her own room. They did not even kiss. She says: “I felt that each minute the temperature between us kept rising. He sat by my side. There was something special in his smiling tanned face. It was clear he found it very difficult to take the first step. And I felt, for the first time, the warmth of the proximity – real and spontaneous. Between us there was something special: a long talk, a look, a touch. He tried to kiss me. I backed up – not yet.”

  Daniela and the other girl were forgotten but it seemed to take forever for any real intimacy to develop. In the end, they did kiss. For Adriane, it was immediate love and she felt as though her world had stopped turning. Then they fell asleep in each other’s arms. She remembers the details of that first kiss: “Standing, he kissed me. The first kiss. A real kiss. And then one more, another one, and another one. Kisses, kisses and more kisses. It seemed like the night had stopped around us – everything stopped, the night, time, the noises, the sea, the wind. Kisses and caresses. But nothing more than that.”

  The next day brought renewed embarrassment and Adriane kept her distance. Saturday was a perfect day with perfect weather and they took his speedboat out. Everything was recorded by Norio Koike, who clicked his camera seemingly non-stop.

  The intimacy problem was eventually solved by the arrival of more guests, which meant Adriane had to vacate her own room and share. He took her up to his immaculate bedroom and said: “This is my room. Now it is also yours. Make yourself at home.” She didn’t demur. It was there that she was first introduced to Senna’s eccentricities. In his vast wardrobes she counted 40 pairs of tennis trainers and hundreds of pairs of shoes. There were also endless belts. He appeared obsessed with belts. He also had enough clothes to change twice a day without washing anything for a year. And this was just one of his four homes. He said to her: “I am a bit fanatical about clothes.” She nodded in agreement. She told him she was obsessed with creams and perfumes. Then he showed her to the bathroom and his own creams and perfumes, which rivalled hers.

  She remembers her feelings that day: “To me sharing his bedroom didn’t necessarily mean that we’d have sex. I adored his paradise and I wanted to make sure that I would be coming back there as a friend or a girlfriend.”

  That night she donned what she called “armoured pyjamas” and they fell asleep. Until he woke her up and asked if he had to marry her to have sex. Then he started caressing her feet, her weak point. He told her: “You are the first woman in three years to provoke desire in me. I don’t feel like kissing your feet, I want to kiss your entire body.”

  It finally happened, and then she fell into blissful sleep. When she woke he was gone. She looked out of the window and discovered him whistling on the pier, deep in thought. Then in the middle of that afternoon he took her in his helicopter to Angra airport for the short flight back to São Paulo. She was scheduled for a fashion show the next morning. After that, they were inseparable, staying at his apartment in São Paulo, or the family farm at Tatui, his parents’ home. She would return to Angra many times over the next 12 months. As the relationship developed he she her if she would join him at the Monaco Grand Prix. Monaco was very social and he liked to have a girlfriend with him at the race, especially as he believed he would win again for the sixth time in 1993 and would need a partner for the winners ball thrown by Prince Rainier.

  So on 17th May Adriane got ready to go to Europe. It would be the first time she would be publicly at his side. She was the Shell grid girl transported to be the girlfriend of the fastest driver alive, at the most glamorous place on earth. On arriving in the principality, they went straight to Senna’s small Monaco apartment to be greeted by his Monte Carlo housekeeper Isabel, who was Portuguese. He only stayed there for a week a year, for the race. He had sold the big apartment he used when Monaco was his permanent home, before moving to the Algarve in Portugal two years before. But for tax purposes he listed Monte Carlo as his home.

  Senna walked Adriane around the Monte Carlo track, introducing her to the intricacies of driving a Formula One car. He also took her to the casino, where they quickly lost the $300 they had changed into chips.

  Adriane had brought three evening gowns to prepare for the annual post-race ball, where she also sensed her new boyfriend would take the laurels. After all, he had won Monaco five times previously and his car was ideally suited to the tight circuit.

  She was hampered at the ball by only being able to converse in Portuguese as her English was very limited. She was introduced to Betise Assumpção, Senna’s press secretary, who was Brazilian herself.

  Senna hardly let go of her all weekend in Monaco. Wherever they went they attracted the intense attention of photographers and fans. But on Thursday when the racing proper began, she noticed a sudden change in him. At night he changed into his pyjamas and took the bible to read as he went to sleep. It was a different man to the one she normally shared her life with.

  During practice, when Senna had a small accident and hit the guardrail, Adriane quickly ran down to the track from the apartment – but it was nothing. On the Sunday she watched the race from the commentary box of Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo alongside Senna’s friends, Galvao Bueno and Reginaldo Leme.

  When he won, she ran from the box to be with him and cried as the Brazilian national anthem was played. In the evening, they dressed up and went to the sporting club to collect his prize. Few journalists knew who she was and hundreds of picture captions on Monday morning, in newspapers all over the world, would call her ‘the mysterious Brazilian blonde’.

  The couple sat on the top table at the sporting club. When Adriane turned around she saw she was sat next to Prince Albert of Monaco on one side, while on her other side were Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Cindy Crawford and Princess Caroline. As Adriane ignored the champagne, Senna joined her in drinking Coca-Cola. Afterwards they went to Jimmyz’, the most famous nightclub in the world and a symbol of hedonism in Monte Carlo. As they sat at their table next to the dance floor, Adriane was astonished by the enormous number of girls who threw themselves at her boyfriend, some quite brazenly.

  When they got home and drifted into sleep, Adriane thought to herself: “Is it a dream? Is it true?”

  After Monaco, they flew from Nice to London in Senna’s HS125 jet flown by Captain O’Mahoney. It was Adriane’s first visit. On 26th May, they flew home to Brazil after an extraordinary nine days. They only returned so quickly because Adriane had bookings and relied on her income as a model to live.

  She remembers now: “Looking back, I realise it was a good combination: our first trip abroad had been the best trip of all trips. It’s because later things got complicated on the tracks, problems arose in McLaren, victories became less frequent and tensions built up.”

  Back in Brazil, as he left every fortnight for a race, she befriended his brother Leonardo. The young man confided in her and asked her whether he should marry his long-standing girlfriend. Later this relationship would sour and Leonardo perceived that Adriane was driving a wedge between Senna and his family.

  That summer she accompanied Senna to Europe whenever she could and stayed at his Algarve house. On one trip his mother and sister joined them, and with Adriane jetted off on shopping trips to Europe’s capitals. The shopping almost got out of hand. When Senna met up with them in Paris in mid-July he went to their hotel rooms and found they had 38 pieces of luggage between four of them. Later that relationship would also sour for the same reasons.

  Adriane’s second Grand Prix of 1993 was to be Hungary, where they
would stay at the new Kempinski Hotel in Budapest on the banks of the Danube. It was special for her as she had never been and she had Hungarian ancestry. Her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Agnes, had migrated from Hungary to Brazil during World War II.

  Hungary marked a low spot in his relations with Ron Dennis and he asked Adriane to teach him Hungarian swear words to use if the need arose.

  In the evenings they forgot his troubles and walked by the side of the Danube. They shared the visit with Senna’s close friends, Christian and Birgit Schues and their two young children. Adriane stayed in Budapest for much of the time Senna was at the track.

  On race day, Senna retired from the Grand Prix and they were to attend the post-race party at the Gundel restaurant staged by the race organisers. There, now-famous pictures were taken of them being serenaded by a violinist. It was another magical evening. Adriane says now: “It was a photo of two people in love. We were in love.” Hungarian-born publisher, Andrew Frankl was at the Philip Morris-sponsored party. He was a long-time friend of Senna’s from his days as publisher of Truck magazine; and had met him at the Toleman team when it was owned by the eponymous transport company. He says: “Ayrton was in tremendous form, clearly much in love, holding hands with Adriane. It was so obvious. I was convinced they would marry.”

  In the middle of August, back in Brazil, Senna bought Adriane a new car, a silver Fiat Uno. He called it ‘her present for August’. She immediately phoned his mother, who said: “Come and take me for a drive.”

  All summer it was the same pattern, as Senna returned to Brazil after every race to spend time with Adriane at Angra. Looking back now, she thinks it was someone telling him time was running out and he had to make the most if it.

  On one occasion, he returned from Belgium and was angry at coming fourth. When she picked him up from the airport in her Fiat he asked for the keys, saying: “Where is the key to the tin of sardines?” He took the wheel, pursued by waiting photographers keen to have photos of him with the mystery Brazilian blonde. Reporters still did not know her name and the love story was the talk of Brazil. It was getting her plenty of work – her picture was on billboards advertising jeans all over São Paulo.