THE IDOL OF IDOLS
It’s 25 years today since Ayrton Senna died at the San Marino Grand Prix. Despite the passing of time he is still...
AT IMOLA, where he died, and at Interlagos, near where he was born and is buried, Ayrton Senna’s death will be marked by music and racing today.
It is 25 years since the Brazilian crashed his Williams car into a concrete wall at Tamburello. That corner is now an insipid chicane, one of many safety advances hastened by the cursed 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
Family and friends will be in attendance in Europe or back in his homeland for the celebrations and lamentations. But Bernie Ecclestone will be at neither.
‘I will just remember Ayrton, think about him,’ Ecclestone said softly yesterday. ‘He was a special person. You can’t say he was like anyone else. He was like Ayrton. He was a warm person, natural. He got on well with my children.’
Ecclestone, now 88 but then at the height of his powers as Formula One’s ruler, remembers
the day of the accident vividly, saying: ‘I phoned the clerk of the course to enquire about Senna’s condition.
‘He told me it was his head, but I thought he said he was dead.’
Ecclestone conveyed the blurred information to the family. Tempers frayed. After a 37-minute delay, by which time Senna’s lifeless body had been transferred to hospital in Bologna, where he was pronounced dead, the race continued.
The rest of the field drove round and round a pool of Senna’s blood. Michael Schumacher, nine years younger and on Senna’s tail that day, won. There was no champagne on the podium.
‘ The family thought I was callous,’ said Ecclestone. ‘So I wasn’t welcome at the funeral, not by his sister Viviane. I was a little bit upset about that but my ex, Slavica, did go. I was in Brazil and watched it on TV in my hotel room. I have never been to anyone’s funeral since.
‘Thankfully, after a while, the truth about the afternoon came out — the confusion, who knew what and when, and how everyone reacted to what they knew — and now my relationship with the family is fine. I help them with the Ayrton Senna Foundation.’
Team owner Frank Williams was at the funeral in Morumbi, a posh, hilly part of Sao Paulo, arriving in a van with the curtains drawn. He was charged with the manslaughter of the charismatic triple world champion but cleared in 1997. The exact cause of the accident remains undetermined.
Ecclestone retold yesterday how he was threatened with arrest for refusing to hand over footage of Senna in the car that afternoon. ‘People suggested it was Frank’s fault, which isn’t true,’ he said.
‘Whatever happened, it wasn’t deliberate. The tapes would have told the investigators nothing. They would just have shown the steering wheel. Anyway, it was pointless because nothing in the world would be able to bring Ayrton back to life.’
It was a horrible weekend. The day before, Roland Ratzenberger had died in qualifying. Senna was deeply upset. Rumours persist that he did not want to race. Prof Sid Watkins, the distinguished neurologist who revolutionised safety in Formula One before and after Senna’s death, advised him not to start and instead to go fishing.
But both Senna’s girlfriend Adriane Galisteu and his manager Julian Jakobi have told me he did want to race, no matter that he was shaken badly. ‘It is my life,’ he explained to Galisteu, a former umbrella girl, now aged 46 and a married mother.
To mark the anniversary, the Senna family have handed a bust of Ayrton, sculpted by his niece Paula, to Pope Francis. It will be housed in the Vatican Museum.
In Brazil, Senna remains the idol of idols, a semi-mystical figure. He arguably outstrips Pele in national esteem, even if Neymar, signed by Paris Saint- Germain for £200million, may appeal more readily to the youth of today.
I ask Ecclestone about another modern hero, five-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who hid his tears behind his father’s car when he heard Senna had died. Are there not similarities?
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Forget Lewis as a driver, though he is of course brilliant at that, he is a very, very special person. And that is how I remember Ayrton, too.’
‘He was a special person. Warm, natural, unlike anyone else’ BERNIE ECCLESTONE