His death remains alive like that of hardly anyone else. Imola, Italy. A split second on May 1, 1994. A country freezes. Football games are interrupted. Players kneel on the grass. The sports world is at a standstill. Two billion people watch on television as a blue and white Formula 1 car shoots out of a curve at 307 km/h and crashes into a wall at 211 km/h. Wheels and car parts fly through the air.
The Williams-Renault, the most successful Formula 1 racer at the time, remains in tatters. Ayrton Senna, then 34, dies. Brazil is reeling in a sea of tears. The sport is losing one of its greatest. The world is losing a very special person. “When you decide to race you have to know that it can be over in a split second. It makes you realize that we are nothing. You have to internalize it or stop.” Words from the three-time world champion (1988, 1990, 1991).
That split second happened 30 years ago. But he has immortalized himself in millions of heads. Because this Ayrton Senna was enveloped in an aura that seemed to be woven from silk and steel. Soft and gentle man. The racing driver is tough, over-ambitious and over-disciplined.
Gerhard Berger (64), McLaren teammate, best friend and pallbearer: “Ayrton was like a well-rested Brazilian street dog. I studied him closely during our McLaren time. He was so ambitious, knew every trick, every engine setting, he had no weaknesses, he was perfect.”
Between ambition and faith
Ayrton Senna – a life guided by ambition and God. Racing driver by day, eyes in the Bible in the evening. Also, and especially, on racing weekends. After his first world title in 1988 in the McLaren these candid words: “I had a strange experience. I had his presence over the weekend (Gott, Anm. d. Red.) felt strongly, especially on race day. I felt like he was with me and I was with him.”
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Ambition, concentration and God – did this mixture drive the fighter’s heart? There is no other explanation for the fabulous lap during training for the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, in which Senna heaved the car through the streets 1.427 seconds faster than his teammate Prost. “It was a new state of consciousness, I had the impression that I no longer had control of the situation,” said Senna. He didn’t want to drive anymore that day. He was afraid of himself.
Racing driver and folk hero: With his three world championship titles, Senna was not only the king of Formula 1 at the time, but also the idol of an entire generation in Brazil
Quelle: Getty Images/Paul-Henri Cahier
Ayrton Senna had such an ability to concentrate that he heard nothing and saw no one before a race. He programmed his brain with routes, shifting and braking processes. Sometimes it was only the sound of the engine as it started that brought him back. And the Brazilian folk hero also had a very simple explanation for the saga of the “Rain God”: “I don’t see anything but I stay on the gas, unlike the others.”
Well, not all of them. Alain Prost always kept his foot on the gas. From 1988 to 1990 they were the bitterest, most toxic team duels that ever occurred in Formula 1. They shot each other down and shared the world championship titles in these three McLaren years: two went to Senna (88 and 90), one to Prost (89).
The Frenchman fled to Ferrari in 1991, Senna won his third title in the McLaren – but what was more important to him: he won his home race in São Paulo for the first time. And, typical Senna – heroic. Gearbox goes on strike. The last laps only in sixth gear. Victory. Suddenly, screams on the pit radio. Cramps in arms and hands. Brief fainting. Senna has pushed his limits again.
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Imola 1994. After two titleless years at McLaren, Senna moved to the top team at the time, Williams. He wants Fangio’s five titles. A photo of the Argentine hangs above Senna’s desk. The Williams bitches: Berger: “Ayrton told me the car was difficult to drive and not competitive.” Michael Schumacher won the first two races in the Benetton, Senna, two retirements, zero points. Boundaries had to be pushed back.
The dark weekend of Formula 1
Friday, the dark weekend begins. Rubens Barrichello, Senna’s compatriot and pupil, has a serious accident. Senna climbs over a two-meter-high fence and storms into the emergency room. Lucky: just a broken nose.
Saturday. Everything is different. The Austrian Roland Ratzenberger flies off at 300 km/h – dead. Senna goes to the track clinic after training and cries on the way back. Race doctor Sid Watkins consoles: “Let’s stop and go fishing.” Ayrton: “I can’t stop. This is part of my life, my blood.”
Senna achieved 41 victories in 161 starts in Formula 1. He celebrated his first success in 1985 at the Portuguese Grand Prix in Estoril
Quelle: Getty Images/Paul-Henri Cahier
Sunday. Border crosser Senna on pole. Everything is different. Shortly before the race, he passes by his former arch-enemy Alain Prost, who now works as a TV commentator. They shake hands. A premonition? “That was unusual, so shortly before the race,” Prost said later. Senna goes to the start. Unlike usual, he sits in the car without a helmet. His eyes restless, worried. Senna’s trainer Cobra: “He threw all rituals overboard and behaved differently than he had in the last ten years. Like he had a premonition.”
Everything different. Gerhard Berger: “Before the start I got out of my Ferrari and went to him. He looked at me, laughed at me and was happy for me as the Tifosi stood behind me. I can’t get this image out of my head.” Everything is different. Starting crash in the rear field of drivers. Nothing happens. The safety car goes in after lap six. Senna in front, Schumacher behind in the Benetton and Berger. Tamburello curve. Where Berger had had a serious accident five years earlier. “Ayrton and I went to this spot during the test a few weeks later and said: ‘The wall should go, hopefully nothing bad will happen there. But behind the wall was a stream.”
In the helicopter, Senna was already brain dead
And now, five years later, his friend Ayrton Senna. “We didn’t know how serious his accident was, so we kept driving,” remembers Berger. Parts of the flying suspension pierced through the helmet visor and into the head. Track emergency doctor Guiseppi Rezzi, who was standing in the Tamburello corner, was immediately at Senna’s side: “He was bleeding heavily from his head and was unconscious. His pulse was still there, even though he was in a deep coma with brain injuries.”
The large blood vessels in the brain were severed. When the helicopter took off at 2:35 p.m., Senna was already brain dead. At 6:40 p.m., three-time Formula 1 world champion Ayrton Senna was declared clinically dead by Bologna Maggiore Hospital.
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After years of investigation into the cause of the accident, the final report states: “Senna’s steering column is damaged on the 6th lap in the Aqua Mineralli corner, (…) the steering wheel shakes for 25 seconds, (…) after 26 seconds the steering column bends to the first Time, (…) the abnormal steering movements increased, (…) which suggested that the steering became weaker until it failed in the Tamburello curve.”
“Nothing can separate me from the love of God,” is written on a brass plaque at his resting place in São Paulo’s Morumbi Cemetery. Nothing can ever separate the sports world from the thoughts of this extraordinary man. His death remains alive like that of hardly anyone else.
The history was researched for the Sports Competence Center (WELT, SPORT BILD, BILD) and first published in BILD AM SONNTAG.
