According to Wikipedia only two funerals, in recorded history, have had greater attendance by free will than Ayrton Senna’s. They were the funerals of Pope John Paul II, who was recently beatified as a saint, and the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Let that settle in for a minute.
F1 drivers talk of the palpable electricity in the air before the lights go out to start a grand prix, but Senna’s presence on the grid extended that mad tension to every single person watching. Jeremy Clarkson, in his amazing Top Gear tribute, concurred by saying, “Senna was spectacular every time he got into a car”. That’s the crux of it; every time he raced there was the chance you might see something that defied credibility and reason.
As a young man eager for such miracles, my place of worship was the Sunday Sunrise Service at the ESPN Church of Formula One, featuring pastor Bob Varsha. Fourteen years old, sitting on my parents’ plaid couch was when I first saw that chartreuse helmet burst through the mist at Monaco in 1984, and I continued to watch Senna for years with a consistency foreign to the rest of my life. In 1990 I was standing to the side of a raging fraternity party, staring spellbound at a soundless TV as Senna and Prost collided for the second time in Japan. I yelled “OHMYGOD!” but the Stone Temple Pilots drowned me out. I watched Donnington 93’ at university as well and was almost overcome with the idea that I’d just witnessed the supernatural. I wasn’t alone. In Brazil, Japan, England, and elsewhere, Senna began to be revered like a god, and one that could indeed walk on water. What we saw was incongruent with racing history, with physics, and finally, with reality.
The striking part of it all was that you had to understand what you were seeing in order to grasp it’s significance. My roommate saw what appeared to be a lopsided car race, but people who understood what they were watching saw so much more. When I explained to him that Senna’s car was actually much slower than the other four cars he passed on the first lap, his reply was as incredulous as it was common: “How is he doing that?”
Until that point I thought if I were ever going to witness something otherworldly it would be perfectly obvious to everyone in the front row. Afterwards, I understood a much more nuanced view of the world. Truly unlikely and amazing things, if not exactly supernatural, happen all the time if you understand the context in which they occur.
I presented the Senna film here in Orlando, FL with sports car champion Wayne Taylor and Brazilian Karting champion Andre Martins, and while the film was nearly pitch perfect, the European Grand Prix at Donnington Park in 1993 was conspicuous by it’s absence. I doubt the exclusion had anything to do with running time. I think it was, as they say, a bit much. The easiest way for a documentary film to discredit itself is to lapse into hagiography, i.e. to deify it’s subject. For a film bordering on it already, Donnington 93’, presented even in the most objective terms, would have put it over the top. It’s a rare example of reality being too much for reality.
I was again in my room at university on Sunday, May 1, 1994 when the end came. His death wasn’t announced until hours later, of course, but by then I’d seen enough drivers die that I knew how to read the tea leaves. I did manage to maintain my composure until that announcement in the early afternoon, but then, as a twenty-four year old university junior, I spent the rest of the day in a deeply morbid state.
By far the best contemporaneous account of that day and it’s context was an article by Bruce Newman in Sports Illustrated. The irony, of course, is that SI stopped caring about motor racing around 1979, so for the best article on Senna to appear in a magazine which typically couldn’t be bothered was extraordinary. There are worse ways you could spend the next 15 minutes than by reading it.
I knew Senna was important to the rest of the world, but being an American in the last days before the internet I was isolated in my reverence. A week later, normally sober American newscasters announced, with disbelief, that three million people had gathered for Senna’s funeral in Sao Paulo. Sadly, they also announced that a woman in Curitiba had committed suicide, leaving a note behind saying that she “was going to join Senna.” I realized then that even if America hadn’t been paying attention, his loss was anything but transparent to the rest of the world. It was crippling to Formula One, and motorsport in general. A significant majority of racers under Senna’s 34 years of age had just lost their idol. Never had so many in one field of endeavor lost so much at one time. Even now, 21 years on, if you poll racers in any road-racing series in the world as to the best, their favorite, or their inspiration, the outcome isn’t in doubt.
Senna’s career was so electric that any single one of his highlights from Monaco, Estoril, Suzuka, Interlagos, or Donnington would make a full career for another driver. For Jarno Trulli, Olivier Panis and even Juan Pablo Montoya, the highlight of their Grand Prix career is a single victory at Monaco; Senna won the race six times and is actually more famous for notwinning it in 1984.
So what is the net effect of his presence after twenty-plus years? It’s simply this- that parents tell their children stories of great people to inspire them and reinforce that they can be anything they want to be. These people, for one reason or another, are frequently dead and in many cases were not even appreciated in their own lifetime.
The clear difference is that Ayrton Senna’s genius was recognized not just within his lifetime, but virtually at the start of his career. Watching him race was akin to watching Monet paint, Michelangelo sculpt, or Gaudi build in real time with the knowledge that you were watching history in the making.
For me, that’s the answer. Senna’s significance was that every single time he was on track there was a chance that something could occur which would alter my understanding of the possible, and therefore, my understanding of the world.
Ole-oleleo la, ole-oleleo la, Sen-na, Sen-na, adeus.
Photo: No Fear Senna memorial, 1994, Racer magazine
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