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When the safety car peeled off Senna put the hammer down. With a fully loaded car he clocked 1m 24.887secs on the sixth lap on full tanks and cold tyres. It was a very good time and only two drivers bettered it by the end of the race – Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher.
Schumacher couldn’t keep up that speed and fell behind immediately. The pace worried Sid Watkins – he remembered a premonition, turned to Mario Casoni and said: “There’s going to be a ****ing awful accident any minute.”
At exactly 2:17pm Senna approached the Tamburello curve for the second time after the restart and the seventh time overall. His car veered off the track just after the apex of the bend at a speed of 190mph and slammed sideways into the unprotected concrete wall. As he braked he slowed the car to 130mph on impact. The next moment the red flags were out again and Casoni put his foot to the floor and steered towards Tamburello. Sid Watkins said: “Somehow I knew it was Senna.”
At exactly 2:18pm Watkins’ Alfa-Romeo pulled up at Tamburello behind the wreck of a blue and white car. Life had suddenly gone wrong for one of the best drivers the world had ever seen. He had driven his last lap.
The first time 200 million TV viewers realised that Ayrton Senna had failed to complete lap seven of the San Marino Grand Prix was when Michael Schumacher’s Benetton Ford swept into their screens at the exit of Tamburello. They could just see a cloud of dust in the background, as his Williams Renault rebounded off the Tamburello concrete wall and came to rest in the middle of the run-off area.
Murray Walker was commentating on British television: “Well, we are right with Michael Schumacher now, and Senna, my goodness, I just saw it punch off to the right, what on earth happened there I don’t know.” Walker’s shock and surprise was down to Senna being out of his third race in succession with no points on the board. He had no reason to worry about Senna’s safety; he had seen many, many accidents worse than this.
But one man felt immediate concern. Brazilian commentator Galvao Bueno, in the TV Globo cabin, had Senna’s friend Antonio Braga by his side. He was the first to realise the accident was probably fatal. He and Braga simply looked at each other. They knew it was very bad. Bueno was more knowledgeable than most TV journalists simply because he was one of Senna’s best friends and had total access. Reginaldo Leme was also in the commentary box with them.
Bueno made no attempt to play down the situation. He said to millions of Brazilians: “Ayrton has hit [the wall] badly. It’s serious, it’s very serious.” Bueno quickly worked out Senna’s crash speed. He told Braga: “You know, when you hit a wall at 130mph, already the deceleration is lethal.” In truth, drivers should never survive accidents of this nature, but in reality they do most of the time and, not only that, walk away uninjured. But this was not one of those times.
Murray Walker is no less knowledgeable but not in Bueno’s technical way. The BBC was showing continuous re-runs to avoid events on the ground.
But before the marshals could get to Senna and the first medical car had reached the scene, his head moved forward in the cockpit and unknowing viewers were encouraged that the champion was intact. Another man, sitting thousands of miles away in Balcarce, Argentina, knew different. Five-time, world champion, 82-year-old Juan Manuel Fangio knew the outcome when he saw the spasm, the sign of a massive head injury. He switched off his television. He said later: “I knew he was dead.”
It soon became apparent that in describing the split-second before the car hit the wall, Bueno had been spot on. Senna had managed to slow the car by 60mph before it hit the wall, and the impact speed was estimated at 130mph. The right-hand front of the car took the full brunt of the impact: a wheel flew off and was trapped between the chassis and the wall, as the suspension crumpled and the Williams catapulted back onto the track. The monocoque was split by the force of the impact, but otherwise intact.
Marshals were quickly on the scene, but were frozen in their tracks by what they saw.
As a helicopter with an overhead camera was soon hovering, pictures of the car were being transmitted live to an avid audience. BBC television and Murray Walker sensitively switched to its pitlane camera, but other broadcasters did not and stayed glued to the scene. It was starting to become very unpleasant.
Senna’s girlfriend Adriane Galisteu was at Senna’s home in Portugal, watching the race on television. When his car hit the wall, she remembers a selfish thought went through her mind: “Oh that’s good! He’ll be home sooner.” She waited for him to throw off his gloves, undo the steering wheel and leap from the cockpit. It didn’t occur to her for a second that he wouldn’t. Even in the 18 months she had known him, this had happened a few times, always with the same outcome.
Captain O’Mahoney, who had moved Senna’s plane to Bologna for a quick departure, was also watching the race on television in the executive jet centre. He got ready to leave early when he saw the crash. But when his boss didn’t get out of his car he quickly sat down again.
Josef Leberer was in the Williams garage. He remembered: “I said c’mon, c’mon, move, move, get out of the car, boy.” Suddenly a heavy feeling enveloped Leberer, who knew something was very wrong.
The Portuguese TV commentators gave Adriane no cause for concern and there was nothing that suggested to her that the accident was anything out of the ordinary, certainly no more serious than other crashes he had survived. She remembered: “I jumped up from the sofa, holding the plate on which I was having my lunch.” But that soon changed. She grew more anxious as he stayed in the car. She shouted out to Senna’s Portuguese housekeeper, Juraci: “What are they waiting for?” She said: “He must have broken his arms or a leg.” She screamed at the TV: “Get out of the car, get out!” After a few minutes when he had not moved, she recalled: “I was motionless and I started to sob.”
As Professor Sid Watkins approached Tamburello in his medical car, he somehow knew it was Senna who had crashed. Watkins found him slumped in the Williams. The doctor from the first intervention car was already with him and cradling his head, aware from the condition of his helmet and seeping blood that he had suffered a massive head injury. The two men looked at each other, unsure of what they would see when they got the helmet off. Watkins frantically cut the chin strap and lifted the helmet off gently, whilst others supported his neck. Blood poured out. His forehead was a mess and, more worryingly, blood and brain matter was seeping from his nose.
Watkins appraised him. Senna’s eyes were closed and he was deeply unconscious. Instinctively Watkins forced a tube into his mouth to obtain effective airflow. Watkins shouted for blood – his team already knew Senna’s blood type: B+.
By then the other race cars had stopped going around and the crowd was silent. Senna looked serene as Watkins did what he had to, and raised his eyelids. He remembered: “It was clear from his pupils that he had had a massive brain injury. I knew from seeing the extent of his injury that he could not survive.” The medics lifted him out of the car. The blood was still flowing. They lay him on the ground, as marshals held up sheets to shield him from view. Watkins said: “As we did he sighed and, though I am totally agnostic, I felt his soul departed at that moment.”
There was only one photographer at Tamburello that afternoon. Angelo Orsi, a close friend of Senna’s and the picture editor of Autosprint, the Italian racing magazine, leapt over the wall when the car came to rest and started snapping. He took close-ups of Senna in the car and after his helmet was removed, and then when he was being treated on the ground, before marshals blocked his view. Galvao Bueno was watching Orsi on television, and said: “He aimed and shot, without even seeing exactly what he was getting.”
Adriane Galisteu was watching anxiously on television. She looked at his feet for signs of life, for she understood what she called the language of feet. She saw no movement. His feet told her he was dead, but she put that thought completely from her mind. By then the housekeeper was a screaming wreck, and Senna’s close neighbors had started to arrive at the house to see if there was anything they could do. Although people at the circuit were calm, on television viewers had seen everything. The sharper-eyed had seen blood seeping from the car like oil; it carried on as Senna lay on the ground, staining the track red. It was not obvious unless you knew what to look for. Later it would be revealed that Senna had suffered a burst temporal artery and lost 4.5 litres of blood.
In the TV Globo cabin, Bueno could not see what Watkins could, but he was reading the body language of Watkins and the doctors: “At the moment of the disaster, by the way it happened and by the way he was rescued, I knew that it was extremely serious, but I had to continue to commentate on the race until the end. Bueno had already had a difficult time on Friday when the young Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello was taken to hospital.
Frank Williams was watching in the Williams pit; Alain Prost was alongside him. They anxiously scanned the monitors. Williams had experienced death at the track when his driver Piers Courage lost his life in 1970; 24 years on, the same emotions stirred.
Roaming around the garden at Quinta do Lago, Senna’s dog also seemed to sense that his master was in trouble and began barking loudly. The neighbours’ dogs started to bark. Neyde da Silva called Adriane from the farm at Tatui for information. Adriane had none. After that the telephone never stopped, as neighbours congregated at the house. The peaceful retreat had suddenly turned to bedlam.
Dr Pezzi, one of the trackside medics, got on with intubating Senna and, under Watkins’ supervision, the team inserted several IV infusions into the inert form. They had to clear the respiratory passages; stem the blood flow and replace lost blood; and immobilise the cervical area. After that was done Senna had a faint pulse. Watkins followed procedure and decided Senna should go straight to Maggiore Hospital for urgent treatment in intensive care conditions, although he knew it would be fruitless. He radioed for the medical helicopter and asked Dr Giovanni Gordini, the intensive care anaesthetist in charge of the circuit’s medical centre, to accompany Senna to Maggiore.
The helicopter quickly arrived but Watkins decided not to accompany Senna as he realised that there was nothing he could do. As medics loaded Senna into the helicopter at around 2:35pm, he took a call on his personal radio from Martin Whitaker, the FIA’s press supremo, who was with Bernie Ecclestone in his grey motorhome parked by the paddock gates. Ecclestone wanted information. With Whitaker and Ecclestone was Leonardo da Silva.
Senna was still alive, and Watkins told Whitaker the problem was his head. Over the crackly radio, Whitaker mistakenly misheard him as saying he was dead. This would cause much unhappiness later. Whitaker whispered to Bernie Ecclestone who was eating an apple. Ecclestone saw no point in hiding the truth from Leonardo and told him his brother was dead. He said: “I’m sorry, he’s dead, but we’ll only announce it after the end of the race.” Whilst he was doing this Ecclestone was coping with his own personal grief, and he calmly tossed the apple core over his shoulder. Ecclestone knew that, of all people, he had to remain calm. He was already thinking ahead to what Senna’s death would mean, sub-consciously making plans and weighing up every possibility. Leonardo mistook his calmness as indifference and disrespect for his brother, and was astonished that plans were going ahead to restart the race with his brother dead. He was almost beside himself with grief, and although it was quickly established what Watkins had really said, the damage was done: Senna’s brother lost control. Ecclestone told
Whitaker to fetch Josef Leberer immediately to help Leonardo with his grief. The younger brother was distraught. His last words to his brother had not been friendly and they were still arguing about Adriane that morning.
Meanwhile, as the helicopter ascended, Watkins picked up Senna’s helmet. But as he looked around, he couldn’t find either his own gloves or Senna’s. Neither pair was ever seen again. As he looked for them, another drama was happening in the air. The 20-minute helicopter ride was barely three minutes old when Senna’s heart stopped. Dr Gordini worked on him frantically, and finally got it going again.
Adriane watched Senna’s motionless body being loaded into the helicopter. Someone pointed out the red stain on the ground after he had been moved. It startled her. A neighbor tried to reassure her, saying it was a new kind of fire extinguisher foam. She believed it at the time, thinking to herself: “Nobody ever thought Ayrton Senna would die in a racing car. Neither had I.”
Meanwhile, Sid Watkins was driven at speed back to the circuit’s medical centre. He quickly told the centre’s Dr Servadei details of Senna’s condition, so that he could brief Maggiore hospital by telephone for Senna’s arrival. In reality he knew there was nothing they would be able to do, other than going through the motions. Watkins doubted Senna could last long, even with the help of a life-support machine. Like Ecclestone, Senna had been a close personal friend, and Watkins was having to deal with his own personal grief at the same time as organising Senna’s care. Watkins turned round and saw that Josef Leberer had come into the medical centre. They didn’t need to exchange words. Leberer remembered: “I saw Professor Watkins and he just looked in my eyes and then I knew it was going to be a very serious thing. He didn’t say anything.” After the silence, Watkins briefed him. At that moment Whitaker finally tracked down Leberer and a message arrived for him to go urgently to Bernie Ecclestone’s motorhome.
Leberer found Senna’s brother Leonardo in a high state of distress. Leberer said: “I had to calm his brother down.” At that point, Leonardo thought his brother was dead after the misheard radio conversation. Leberer told him he was in a serious state but still alive and they should get to Maggiore as soon as possible. Leonardo calmed down enough to phone his parents in Brazil from the motorhome telephone. Meanwhile, Ecclestone arranged for his helicopter to take them to the hospital. They left immediately with Julian Jakobi following.
Ecclestone went off to confer with Max Mosley, the FIA president. Afterwards he toured the pitlane, assuring everyone that everything was being done for Senna. What he was sure of was that the race would restart and run to a conclusion. It always did. That was the way of Formula One. Like Frank Williams, emotions from 1970 were flooding over Ecclestone. Months after Williams had lost Piers Courage; he had lost Jochen Rindt who he had managed. But no one could sense his turmoil. Ecclestone was doing what he had always done for Formula One: creating stability in a very unstable environment.
With Leonardo on his way to Maggiore, Antonio Braga called his wife Luiza, who was in their house in Sintra near Lisbon with their teenage daughters Joanna and Maria. He told her to phone Adriane and tell her to get to Bologna as soon as possible. Braga knew that Senna was dying but thought there would be time for her to say goodbye. He told Luiza to charter her a plane from Faro to bring her to Bologna. Braga went back to the TV Globo cabin.
Luiza, who had also been following events on television, called Quinta do Lago. She told Adriane it was extremely serious: “Braga called me from Imola. It’s extremely serious. You have to go there immediately.” Adriane replied: “Luiza, come with me. Don’t leave me alone.”
Luiza agreed to accompany her there: she would charter a jet in Lisbon and pick Adriane up at Faro. She told her she would be there at around 5pm. The flight to Faro would only take half-an-hour, but renting a jet at short notice on a Sunday proved difficult and it would take three-and-a-half hours for Luiza Braga to hire the plane and fly to Faro.
After putting the phone down, Braga discussed with Galvao Bueno what they should do. They agreed to leave for the hospital straight after the race. Braga called Senna’s father Milton, who was following the race on television with his wife Neyde. He told them it was serious and to stand by to come to Bologna.
Meanwhile the drivers had no idea what had happened, other than that Senna had had an accident. As they formed up on the grid for the restart, people were saying there was no problem, that he was out of the car; others were saying there was a big problem. Gerhard Berger remembered: “At the time I didn’t realise how bad it was. I didn’t see his accident as I was in the car behind him but you get a feeling from the atmosphere, and there was a strange atmosphere.”
Like Ecclestone, Watkins calmly went about his business. He replenished his medical bag from the stores in the medical centre and walked back to his car to await the restart.
Prior to that, just before 3 o’clock, the wreckage of Senna’s car was brought to the parc fermé and put in the steward’s garage, under the care of Fabrizio Nosco. Patrick Head was aware of how serious the accident was, as he and Frank Williams had been briefed by Bernie Ecclestone. The gravity was confirmed when the car had not been brought straight back to the Williams garage. Head was anxious to see the telemetry and sent two of his mechanics to the garage to fetch the black boxes. Nosco, a technical commissioner, politely refused them entry. He told them that, under FISA rules, no one could touch the car. They went away and returned with FISA’s technical delegate, Charlie Whiting, who ordered Nosco to remove the boxes and hand them to the mechanics. Nosco said: “Whiting told me to open up the garage and that he had permission from John Corsmit, the FIA security chief that day. He told me to remove the black boxes.
“The Renault engine box was situated behind the cockpit. I removed it with a pair of large pliers. The Williams chassis box was behind the radiator near the back wheel, on the right wing of the car. I have seen thousands of these devices and removed them for checks. The two boxes were intact, even though they had some scratches. The Williams device looked to have survived the crash.”
Back at the Williams garage, engineer Marco Spiga tried to retrieve the data. But power had been lost to the box and wiped the memory. Although the box was basically intact, the connectors had been badly damaged in the accident. Spiga said: “The Williams box was totally unreadable when we got it back.” They had more luck with the Renault box, and the data was transferred to a diskette.
At 2:55pm, 37 minutes after Senna’s crash, the race was restarted. Five minutes later, the helicopter carrying Senna landed in front of Maggiore hospital. Doctors rushed out and wheeled him straight into intensive care for a brain scan that would only confirm the diagnosis made at the track. At 3:10pm his heart stopped again. The doctors were able to restart it, before putting him in a clean room on a life-support machine.
In Brazil, the streets of the major cities were quiet on that Sunday morning, as the whole country woke from its slumbers as the news spread and huddled in front of television sets, hanging on Galvao Bueno’s every word. Bueno was well aware that, since the accident, probably half of the Brazilian population had woken up and was watching his broadcast and listening to his words. He also knew that Milton and Neyde da Silva and Senna’s sister Viviane would be watching. He found it a terrible responsibility: “They were all listening to me, hoping I would say some good news. Reginaldo and Antonio, who was like a father to Ayrton, kept looking at me speechless, having the same worry. Through my earphones I was constantly being pushed forward by our manager, and also from our studios in Brazil they kept asking me to go on. At least three times I left the cabin to catch some breath. And because I had this great friendship with Ayrton, people started coming to our cabin, Rubinho’s [Barrichello’s] manager, Christian’s [Fittipaldi’s] girlfriend, everybody apparently expecting something to hope for.” But TV Globo had the best sources of information, and a reporter at the studio had given two bulletins on Senna’s condition, warning that his brain damage was severe.
The later it got, the streets of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo stayed eerily deserted at around 8am local time. As Senna struggled for life, and TV Globo commentators predicted the worst, millions of Brazilians held their breath, not quite believing what they were witnessing on live television.
Meanwhile, Berger led the restarted race for the first 11 laps before pitting with a suspension problem. Berger remembered: “I was just thinking ‘****, what is happening now?’”
On lap 41 a wheel had flown off Michele Alboreto’s Minardi car at the pit exit and flown into a crowd of Lotus mechanics. It hadn’t been fastened properly at a pitstop. Alboreto was almost glad. He jumped out of his car, dumped his helmet in the pit garage and ran to the medical centre to talk to the Italian doctors. They told him the full truth of what had happened to Senna. After a brief discussion in Italian, Alboreto walked glumly back to the Ferrari garage to speak to his old team-mate Berger, who by then had got out of his car, having retired from the restarted race on lap 14. Alboreto told him: “It’s very bad with Ayrton, he’s in hospital in Bologna and very critical.” Berger said: “Why are all these things happening?”
Ten minutes before the end of the race, Bueno realised that it would take them too long to get to the hospital by car with all the race traffic. He told Braga to go and find a helicopter. Braga went off and found Jo Ramirez, the McLaren team manager, who organised it. Brazilian driver Christian Fittipaldi sent a note to his broadcast cabin asking him if he could accompany them to the hospital. Bueno sent a message back to be ready.
For Sid Watkins, the next two hours were terrible; as he watched the cars go by. It seemed interminable. But he breathed a sigh of relief as the race finally ended at 4:20pm with no further incident. Michael Schumacher, Senna’s natural successor, inevitably won. He and the other drivers on the podium, Nicola Larini and Mika Häkkinen, had little idea of Senna’s condition but their faces revealed that they feared the worse.
As soon as the race was over, Bueno threw off his headphones and left the studio back in Brazil to carry on. By this time Bueno knew Senna was dying and he wanted to be there when he did; not out of any professional duty, as he wanted no part in the reporting of his friend’s demise, but out of personal duty. He rushed straight to the Arrows motorhome. Fittipaldi was half-dressed and pleaded for Bueno to wait. Bueno told him to come to the McLaren motorhome, where there was a crowd of people surrounding Antonio Braga, including Gerhard Berger, Ron Dennis and Jo Ramirez. Berger was recommending that Braga call a neurosurgeon he knew in Paris who had once saved Jean Alesi from brain damage after an accident. Berger said that he could organise a jet to bring the doctor from Paris. Braga told him to get on with it. Bueno waited impatiently for Fittipaldi to arrive.
Sid Watkins ran back to the medical centre and found Lotus team principal Peter Collins waiting for him, looking for news about Senna. Collins and Watkins were close friends; the professor was closer to Collins than to any other team principal. Collins had come to find out about Senna, but he pretended concern over his mechanics, whom he already knew were alright. When Watkins told Collins his mechanics would be fine, Collins asked him if Senna was in a bad way and Watkins simply said ‘yes’. When he asked him if there was any hope, he shook his head and simply said ‘no’. Collins was the first of the Formula One fraternity to find out the truth that all the others feared.
Bologna’s chief medical officer Dr Maria Theresa Fiandri had been called out to Maggiore hospital, and she took charge. She was interviewed by a local reporter who had been tipped off. She told him that surgery was out of the question.
Half-an-hour later, several dozen reporters and some TV crews had arrived. At 4:30pm, Dr Fiandri read out a clinical bulletin. She said Ayrton Senna had brain damage, with haemorrhaged shock and was in a deep coma. She told the reporters there would be another bulletin at 6 o’clock.
The Italian police, tipped off that the accident was probably fatal, had arrived shortly before the end of the race and taken away Senna’s helmet.
When Sid Watkins had finished at the medical centre, he knew his place was at the hospital. He quickly changed, leaving his overalls strewn on the floor, and ran to the medical helicopter, which had returned from Maggiore. With Dr Servadei for company, he took off straight for the hospital. He also wanted to get away from the gloom that had fallen over Imola. It was a terrible place to be at that moment.
Bueno, fed up with waiting, told his friends to meet him at the helicopter pad. He rushed back to Arrows to collect Fittipaldi. He ran into Jose Pinto of the Portuguese TV company, threw him the keys to his hire car, and told him to give them to Reginaldo Leme, with instructions to meet him at Maggiore.
As he rushed to the helicopter pad with Fittipaldi, he phoned a TV Globo reporter at the hospital who told him Senna would not last long. After a wait, the helicopter arrived and Braga, Berger, Fittipaldi and Bueno took off for Maggiore. The trip was made in absolute silence. These were four men as close to Senna as it was possible to be. The tragedy that had unfolded that afternoon defied any meaningful words.
The cramped Imola media centre, as word of Senna’s condition circulated, was enveloped by a shroud of dread. He would never race again, at best, and most were under no illusion that he would be dead before midnight.
Top journalist David Tremayne had been tipped off by Collins and was starting to write an obituary for the next day’s edition of the London Independent. Other British journalists with national newspaper contracts followed suit. Many of them hadn’t much cared for Senna when he was alive, but the enormity of his imminent passing weighed heavily.
When Sid Watkins arrived at Maggiore, he conferred with the doctors who had been treating Senna. They had ordered an immediate brain scan. It merely confirmed that Senna had no chance of surviving the accident. Watkins was told Senna had multiple fractures of the base of the skull where his head had smashed into the carbon-fibre headrest of the monocoque. What had likely happened was that the right front wheel had shot up after impact like a catapult and violated the cockpit area where Senna was sitting. It impacted the right frontal area of his helmet, and the violence of the wheel’s impact pushed his head back against the headrest, causing the fatal skull fractures. A piece of upright attached to the wheel had partially penetrated his helmet and made a big indent in his forehead. In addition, it appeared that a jagged piece of the upright assembly had penetrated the helmet visor just above his right eye. Any one of the three injuries would probably have killed him. The combination of them all made it certain. Only Senna’s extremely high level of fitness meant he had momentarily survived. He suffered brain death on impact but the lack of any physical injury to the rest of his body meant that his heart and lungs continued to function. The neurosurgeon who examined Senna said that the circumstances did not call for surgery because the wound was generalised in the cranium. But an X-ray of the damage to his skull and brain indicated he would not last long, even with a machine maintaining his vital functions. Watkins looked at the monitors of blood pressure, respiration and heart rate: the end was near.
Although their helicopter had left before Watkins’, finally Leonardo arrived with Josef Leberer. Then Julian Jakobi turned up. He had hitched a lift to the hospital with a Brazilian journalist, who knew the way after a trip the previous Friday to visit Barrichello.
Dr Servadei and Dr Gordini together with Watkins immediately took Leonardo, Leberer and Jakobi into a small room, next to Senna’s. He told them that the end was near, that the situation was hopeless. Leonardo was in a hopeless condition himself, unable to absorb the news, but Jakobi and Leberer accepted the news stoically, and supported him. Like Watkins and Ecclestone, Jakobi also had to be strong whilst coping with intense personal grief. Leberer wanted to go in and see Senna whilst Jakobi comforted Leonardo. The doctors warned him that Senna did not look good because of his head injuries. But Leberer went in to see his friend for the last time. In the room, the life-support systems were noisy. Leberer saw his friend’s massive head injuries. He said: “I knew every part of his body. I was there because I wanted to see him there. We were more than six years together. We were friends and I did not have a problem to go there, even if there was a big injury.”
As Watkins was talking to Leonardo, Galvao Bueno’s helicopter was landing in front of Maggiore hospital. Hospital staff recognised Gerhard Berger and the group was quickly ushered through to the intensive-care unit. The four men were led into the little room where Professor Watkins told them bluntly that Senna was already dead but that his heart was still beating. Berger remembered: “Sid Watkins told me it was very, very, very critical and basically there was no chance of getting him through.” Bueno remembered: “Sid Watkins said, ‘He is dead. He is brain dead, his heart stopped, we managed to make it go again, and he is kept alive with machines, but the Italian law requires us to wait 12 hours and take another ECG. Only after this can we disconnect him.’ I asked him: ‘But Dr Sid, will we have to wait suffering for 12 hours?’ He answered that he did not believe that even with support Ayrton’s heart would hold on for these 12 hours.”
Watkins suggested they all went in to see him before that happened. Berger went first, with Josef Leberer supporting him. Berger sat down by his bed with all his memories of the man who had shared his career and also been a big part of his life outside the sport. He quietly spoke to Senna’s lifeless form. After spending a few intimate minutes in the bleak hospital room he quietly say his final goodbyes and kissed his friend on the cheek. He said: “I spent a few minutes with him and then that was that.”
Then, in turn, the others went in to say goodbye.
By now Senna’s family had gathered at the family farm in Tatui. Viviane Senna’s husband Flavio Lalli was fulfilling the same role as Ecclestone, Watkins and Jakobi, and had taken charge of a distraught family. Watkins was handed a phone with Lalli on the line. He told Lalli what he had told Leonardo, Jakobi, Bueno, Berger, Braga and Fittipaldi, that the situation was truly hopeless and that Senna would soon die. The family was on the verge of a decision to catch a chartered jet straight to Bologna. Watkins told him it would be inappropriate as there was nothing they could do. Watkins remembered: “They accepted the tragic news with dignity, and took my advice to remain in Brazil.”
After Berger went into Senna’s room, Watkins decided to leave, unable to take any more. He was used to death, but this was unlike anything he had experienced. Watkins had borne the brunt of the tragedy. It had fallen to him to tell Senna’s family that he was effectively dead. Even he could only take so much. Although Senna was still technically alive there was nothing more he could do. It was just a question of waiting for the inevitable, which Watkins’ experience told him would be within the hour. For him, his friend was already dead. He took the chance of a lift back to his hotel. Watkins needed some time on his own to come to terms with the day’s events. When he got to his room, a man who had seen death many times discovered his own vulnerability as the television replayed the accident incessantly.
Like Watkins, Berger needed some solitude. He took a helicopter to the airport, then his plane home to Austria. At the airport, in the evening dusk, he saw Senna’s plane waiting forlornly for an owner that would never return. Berger broke down, overpowered by the silhouette.
In Portugal, Luiza Braga tried frantically to book a plane, as friends helped Adriane pack enough clothes for three days. She knew there was little hope, but told herself she would be by his bedside, waiting for him to recover. It was the only possible thought, and it kept her going.
As she waited, a neighbor told her she had heard he had recovered consciousness. Adriane’s own mother phoned from São Paulo and asked what was happening. Adriane told her she hoped Senna would recover and that it was not as serious as was thought. Her no-nonsense mother immediately disabused her of that and made her face reality. TV Globo was delivering far more accurate information to Brazilian viewers than the more reserved European television channels, which were waiting for an official bulletin and shying away from the reality. Adriane’s mother told her the truth: that only a miracle could save him. After putting the phone down from her mother, Adriane felt her emotions going out of control. Her friends gave her a tranquilliser pill. She phoned Neyde da Silva at home in Brazil and tried to calm Neyde down, telling her she had heard her son had recovered consciousness. Neyde told her the family would catch a plane to Bologna at 2:30pm (local time).
Even as they spoke, at Maggiore hospital electrical brain tests confirmed that Senna was brain dead and being kept alive only by artificial means. Senior doctors conferred about the press bulletin promised for 6 o’clock. They did not want to raise any false hopes, nor could they say he was dead, because he wasn’t. By law, the machine could not be turned off. They compromised with an announcement saying Senna was clinically dead.
At 6:05pm Dr Fiandri, her voice shaking at the gravity of her announcement, told reporters that Senna was clinically dead. He was still connected, she said, to the equipment maintaining his heartbeat. The news led the early-evening news programmes. In Britain an hour behind Europe, the news bulletins waited for a more final verdict.
Josef Leberer returned to Imola to fetch his car. A doctor gave him a lift.
Neyde da Silva, calling from Brazil, told her son Leonardo to ask the hospital to arrange for a priest to visit her eldest son. The priest arrived, went into Senna’s room at 6:15pm, and gave him the last rites. At 6:37pm Senna’s heart stopped again and Dr Fiandri decided not to try and restart it. Keeping a man who was effectively dead artificially alive was ethically doubtful. She said enough was enough. At 6:40pm, Dr Fiandri pronounced Ayrton Senna dead, but said the official time of death would be 2:17pm, when he had impacted the wall and his brain had stopped working.
Oblivious to this, Juraci drove Adriane to Faro airport. When the chartered plane arrived, around 6:30pm, Adriane was waiting desperately on the tarmac. As soon as the door opened, she scrambled on board and into Luiza Braga’s arms. The pilot told them it would be a three-hour flight. On board, Luiza told Adriane that her boyfriend was as strong as an ox and that she had heard nothing more from her husband at the circuit, other that it was very serious. But even as they spoke, Senna was already dead.
The captain taxied to the edge of the runway, and waited for clearance to take off. As he waited, a message was relayed to the plane. The pilot immediately taxied back to the terminal building, without a word to his passengers. The message was that Ayrton Senna had passed away, but the captain didn’t want to be the one to break the news to them. He finally told them there was an urgent call for Luiza back at the control tower. He said: “I don’t have authorisation from the tower. There is a call for Luiza and Adriane.”
Adriane shook with fear about what the call might reveal.
Luiza rushed off as soon as the plane door opened. Adriane stepped from the plane and was overwhelmed at the silence in the terminal, the silent people there, betraying the news she didn’t want to hear. Adriane followed Luiza to the control tower. “I shook all over, from head to toe,” she remembered. She waited in silence alone. Luiza Braga was pale when she returned. She took Adriane’s hand. “Adriane,” she said, but Adriane interrupted her and said: “Luiza, only don’t tell me he has died.” She replied the only way she could: “He’s died.”
The two women hugged each other for comfort. They spent 40 minutes in the control tower, sobbing and trying to come to terms with the devastating news. They did not know what to do, and were driven back to Senna’s house at Quinto da Lago. The pilot waited at Faro for instructions. When they returned they found the whole house in mourning. Juraci, the housekeeper, who had regarded Senna as her son, was screaming. Adriane made for their bedroom and lay motionless on the bed for two hours. She remembers: “I naively thought I would see him arrive that night, even earlier than expected, with that beautiful smile of his, ready for a reunion after almost a month.”
When Josef Leberer returned to the paddock from the hospital he found it a desolate place. Everyone was trying to come to terms with what had happened. By that time his death had been announced. He remembered: “It seemed like everybody was waiting and asking, ‘what’s happened, what’s happened, what’s happened?’. I had to tell them.”
Leberer had to cope with two grieving teams. Not only his own but also McLaren. Ron and Lisa Dennis and Mansour and Cathy Ojjeh huddled around him for news. He found Frank Williams and Patrick Head in a state of disbelief. After finally getting Senna to drive for them after all these years they couldn’t believe he was gone so quickly.
He couldn’t cope with too much of it and drove his car back to the hotel.
Meanwhile, Luiza Braga spoke to her husband at the hospital who told her there was no point going to Bologna and to pack some bags and prepare to return to Brazil for the funeral. Braga told his wife to take Adriane to their home in Sintra with one of the cars Senna kept at the villa. He said he would join them as soon as he had got Leonardo back to Brazil and made the arrangements to have Senna’s returned to Brazil. He told her to instruct the pilot of the chartered jet, waiting at Bologna, to go. Luiza explained the plan to Adriane, who agreed: “I gathered all I had brought from Brazil,” she remembered. “The big suitcase, everything. The three pieces of luggage that I had just unpacked, less than 24 hours before, with all I would need to spend the next five months of the European season by his side. The season that ended before it began.” Before leaving, she took a T-shirt and shorts of Senna’s she had worn that morning to go running.
Then she walked around the house and gardens for the last time. The garden and lawns were bathed in moonlight, as they only can be in the Algarve. She walked by the swimming pool and then went into his study and checked for messages on his fax. She gazed at his photographs on his desk for the last
time and his trophies. She stopped by his powerful Swiss stereo player and wondered what was the last music he had listened to. She pressed the eject button and out came a Phil Collins album. She slipped it into her pocket, as she remembered: “I wanted to know what had been the last CD he had listened to in life. That was one thing that I had the right to share with him. After that I walked in tears around the house.”
At around 10 o’clock, the two women left for the two-hour drive to Sintra. They were silent, thinking about what had been a terrible end to a terrible day. Just after midnight, Adriane pulled into the drive of the Braga home, where Senna had stayed many times and he had his own room. Adriane went straight to bed, but not in his room. That would have been too much to bear.
Back at the track, the lights in the media centre burned brightly as 200 journalists prepared 200 obituaries. The pit garage, containing Senna’s shattered car, was now guarded by armed police.
At the hospital it was revealed that nurses had discovered a small furled Austrian flag hidden in the sleeve of Senna’s race overalls. Journalists concluded he had intended to fly it from his cockpit on the parade lap, and dedicate what would have been his 42nd Grand Prix victory to the memory of Roland Ratzenberger.
Around midnight, Angelo Orsi was back in the developing room at his office. The pictures were not pleasant. He was doubtful any magazine would publish them. Representatives of the Senna family told him immediately they that did not want anyone to even see them. Orsi respected their wishes. The pictures have never been seen, except by the family and Senna’s girlfriend Adriane. Today they are believed to be still in a safe in the Autosprint offices. Both the magazine and Orsi have turned down significant offers, believed to be well over US$100,000, for the rights to them. Orsi’s decision earned everlasting respect from Galvao Bueno, who had tipped off the Senna family about their existence: “He is the only person who’s got pictures of Ayrton’s face, developed and stashed in a safe. He has already turned down fortunes for them, he won’t sell, he won’t give. His superiors at the magazine understood his action, even with the fabulous offers from agencies, and I find it very dignified.”
There is much more Galvao Bueno would like to say about the events of Sunday 1st May 1994, but he agreed with Milton and Neyde da Silva that he would never discuss it. He confided to friends he mentioned the events to: “I shouldn’t be talking about this; I have an agreement with his family.”
In America, five hours behind Europe, Nigel Mansell was interviewed on the NBC nightly news: “I thought he was bulletproof,” he said. “It hurts, it hurts big time.”
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