About this tribute Independence statement, editorial method

Independence

This is an independent, non-commercial tribute to Ayrton Senna, made in the form of a book: three parts on his life, the man and his legacy, and a section of reference pages, told in pictures, races and his own words.

It is not affiliated with the Senna family, the Instituto Ayrton Senna, or any team, manufacturer or other rights holder. It sells nothing and carries no advertising. The names, marks and liveries that appear in its pages and its photographs belong to their owners, and are shown only because they are part of his story.

Method

Every fact on these pages comes from a set of research dossiers, one for each subject, from his childhood to his legacy, and each dossier names the sources behind every line: newspapers and magazines of the time, books, interviews, official records and databases. Each dossier was fact-checked, against other sources wherever possible, and then independently audited, and the corrections were made in the dossiers themselves. Every page is then read against the dossiers by an independent checker before it is published.

Each fact is graded. Two independent, reliable sources that agree make it firm; one reliable source is enough to use it. A fact that is unconfirmed, or on which the sources disagree, is written in words such as reportedly or accounts differ, and where the difference matters a note says where the accounts part, or it is left out. Race results, grids, points and totals come from one record, checked race by race against four independent statistical databases, and the tables are built from that record rather than typed by hand.

Quotations

Every quotation is checked word for word against the source it cites: a film or recording, a transcript, a newspaper, magazine or website, or a book. Words found in the original record, whether film, a broadcast, a signed statement or print within about a year from the journalist who heard them, are given as they were said, with no mark. Words that reach this book only at second hand, through someone else’s account, a recollection made years later or a later copy or report of a source it could not see, are marked attributed wherever they stand on their own, as are the few whose speaker is not certain.

A doubtful quotation, one that is misattributed, reworded in the retelling or never traced to him, is never given as his words: the doubtful ones are gathered, each with a note on what is wrong with it, in a section of their own at the end of In his words. Where he or others spoke in Portuguese or another language and this book has the original words, a quotation set on its own shows them first, with the English translation beneath; a few lines are known here only in a published English version, such as a film’s subtitles, and are given in that English, as is a phrase quoted within a sentence.

Pictures

The photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and other open collections, and each is used under the licence given with it. Every one was checked for its licence before it was used, and a photograph whose free licence cannot be relied on, such as a press picture uploaded by someone other than the photographer, is left out. Each caption names the photographer, or the collection where no photographer is known, and the licence, and the picture credits list every photograph, page by page, with its source.

The photographs are shown in black and white, converted for this book, and colour is used only where colour is the point, as with his helmet and the flag of Brazil. No picture is shown at more than 1.25 times its own pixels. Where a photograph shared under a share-alike licence has been adapted, by conversion or by cropping, the adaptation is shared under the same licence.

Corrections

There will be mistakes in these pages, and they are corrected at their source. When an error is found, it is put right in the research dossier first, and then on every page that uses the fact, so that it cannot come back in another chapter.

Every page ends with a list of the main sources it relies on, so that a reader can check them.