The people around him Family, friends, mentors and team-mates

In February 1990, at home in São Paulo between seasons, the world champion of 1988 still shared a bedroom with his younger brother, Leonardo, in his parents’ house. He was thinking of buying a flat for his visits to Brazil, he told Veja. In Europe, he told Playboy that August, he telephoned his parents, his sister and his brother more than once a day. He was never alone, he said; he never had been.

His father, Milton da Silva, Miltão to family and friends, had had his first kart made at the family metalworks and paid for everything from karting to his first year in England, and then wanted him home in the family business. He stayed close to the career all the same. He signed contract papers for his son in 1987, was in the paddock at the Hungaroring in 1990 to advise on his contract, and embraced him after his 50th pole, at Jerez that September. By 1994 he was president of the holding company that ran his son’s businesses. On 1 May he watched the San Marino Grand Prix at the family farm at Tatuí, and a doctor who saw him there found him depressed, as any father would be. He died in São Paulo on 27 October 2021, aged 94. The family’s announcement ended Obrigado, Miltão: thank you, Miltão.

His mother, Neyde Senna, remembered the clumsy, headlong small boy of his early years. The dish she cooked for him most was her pasta, home-made when she could, in a plain Italian tomato sauce, and when she visited him in England she cooked for him and for his house-mate, Maurício Gugelmin, too. She kept out of the public eye, and narrated the official video for the 25th anniversary of his death.

Viviane, nearly three years older, was a psychologist, and the one he confided in. In the summer of 1989 it was she who told him, after the podium at Hockenheim, that Armando Botelho Teixeira had died, and they prayed together in his motorhome. Not long before Imola, she says, he asked her to devise something more systematic than the donations he was always making: a way of helping Brazil’s poorest children to a better future. She founded the Instituto Ayrton Senna in November 1994, and has led it ever since. Her husband, Flávio Lalli, was killed in a motorbike accident in February 1996. They had three children, Bianca, Bruno and Paula.

Leonardo, six years younger, was the brother on the spot. The official site calls Viviane and Leonardo his confidants and his partners at work, and credits Leonardo with a decisive part in the business side of the Senna name. He was Ayrton’s partner in Senna Import, which brought Audi to Brazil in March 1994, and at Imola he was the one member of the family at the circuit. At a Honda karaoke night, when his brother hesitated, Ayrton stood up and sang Can’t Help Falling in Love himself.

Of Viviane’s children it was Bruno, born in 1983, who raced. He won his first kart race on the track at the family farm, with his uncle waving the flag, and when he pulled up his uncle knocked on his helmet and teased him: “Well done, brake-foot.” Jo Ramírez of McLaren thought him fond of the boy almost as if he were his own. After 1994 Viviane would not let Bruno race. He began only in 2004; in 2008 he won the GP2 race at Monaco, 15 years to the day after his uncle’s last win there, and from 2010 to 2012 he started 46 Grands Prix, the last 20 of them for Williams.

For me, it was special to have such a hero from inside my family, … and even when we raced karts together he was competitive. Ayrton was not a fragile person, but he had a very open side to him, very naive sometimes, and motor racing has never been a sport for naive people. So he hardened himself for racing. But there were many moments when you could see his softer side coming out. For example when there were accidents, he wanted to help, wanted to know why it happened. For those who didn’t know him well, it was hard to see that side of Ayrton, but he was a kind person and totally normal, much softer, when he was away from his motor racing.

Bianca runs Senna Brands, the company set up in 2019 to manage his name and image apart from the Instituto’s work. She remembers him cheating at cards, a pile of them hidden under his cushion, and laughing when he was found out; it was he who taught her to ride a jet-ski and to water-ski. Paula, the third, has kept a private life.

The women he loved

In February 1981, at 20, he married Lilian de Vasconcellos Souza, a childhood friend and teenage sweetheart from the north zone of São Paulo, and took her to Norfolk for his season of Formula Ford. She washed and ironed and cooked, for the paddock too, and looked after the money, she said, because he did not like dealing with it. After eight months in England they went home, and in March 1982 he decided to go back to Europe and to separate; the divorce followed. She has always lived privately.

From 1984 to 1988 he was with Adriane Yamin, who was 15 when it began, and who published a memoir of those years in 2019. It ended at the end of 1988, when the television presenter Xuxa Meneghel came into his life; he appeared on her programme, Xou da Xuxa, and they were together until about 1990. In a documentary in 2023 she blamed their schedules, and her manager of the time. Through her programme he came to know the founder of the Lar Casa Humilde, a crèche in Paraisópolis, which he then helped, quietly. Xuxa stayed close to Viviane: on the day of his funeral she stood with the family, and in 1996 she sat with them through the night at Flávio Lalli’s wake.

In March 1993, at the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos, a 19-year-old model called Adriane Galisteu took a job as one of 10 Shell hostesses, at US$1,000 for four days. Taking it, she wrote, it never crossed her mind that she was about to win the love of her life. She first saw him on the Saturday, when he visited the Shell hospitality area, and met him after his win, at a party at the Limelight club, where he kept hold of her hand.

They were together until he died. He called her Dri; in 1994 she lived with him at his villa in Portugal, and she last saw him at the family farm at Easter, on 3 April. Her memoir of their time together, Caminho das Borboletas (The butterflies’ path), published that year, counts it as 405 days. At the funeral the family kept her apart, and Viviane has since criticised her in public.

In 1990 he told the writer Gerald Donaldson that a few years earlier he had had no time for anyone or anything but racing. Now he needed time for his family, his friends and above all his girlfriend; he had found that “when you love a woman you feel more human”.

In his corner

When he came home from England at the end of 1981, unsure whether to go back, a cattle rancher and friend of his father’s, Armando Botelho Teixeira, took his career in hand. He had time to spare and a great affection for Ayrton, the official site says. He found the sponsors for 1982, then handled the contracts with Toleman, Lotus and McLaren, and the two became close friends as well as partners. He was seriously ill through the summer of 1989, and died of liver cancer in São Paulo on the night of 29 July, the eve of Senna’s win at Hockenheim. Viviane said he had been a second father to her brother.

From 1984 the trainer Nuno Cobra rebuilt him as an athlete, running him on the track at the University of São Paulo through the Brazilian summers. His method put a gradual build-up, rest, sleep and diet before intensity; at first, Cobra said, Senna could run for 25 minutes and then faint. Their last sessions together were in March 1994. The day after Senna died Cobra wept in a television interview, and blamed the circuit.

Ele era um exemplo de coragem, dedicação, trabalho e aplicação.

… A morte dele é uma perda irrecuperável para o Brasil.

He was an example of courage, dedication, work and application.

… His death is an irreparable loss for Brazil.

Julian Jakobi, an accountant who ran the motor-racing side of IMG and managed Senna and Prost at the same time, left IMG in 1992 to manage Senna alone and to build the international side of Ayrton Senna Licensing from London. At Spa in 1991 he had arrived with two contracts, one for McLaren and one for Williams; overnight Senna talked to Honda’s president, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, in Japan, and in the morning said he would stay another year. Jakobi remembered one of the most intelligent people he had met in business, a kind and caring man, and one who ran on Senna time: they used to say there was summertime, wintertime and Senna time, and he was always late.

From about 1990 his press officer was Betise Assumpção, formerly a sports journalist on O Estado de S. Paulo, and, by her own account, the only personal press officer to a driver in the paddock. Every day she sent stories to some 350 Brazilian newspapers and radio stations, and she set up a press window at which he gave interviews in a fixed order of languages: English, then Italian, then Portuguese. He was difficult, she said, a pain sometimes, but very honest. She later married Patrick Head.

The teams

At Toleman, in 1984, it was the managing director, Alex Hawkridge, who chose him over Martin Brundle: a close call, he said. Senna came to the signing of his three-year contract with an Oxford Concise English Dictionary, and the telephone line to Brazil stayed open until 4 a.m. while every word was gone over. When he signed for Lotus that summer without first buying himself out, Hawkridge stood him down for Monza, as 1984 tells. Senna paid what he owed, and apologised. The designer, Rory Byrne, found his feedback very concise, and Pat Symonds was his race engineer.

Peter Warr, who ran Lotus after Colin Chapman’s death, had wanted him since 1983 and signed him for 1985. His race engineer there, Steve Hallam, remembered a young man like a sponge, who lived in Norfolk that first year and came to the factory every day, had a desk there, ran with the mechanics at lunchtime and knew all 68 people who worked there. Hallam engineered all 16 of his Lotus poles and all six of his Lotus wins. When Senna’s move to McLaren became public in September 1987 the technical chief, Gérard Ducarouge, said that in that world it was rare to feel so good with a driver. With Warr he parted on bad terms.

Ron Dennis had offered to pay for his Formula 3 season of 1983 in exchange for an option on his services, and been turned down. When they came to terms for 1988 they settled the last half-million dollars on the toss of a coin. Later, in Mexico, Senna bet him US$10,000 that he could not eat a whole container of chilli; Dennis ate it, and still keeps the envelope Senna paid him in. It was Dennis who talked him out of stopping in the winter of 1989, through Viviane and his father.

Ayrton Senna was an extraordinary racing driver. His skills, craft, subtlety and courage were of such magnitude that he dwarfed his generation of drivers. With McLaren he won three world championships and in doing so gave pleasure, not only to all of us in the team, but also to millions of people. But to me he was more than all of this, more than a world champion, more than a successful businessman. To me he was a friend.

Steve Nichols, chief designer of the MP4/4 and his engineer in 1988 and 1989, remembered debriefs in which Senna went through every parameter, corner by corner, even when the car was very good. Drivers like Lauda, Prost and Senna, he thought, could not have been born like normal people. Nichols left with Prost for Ferrari, but they remained friends, he said. Neil Oatley led the design of the cars that followed, under Gordon Murray, the technical director in Senna’s first seasons at McLaren. In 1992 and 1993 his engineer was Giorgio Ascanelli, who went with him to Eddie Irvine’s office at Suzuka. Jo Ramírez, the team’s coordinator, from Mexico, was his confidant.

Soichiro Honda, the founder of the company, shook his hand at Suzuka after the first title, and when he died, in August 1991, Senna dedicated his win in Hungary to him. Honda’s president, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, once said that he was like his oldest son, but a bit spoiled. It was Kawamoto who kept him at McLaren in 1991, and when Honda decided to leave Formula One he went to Senna to apologise in person: their dream had been to beat Fangio’s five titles together. His questions never stopped. When an engine broke, the Honda engineer Toyoharu Tanabe remembered, Senna would ask not how he was but what had gone wrong and what they would do about it, and once he told them the throttle was not opening fully; they measured it, and the pedal’s travel was 2 mm short.

Frank Williams had given him his first drive in a Formula One car, at Donington in July 1983, and waited 10 years to sign him. In August 1992, when James Hunt told BBC viewers that Senna would drive for Williams for nothing, Williams’s answer was that he would ring him there and then. On the Saturday night at Imola in 1994 Senna went to Williams’s room after dinner, and when Williams asked, by Julian Jakobi’s account, whether he was sure he wanted to race, he said all was fine. Patrick Head and Adrian Newey built his last car, the Williams FW16-⁠Renault. David Brown, who had engineered the two previous champions, was his race engineer, and at the first debrief of the season, from habit, said something like bloody Senna, always there or thereabouts, with Senna sitting beside him, and turned the colour of a beetroot. Jo Ramírez, Adrian Newey and Frank Williams, at different times, each wondered whether he might one day have been President of Brazil.

Friends

Josef Leberer, an Austrian physiotherapist trained by Willi Dungl and recommended to McLaren by Niki Lauda, joined the team at the first race of 1988, in Rio. Afterwards Senna rang him and asked him to dinner; years later a friend told Leberer why. Senna had watched him treat Prost’s headache on the Friday, and decided he was worth having on his side. Leberer ran his training, his therapy and his diet, and cooked for him, and Senna could tell at once when someone else had made his salad dressing. Senna asked him to come with him whenever he changed teams, and in 1994 Leberer went with him to Williams. He named his son Josef Ayrton.

Professor Sid Watkins, the neurosurgeon who was Formula One’s medical delegate from 1978, was a friend away from the circuits too, and a guest at the farm in Brazil, where he was given Senna’s own room. What passed between them on the last Saturday at Imola is told in Imola, 1 May 1994.

It’s the deepest personal relationship that I’ve ever had with any driver. Whenever I got to the circuit and ran into Senna, he was usually being interviewed or surrounded by people. And the moment he saw me, his face would always light up with a beautiful grin. Because he had that wonderful humility, which is not common amongst racing drivers.

Galvão Bueno, TV Globo’s commentator, who met him at Zolder in 1982, is introduced in Senna and Brazil. Looking back in 2024, Galvão spoke of 10 absolutely spectacular years, of which only good things had stayed with him, and of the sulks when Senna lost: how many days, he once asked him, did he mean to keep that long face on?

Rubens Barrichello, 12 years younger, was the young Brazilian he helped along. Before the Pacific Grand Prix in 1994 he took him to Tokyo Disneyland, and after Aida, where Barrichello finished 3rd, Senna said how lovely it was to see the youngsters growing up. At Imola he went to see him at the medical centre after his crash on the Friday. In the last month, Barrichello said on the day after Imola, they had become real friends.

Ayrton was always very kind to me. He was like a big brother to me, because he knew I didn’t have a lot of money, so he always did his best to help me. He introduced me to people. He did whatever he could. But he was a hero as well as a big brother. I always used to watch his hands in the videos I’d bought or rented. The way he drove – wow! – I was just in love with that.

His best friend among the drivers, the official site says, was Gerhard Berger, his team-mate from 1990 to 1992. In Australia he filled Senna’s hotel room with frogs, with Lisa Dennis’s help, and when Senna complained asked him where he had found the snake. Near Monza in 1991, with Senna at the controls of a helicopter, he opened the door and dropped his briefcase from about 150 metres, and the pens inside burst over his papers. Ron Dennis said that before Berger arrived the idea of telling Ayrton a joke and seeing him laugh had not even been possible.

At the gate of the Cemitério do Morumby on 5 May 1994, Berger ran to Betise Assumpção: someone had told him that Prost and Jackie Stewart would be at the front of the coffin, in order of world titles. She moved him to the front. Barrichello, who was among the drivers at the coffin that day, has no memory of it. When he thinks of Ayrton, he says, he thinks of him smiling.