The Death of Ayrton Senna by Richard Williams

Author:Richard Williams [Richard Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141963914
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Senna and Adriane seemed settled, which may be a strange way to describe people who were constantly on the move, using private jets, helicopters and limousines to ferry them between the house on the Algarve at Quinta do Lago, the Rio beach house at Angra dos Reis, the São Paulo apartment on the Rua Paraguai and the da Silva family farm at Tatui.

‘I felt that, with Adriane Galisteu, Ayrton was having luck in life,’ Emerson Fittipaldi wrote after his death. ‘He had found his other half, and his maturity as a human being was visible.’

While Senna was alive, the discrepancy between his social background and that of Adriane, brought up by her mother in considerably less privileged circumstances, was allowed to carry no significance. When he was away, testing a car or fulfilling a sponsor’s requirements, Adriane took lessons in English, the lingua franca of the paddock, and jogged under the supervision of Nuno Cobra so that she would be able to run in the mornings with Ayrton, whose devotion to his physical fitness regime was absolute.

Cobra was a close friend of long standing, and something of a personal philosopher. ‘Life is passing you by,’ Adriane heard him telling Senna during the early weeks of 1994, as they trained on the running track of the University of São Paulo. ‘Seize it.’

In January Senna went to Estoril to try an updated version of last year’s Williams; the new FW16 would not be ready until the early days of March, three weeks before the first race of the season. In between there was plenty of opportunity to play on the jet-skis at Angra and the kart track at Tatui with his nieces Bia and Paulinha and his nephew Bruno, the children of Viviane and her husband, Flávio Lalli.

And there was time, too, for business matters, which were assuming a larger role in his life. ‘I am trying to find new activities, a source of motivation for when I’ve finished,’ he said. ‘I believe I will be able to find some real alternatives in business.’ In 1993, his million-dollars-a-race deal had led Forbes magazine to rank him third in their annual list of the highest-earning sports people. His off-track income, from Banco Nacional, other endorsements and his own ventures, would probably have doubled that. A videogame under his name sold 800,000 copies, for example; there was a range of leisure clothing. Now he moved into a higher gear, announcing that his company Senna Import was the new distributor of Audi cars in Brazil. Cavaro, an Italian bicycle manufacturer, launched a new carbon-fibre mountain bike bearing his name. There were collaborations with TAG-Heuer watches, Mont Blanc pens and Ducati motorcycles. And, closest to his heart, there was the launch of Senninha e sua turma (Senninha and his gang), a witty and well-drawn fortnightly children’s cartoon magazine devoted to the adventures of a boy racing driver bearing a close resemblance to Brazil’s real-life hero. Senninha also jet-skied, outwitted baddies, and, in edition number four, fell in love with a little blonde girl.

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