The Mineral Water Park is a cool and shady place, inside there are areas of frenetic activity and others that seem made for rest and meditation. One of these is on the edge of the park: protected by dense vegetation and a blanket of emotion there is the place where the memory of Ayrton Senna lives. A discreet and reserved cutout in the green quadrilateral, almost hidden among the trees: the large statue of the Brazilian pilot sitting down to think, the fragile net with messages, flags and photographs from all over the world attached to it dividing the park from the Tamburello curve, which today it has become a variant, at the point where Senna stopped on the afternoon of May 1st 1994.
The Tamburello and the Senna memorial are an almost obligatory stop even for those who come to Imola in the summer, for the rock concerts that are held in the Autodromo: leave the mat or towel to some well-intentioned friend to keep your place in line in the sun, you move away, you enter the greenery where the temperature drops and the silence grows, and the silence explodes near that fence beyond the curve. On the lethal developments of the very violent impact of the Williams number 2 against the barriers, investigations have for several years revealed a series of contributing causes which is also a brazen and sadistic combination of events: the anatomical need of the driver to raise the steering which ends up giving way , the speed of a curve to be taken at full speed precisely because in itself, without technical problems, it would be almost impossible to exit. And, above all, the infamous trick of the front suspension column splashing against the helmet, piercing the visor with the only lethal angle, neither ten centimeters below nor above, right on the frontal bone. Ayrton Senna’s body showed no other damage or injuries: there are those who swear that without that mocking mechanical splinter, a perfect and heartbreaking example of bad luck that can be seen very well, the Brazilian driver would have emerged from the car conscious, and on his legs.
As in the famous one Ayrton by Lucio Dalla, at Tamburello time really stopped at 2.17pm that day. At least, he did it on this side of the net. A lot has changed around. As the Bolognese artist sang in the piece written by Paolo Montevecchi, the circus has truly changed city: Formula 1 went to the Middle East, left Imola a long time ago, returned recently as something very different from that of thirty Years ago. Brazil has changed, which at the time had just launched the relaunch plan called Mercosur, a common market of the countries of the Southern Cone, but which in those years was going through a frightening phase of inflation and a condition of widespread poverty that was still rampant, while the Labor president Fernando Collor de Mello carried currency abroad and was dismissed on charges of corruption and tax evasion. The words of a crying woman upon the arrival of Senna’s coffin in São Paulo went around the world. «It was the only good thing about Brazil»: desperation, clarity and the gift of synthesis. Two months later, Baggio’s penalty went high over the crossbar, Brazil became world champions dedicating their triumph to Senna, and the country was slowly moving towards a new season which, with ups and downs, today sees it in the G20 world and greater power economy of Latin America.
For Brazil, and this is a large part of the profound meaning of those tears, Senna had done a lot. Not only ideally, for self-esteem and awareness of a country capable of self-determination, but above all materially. The sweet contradiction of a bourgeois from a wealthy family, tricampeón of one of the richest sports in the world, which has become for the poor the standard bearer of the spirit of revenge of a country on its knees, but not only. Something was already known about his charitable initiatives, much more was discovered after his death, upon the opening of his will and from the words of his sister Viviane, to whom he had confided the idea of a charitable foundation which today is the Ayrton Senna Institute. Senna’s sign, the sense of the tremendous emotional and spiritual damage produced by that accident, but also of the concrete and desperately material damage, thirty years later appears extremely simple: there are still many champions, very few authentic symbols, and one like Senna he would have served for a long time to come, in a transversal way that perhaps he has never had equal. And his obstinate and contrary direction as a vertical man, as a triumphant protester of the distortions, of all the curves to be straightened in a sport, a carousel or that circus that Dalla sang about, sometimes profoundly unfair like life, was needed at the same time.
«Just because I believe in God and have faith in Him doesn’t mean I’m immortal or immune to danger, I’m afraid of getting hurt just like everyone else», said the Brazilian driver at the time of McLaren, in one of the interviews collected in Asif Kapadia’s documentary, Seine. According to some stories, after the accident on Friday of his compatriot Barrichello (who in four days would have accompanied his coffin together with his eternal rival Alain Prost, his partner Damon Hill, Jackie Stewart and others) and after that on the fatal Saturday to Roland Ratzenberger, to lay the smelly veil of death over the weekend, Ayrton Senna would have even considered for a few moments leaving, getting off the carousel. He didn’t, and never would. He stopped him on the seventh lap on the big bend immediately after the Imola straight. But he didn’t stop something fundamental in his spirit, he never could.
