Senna, forever

It took me five years to gather enough courage to actually download that grainy clip which replayed itself across my computer screen. Five y...

It took me five years to gather enough courage to actually download that grainy clip which replayed itself across my computer screen. Five years of admiring a man, a legend: Ayrton Senna, for whom even the word, talent, seemed an understatement.

Now, 10 years after that fatal crash during the Formula 1 Grand Prix, when his car rammed into a concrete wall on the Tamburella S-bend in Imola, I sat down to watch the grainy clip.

I wanted to overcome the demons, but ended up mourning once again for a man who had touched innumerable lives all over the world. The video clip, small and seemingly insignificant, is now forever engraved in my memory. Impossible to forget, I look at the trademark yellow-green helmet, so still in the broken car. It happened 10 years ago. But for me it is like yesterday.

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An F-1 fan, my biggest regret is that I got hooked on to it too late. Too late to watch Senna drive through the rain in Donnington, or battle Nigel Mansell to the closest win in Formula 1 history. I missed the Senna-Prost battles. And I would have done anything to watch Senna drive through the streets of Monaco.

Now all I get are grainy clips off the Net or borrowed videos from reluctant friends.

Ten years ago, Senna died, and changed the way many of us looked at Formula 1. Some stopped watching the races. A friend refuses to talk about Senna, because he can’t forget Sunday, May 1, 1994. The day Senna so improbably crashed in Imola. His eyes still reflect that unhealed pain. No one has taken Senna’s place since that day. No one can.

Now, Formula 1 has one man. He stands on the podium each time, most of the time. And few think of the battles on the track — made famous by Senna. The passion has given way to cold calculation. The perfect merger between the man and machine has disappeared. It is now all about the fastest machine.

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A reporter for the Guardian once said that Senna was most remembered for the races he never won. For the sheer style and panache with which he manoeuvred the curves and took the lead. It is now just a numbers game.

Things have changed. The Senna foundation Vivienne has now helped millions of Brazilian children. Safety measures increased after that horrifying weekend — something Senna had been lobbying for, for many years. In many ways, he is still alive.

Ten years ago Senna died. He took with him the zing of an F1 race. You see shades of him, sometimes, rarely, in some of the younger racers. And then I see the Brazilian flag at the podium and sigh: What if? What if?

He would have been 44 now. A man who lived his dream and died living it. But for me, he’ll never be dead. He will always be Senna, the man who drove through rain.