I made the decision there and then that I couldn't go to another racing driver's funeral while I was still an active professional myself. There was this outpouring of emotion. The great irony is that the awareness of Formula One grew massively after that, because of the global news that it made. People knew that he'd transcended the sport, he was beyond a racing driver… and then he was gone. Senna was hugely important to the people of Brazil and remains their hero 25 years on.
Twenty-five years on, we drove the streets of Sao Paulo that his coffin — draped in a Brazilian flag — travelled down on May 4, An estimated three million people lined the highway, at least 20 deep on all sides of the six-lane road. At a private dinner with Sir Jackie Stewart in Sao Paulo, he speaks of his emotion at being a pall-bearer, of 'carrying Ayrton to his final resting place'. It was a moment that those present in will never forget. Even now, it is easy to understand how important Senna was to Brazil at that time.
This is a country with huge divisions between the wealthy and poor. Alongside gated communities with private pools in each home, there are favelas riddled with poverty, where residents fight for every meal. To have a hero like Senna gave them hope. He lifted his head above the parapet and turned himself into a champion. And he cared about them, too.
The money he was earning was astronomical in those final years, but plenty of it was handed out to the poor of Sao Paulo. Senna's famous yellow and green helmet sits atop his coffin, itself draped in a Brazil flag. Senna handed out millions to the young and poor in Brazil, and his foundation is still growing. Speaking to Sportsmail at Interlagos, Bruno Senna - who grew up on his uncle Ayrton's farm, racing against him - explains: 'Ayrton used to make charitable donations anonymously to help people, because he realised that he was one of the people lucky enough to have education, food on his plate, that he was able to become what he became.
You can give the money with the best of intentions, but not necessarily the money is doing the right thing. Unfortunately he passed away shortly after, and my mum took the initiative to create the foundation: the Ayrton Senna Institute.
It is, truthfully, his biggest legacy by a distance. Brazil is a huge country, fifth largest in terms of surface area, and sixth by population. Wealth inequality in Brazil is huge; next to favelas, there are swimming pools on every balcony.
At the end of their school education, only three in 10 Brazilian children can read or write to the expected standard. Only one in 10 has the required maths level. An alarming example of the wealth inequality comes in Rio de Janeiro. A stone's throw away, beyond the border into Rocinha, you can shave nine years off your life expectancy with the click of a finger. This is the Brazil Senna wanted to change, this is the Brazil he donated money to, and this is the Brazil his Institute is helping 25 years on.
His sister Viviane, the founder of the charity, explains: 'Ayrton is considered one of the greatest drivers of all-time, be it for his incredible talent, be it for his impressive determination, be it for the show he used to give on the racing track. It was almost magic. But all this does not define the man Ayrton Senna. The Ayrton Senna Institute is helping 1. Heineken's ObrigadoSenna campaign donated money to the Institute for every social post.
We could see all this when he chose the colours of his helmet, for example. It always had green and yellow. When he won a race, he would always raise the Brazilian flag. And from this non-conformism came the desire to do something to change this reality. This is a side of Ayrton which was not known to everyone. Needless to say, it didn't go down well. Accounts vary on the severity of the confrontation after the race, but suffice it to say it involved three things: Senna's fist, Irvine's face, and the floor.
Senna's philosophical outlook is worthy of an entire book of study. He described driving in metaphysical terms, and its pursuit as a spiritual endeavor: "On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.
And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'OK, this is the limit. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. Ayrton went with his fellow driver and eventual teammate, Gerhard Berger , to see what could be done in the name of safety at Imola's Tamburello corner , after Berger and several others had been involved in serious crashes there.
Together, they climbed through a partition in the retaining wall to investigate the surroundings. Senna wanted to move the retaining wall back, but the Santerno River prevented doing so. Senna told Berger that he feared someone would die in that spot. Five years later, his words proved eerily prescient. While Honda was designing the original NSX , it also had a highly successful partnership with Senna and McLaren, so Senna spent a lot of time in Japan, driving and giving feedback to help the engineers refine the car.
Towards the end of the race, his transmission started failing, and he lost third, fourth, and eventually fifth gear. He drove lap after lap stuck in sixth, and through sheer willpower managed to get the car around the course just fast enough that no one caught him. After he won, he was so exhausted he had to be helped from the car , while the whole of Brazil nominated him for canonization.
Senna seemingly drove like it was dry, and schooled past and future world champions like Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher , and Damon Hill like they were amateurs, passing them all before even finishing the first lap. In the years that followed, Audi Senna Ltda. The Frenchman had crashed very heavily and was knocked unconscious.
Senna was the only driver to stop. He ran from his car in front of very high-speed traffic, shut off Comas' engine so it wouldn't catch fire, then held his head to stabilize his neck until the paramedics could arrive.
The push to make F1 a safer sport in the wake of Senna's death was massive -- and never ended. As recently as Fernando Alonso at the Australian Grand Prix, but scattered every so often through the past two decades, evidence of the progress comes to light as drivers walk away with minor injuries from incidents that would have meant certain death in a previous era.
In fact, only one F1 driver has died as a result of crashing in a race since Senna. Through sheer willpower, Senna managed to drive fast enough to take the chequered flag, but so exhausted from his battle, he had to be lifted from his McLaren and driven to the podium in the medical car.
A complete shuffling off the order minutes before the funeral would fix that, while Berger went on to guide Bruno Senna in his Formula 1 ambitions. After climbing through a partition in the retaining wall to investigate the surroundings, Senna concluded that somebody would lose their life there, and five years later, it proved to be his that would be cruelly taken. But, although his charity work was kept largely on the hush until after his death, he was very active and to this day his legacy lives on through Instituto Ayrton Senna, helping to prepare children for the future, through education.
They are learning Scratch, a piece of software developed by MIT experts that aims to teach kids how to code. Most public schools in Brazil don't have computer coding in their curriculum. In fact, most schools are struggling to get kids to learn the basics, such as maths and Portuguese, as Brazil ranks among the worst countries in the world in school exams.
Students and staff in Itatiba have little interest in Formula 1. But much of what is going on in the classroom is part of the legacy of legendary driver Ayrton Senna, killed in a tragic accident during the San Marino Grand Prix on 1 May The coding class is a project run by the Ayrton Senna Foundation, a non-governmental organisation NGO that was founded by Ayrton's sister Viviane a few months after his death.
Most of the money for the Foundation comes from managing Senna's brand and legacy. Ayrton Senna is still one of the most valuable sporting brands in the world. And it's all a family affair. The foundation uses the money it raises to fund ambitious educational projects, which are today its core business.
We are the other way around. Ayrton Senna is still a goldmine in terms of marketing. Research conducted in by the Boston Consulting Group suggests Senna is in the same league as tennis superstar Roger Federer and basketball legend Michael Jordan in terms of product endorsement potential. Another survey of Brazilian athletes who competed in last year's Rio Olympics - many of them too young to have seen Senna race - ranked him as their biggest source of inspiration, above past and present idols such as Neymar and Pele.
The foundation does its best to fully explore the marketing potential, licensing hundreds of products with Senna's face and name on it. It caters for two groups of consumers. The first are Formula 1 fans who buy products such as books, DVDs, helmets and collectible souvenirs.
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