Senna Day – Ayrton lives, today and always. He doesn't need an anniversary. His soul returns with us, every time we recall it, rightly or wrongly, in every fold of asphalt, in every place where we admired him, in every curve where we waited for him. It was an intense shiver, a scolding, a thrust of the kidneys that went straight to the stomach. The yellow helmet as a powerful reminder, his soul as an invasion. Because sometimes a steering wheel means something else, in addition to the lines it draws on the circuits, in addition to the jolting maneuvers.
Senna is told, it lends itself to being narrated in all sorts of declinations, as befits the myth. Yet his legacy is much more important than his palmarès says, than those 41 mug shot victories, those 65 poles that seem like the students' roll call, those three reductive laurels.
Senna is anger and determination, total dedication, ferocious instinct in pursuing an objective. But, despite the shadows, the dark sides, the frowning expression and the winning attitude, Ayrton remains a man. This makes him different from many other pilots who have become myths, heroes or legends. That aura that it shares with the moon, in the intensity of its mobile gaze, transforms it into something indefinable, transversal, simply eternal.
He left us a world to remember at our leisure. Multiple images and frames to review every time between the somersaults of the heart. A wet and brutal track, where every trajectory was designed by talent, framed by virtue. A treacherous and infernal course, where every shot was legitimate, launched like a dart in an extreme challenge. Two sides of the same coin, necessary to be successful, to build masterpieces.
But above all he left us a world designed to our measure, to be revived according to personal experience. This is Ayrton's greatness: talking to people. A never-ending dialogue between a thousand experiences that creates the dimension of shared continuity. The yellow helmet insinuates itself into the most intimate folds of every memory, the black velvet gaze penetrates every curtain. Each of us, in front of Senna, shows our conscience, without feeling the need to hide it by virtue of a banal fan base.
Ayrton made us fall in love, he cradled us and delighted us with textbook feats. Many, like me, as children, could not fully understand his mastery, but were still enraptured by it, in ecstatic contemplation. The white and orange McLaren looked like a slice of dessert on a festive day, and never mind if the grown-up relatives blurted out because it beat the Ferraris: the icing on the cake was always the work of that Brazilian with the magnetic profile and invincible attitude.
I wasn't there in Imola in 1990, I was celebrating my first communion. I had a white dress, as in an unforgettable photo of my three years, while I wore my baptism dress to get behind the wheel of my beloved red car, a mix between the sacred and the profane. The home reception offered the opportunity to watch the Grand Prix in front of the TV. With dessert on my plate and trepidation in my eyes, I witnessed that departure. I had imagined a special race in honor of an important day. But Ayrton retired immediately and there was no glory for the Ferraris either.
We all remember the end of that world championship, a rebellious echo of struggle, an epic challenge between titans. But at that time there were no stains, in the brutal tension of a showdown between two warriors announcing the feud. Everything was legal, or almost. Some questions, not entirely satisfied, about the dynamics and the reason for an inexplicable gesture. A stolen pink newspaper, the confusion in hearing the reasons of the adults, with whom I shared my passion. Then the certainty, enlightened and simple as only children can find: Ayrton made a mistake, like everyone does, it is human to make mistakes.
Almost four years later, a small eternity in the tens of years, I found myself a teenager. Ayrton in the Williams, disoriented and dethroned by the young Schumacher, certain of being reborn in his Imola. Senna poleman, with death in his heart, with anger inside and with an Austrian flag that would have been his shroud, in the narrow single-seater transformed into a coffin. The race lasted a few laps, only seven, then the crash. The anguish that envelops like a torment and that querulous transmission, made of a comment that is never empty.
![Seine day](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/SENNA-WILL-750x375.webp)
I go out without saying a word, into the ghost neighborhood. Shutters closed, windows open in the early heat. A jarring contrast, which almost hurts. I walk without caring about the voices on the radio and TV, even ignoring the roar of the engines, which sometimes reaches my ears, announcing to me that the Grand Prix is in full swing. Yet I don't go back home, I continue to wander, in that nothingness that smells of desert, in that Milan of the past, which still knew how to move at the slow rhythm of thoughts. When I get back I lock myself in my room and write a poem.
“Where were you when Ayrton Senna died? Try asking this question to anyone. Each one will respond by describing a place, a precise moment.” Words by Lucio Dalla, reported in “Suite 200“, the delicate and intense tribute by Giorgio Terruzzi, who masterfully knew how to explore Ayrton's soul.
Well, this was Senna. A man who entered our lives with the arrogance of an engine, but remained within us with the lightness of embroidery. It has embellished moments of our existence making them worthy of being remembered, creating a dense, warm and indelible fabric. Something that goes beyond sport, success, competition. Something that those bright eyes tell us, two coffee beans ready to wake up the infinite.
Crediti foto: F1
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