CHAPTER 26
The Last Love Story
So close to happiness
It was a love story that started on 15th March 1993, at 4 o’clock, when Adriane, a 19-year-old Brazilian model went to the offices of the Elite model agency in São Paulo for an audition. It was nothing special and Adriane almost turned it down as a job beneath her. Shell wanted hospitality hostesses for the 1993 Brazilian Grand Prix, and was ready to pay modelling rates for four days’ work. The oil company wanted the best: the best worked for Elite, and the oil giant was ready to pay.
The audition almost ended in tears when two Shell executives asked Adriane to model a swimsuit. She misunderstood and said she was walking out. She only calmed down when they told her the uniform for the job had the same cut as a swimsuit, which was why it was necessary. Three directors of Shell turned out personally at the audition to approve the girls. The hospitality arrangements at the annual Brazilian Grand Prix were very important. Big deals would be hatched there and everything had to be perfect.
Adriane passed the audition and got the job. She and nine other girls were offered $1,000 each for the weekend’s work.
Formula One was not entirely strange to Adriane. On a break from a photo-shoot in Portugal in 1990, she had watched Nigel Mansell win the Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril.
The proceedings for the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend kicked off on the Thursday following the audition with a press conference, but Adriane wasn’t there. She had a modelling job and refused to break the agreement. To her, the work for Shell was just another job, albeit hostessing rather than posing for a camera, which she had done since the age of 12. As she says: “It never crossed my mind that during that weekend I would find the love of my life.”
Adriane was on her way to becoming a top model in Brazil. She was always busy, admittedly not earning a fortune, but always in demand. Already she had been abroad half-a-dozen times on assignments, and was still only 19 years old.
By 5am on Friday 19th March, she was out of bed and in a taxi waiting to take her – still yawning – to the Elite model agency’s offices in the middle of São Paulo. She met the other nine girls and headed off to the circuit in a specially hired bus before the circuit traffic built up. Adriane was learning quickly that a downside of being a member of the inner circle of the Formula One circus was that the mornings were always very early. She remembers: “At the circuit we were quickly told how Formula One operates so that we wouldn’t just stand there with our pretty faces and bodies. They introduced us to the jargon of the circuit: pitwall, cockpit, pitlane, etc.”
Friday went, Saturday came and Adriane barely knew why she had even bothered to go home in-between, so relentless was the pace of the event.
Whispers went around the hospitality suite that Ayrton Senna, having qualified third for McLaren, would be arriving. Senna was a hero in his homeland and it was well known that he was single again. He had finally split up with his long-standing girlfriend Xuxa the year before and there were already rumours that the Shell models had caught his attention. Even the experienced models got excited and rushed to the bathroom, crowding around the mirror. Adriane, however, was non-plussed. She wasn’t a Formula One fan and Senna held the least interest for her. That was until she saw him.
He arrived in a frenzy, surrounded by fans and photographers. All Adriane could see was his blue cap. She was immediately impressed with the way he managed to greet everyone personally and take the whole scene in. He made a short speech and looked over at Adriane. None of the girls could tell who had caught his eye. She remembers: “I felt he looked at me. But was it me or Nara who was just behind me? Or was it just an empty gaze?” By then she was very interested.
Ten Shell guests were allocated to each girl and Adriane visited the pit garage with her guests. But she didn’t see Senna. Then, on Sunday, as she was walking through the pitlane with some more guests, a man called Jacir approached her and said: “I am Ayrton Senna’s personal assistant. He has asked me to get your phone number.” She gave him her home number and Elite’s office number. Then Antonio Braga came up and asked her for her fax number. He hinted at Senna’s interest in her. Braga, who was a banker and lived in Portugal, was attending the race as Senna’s guest. It was the start of a lifetime friendship between Adriane and Braga, his wife Luiza and their daughters, Joanna and Maria.
Jacir, meanwhile, had also asked half-a-dozen other girls for their phone numbers. Later that day, before the race, Senna went to the hospitality suite again. Shell was a very important McLaren sponsor. He made another speech and told the assembled guests: “I can win.” The girls were all lined up right in front of him in a protective cordon as he spoke. Adriane got her first close-up look at him. This time his gaze caught hers and he gave her a smile. She admits that she was hooked on him from that moment, but was determined not to show it.
In the race, after Alain Prost retired, Senna stormed to victory at his home Grand Prix. It meant a celebration party that night at the Limelight Club in the middle of São Paulo. Adriane went along reluctantly and feigned tiredness, making out she was exhausted after her hectic three days. In truth she was frightened by what was happening to her. She says: “As if it was an invented Cinderella story he arrived when the clock struck 12.” For some reason she had not expected him to attend, and had dressed down in jeans and a black top, with a red silk scarf.
She resolved to say hello to Senna and leave. She found him in a padded banquette with his 27-year-old brother, Leonardo, talking to Brazilian footballer Pelé. The younger Senna was also popular with women and the table was surrounded by at least a dozen girls, dressed to the nines, crowding out the three men. As it happened because she was dressed down and, had made no effort, she stood out. She shook his hand and said she was just leaving. But Senna pulled her towards him and persuaded her to stay for a drink. She was scared and retreated to her role as Shell’s representative. He grabbed her hand as she babbled some PR-speak. Looking back, it was comical, as Adriane remembers: “I said, ‘You were great. I am here on behalf of Shell’. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. Only briefly, to get a glass of champagne which he handed to me.” But Adriane had never drunk alcohol and asked for a regular Coca-Cola.
From this point accounts of that night vary. Adriane insists she left immediately afterwards whilst others insist they remember her dancing the night away with Senna. But it appeared that the eye-witnesses mistook Adriane for another blonde model with whom Senna did indeed dance the night away.
Adriane says she turned to him and said: “I have to go, you have my phone number.” She simply wasn’t prepared to stay and compete with all the other girls. It wasn’t her style. By then she wanted him quite badly and knew that walking away was a risk. But walk away she did.
Jacir followed her at Senna’s behest and invited her to a barbecue that the driver was holding at his beach house in Angra a few days later. It was a going-away party before Senna returned to Europe for the European season. Adriane didn’t give Jacir an answer and rushed off home.
Back at home, her mother’s maid woke her early the next day and told her Ayrton Senna was on the phone. Annoyed, she went to the phone thinking it was Jacir. She rasped ‘So?’ into the phone, in the best sarcastic manner she could manage. To her intense surprise, it was Senna himself, virtually cooing down the phone. She says: “The sweet and calm voice in which he answered me back was like a cold shower cooling me down.”
He had rung to invite her to his barbecue. Continuing her ‘hard to get’ stance, she was non-committal and told him she had to rush for an audition. He asked her to call him when she had finished and gave her his direct phone number.
She admits that she melted from that moment on, and couldn’t resist calling him back as soon as she got the chance, as it happens, from a call box. Senna took her call and was very interested in the TV commercial she had been shooting – and which, ironically, starred his great track rival Nelson Piquet. Still attempting to play hard to get, when Senna mentioned the barbecue again, she changed the subject. She asked him his star sign. “Aries,” he replied. “Me too,” she said.
She told him she was unsure of the barbecue because she didn’t know him. He replied that everyone knew him. To get to know him better, he invited her to dinner with his friends at a famous restaurant called The Place in São Paulo. But later that evening she heard other girls had been invited and furious she upped the stakes dramatically, and stood him up. Nevertheless, just in case he called the next day, she packed a small weekend bag and put it in the boot of her car ready to go to Angra.
Senna had indeed invited one of the other girls from Shell, named Daniela, to dinner. Daniela was a blue-eyed blonde from southern Brazil.
The following morning he dropped her off at the Elite model agency where Adriane was waiting to go on a job. Inside Daniela referred to Senna as her new boyfriend and left no one in any doubt as to what had happened the night before.
Adriane was insanely jealous and decided she had probably overplayed her hand and that she had nothing to lose by calling him. When she did he asked her to Angra again and, amazingly, she told him she was still thinking about it. She admits now that she was desperate to say yes.
What happened next was that Adriane found herself in Senna’s 17th-floor apartment in São Paulo, in circumstances she admits she couldn’t control. He had invited her over and she had gone straight away. She remembers he was wearing cream-coloured slacks and no shirt. When she arrived he was doing grass slides across the two-inch-thick shagpile carpet in the cavernous apartment he shared with his brother Leonardo.
When they had finished they sat on different sofas, silent and shy. He finally said: “I am pleased to meet you. My name is Ayrton Senna da Silva. I am 33 years old and I do not have a girlfriend.”
She asked him about Daniela and he pretended he couldn’t remember who she was. He admitted he had got drunk the night before.
They talked for an hour-and-a-half. Then she got her bag from her car in the basement car park and jumped into his black Honda NSX to go to his offices in the suburb of Santana, where his helicopter was waiting on the roof. As she had suspected also waiting on the roof were Daniela and another model who had also worked for Shell at the Grand Prix, plus Senna’s personal photographer Norio Koike. Senna had hedged his bets and Daniela was as shocked to see Adriane as Adriane was to see her.
It was Adriane’s first trip in a helicopter and once the girls’ shock of finding each other on the trip subsided the atmosphere was good as they all looked forward to a weekend at the sea.
They were greeted at Angra by housekeepers Maria and Matesus, along with Senna’s dog Quinda. She also found out that Senna was called ‘Beco’ by his Brazilian friends.
Adriane discovered Angra was a paradise on earth and was Senna’s private playground. It had a wonderful pool and was situated directly on the beach. The waves came right up to the bedroom windows. By day the resort was swamped in sunlight, by night it was bathed in moonlight.
Senna’s brother Leonardo and his assistant Jacir were also there.
On the first evening, Senna and Adriane danced the night away in his private discotheque and afterwards he showed her to her own room. They did not even kiss. She says: “I felt that each minute the temperature between us kept rising. He sat by my side. There was something special in his smiling tanned face. It was clear he found it very difficult to take the first step. And I felt, for the first time, the warmth of the proximity – real and spontaneous. Between us there was something special: a long talk, a look, a touch. He tried to kiss me. I backed up – not yet.”
Daniela and the other girl were forgotten but it seemed to take forever for any real intimacy to develop. In the end, they did kiss. For Adriane, it was immediate love and she felt as though her world had stopped turning. Then they fell asleep in each other’s arms. She remembers the details of that first kiss: “Standing, he kissed me. The first kiss. A real kiss. And then one more, another one, and another one. Kisses, kisses and more kisses. It seemed like the night had stopped around us – everything stopped, the night, time, the noises, the sea, the wind. Kisses and caresses. But nothing more than that.”
The next day brought renewed embarrassment and Adriane kept her distance. Saturday was a perfect day with perfect weather and they took his speedboat out. Everything was recorded by Norio Koike, who clicked his camera seemingly non-stop.
The intimacy problem was eventually solved by the arrival of more guests, which meant Adriane had to vacate her own room and share. He took her up to his immaculate bedroom and said: “This is my room. Now it is also yours. Make yourself at home.” She didn’t demur. It was there that she was first introduced to Senna’s eccentricities. In his vast wardrobes she counted 40 pairs of tennis trainers and hundreds of pairs of shoes. There were also endless belts. He appeared obsessed with belts. He also had enough clothes to change twice a day without washing anything for a year. And this was just one of his four homes. He said to her: “I am a bit fanatical about clothes.” She nodded in agreement. She told him she was obsessed with creams and perfumes. Then he showed her to the bathroom and his own creams and perfumes, which rivalled hers.
She remembers her feelings that day: “To me sharing his bedroom didn’t necessarily mean that we’d have sex. I adored his paradise and I wanted to make sure that I would be coming back there as a friend or a girlfriend.”
That night she donned what she called “armoured pyjamas” and they fell asleep. Until he woke her up and asked if he had to marry her to have sex. Then he started caressing her feet, her weak point. He told her: “You are the first woman in three years to provoke desire in me. I don’t feel like kissing your feet, I want to kiss your entire body.”
It finally happened, and then she fell into blissful sleep. When she woke he was gone. She looked out of the window and discovered him whistling on the pier, deep in thought. Then in the middle of that afternoon he took her in his helicopter to Angra airport for the short flight back to São Paulo. She was scheduled for a fashion show the next morning. After that, they were inseparable, staying at his apartment in São Paulo, or the family farm at Tatui, his parents’ home. She would return to Angra many times over the next 12 months. As the relationship developed he she her if she would join him at the Monaco Grand Prix. Monaco was very social and he liked to have a girlfriend with him at the race, especially as he believed he would win again for the sixth time in 1993 and would need a partner for the winners ball thrown by Prince Rainier.
So on 17th May Adriane got ready to go to Europe. It would be the first time she would be publicly at his side. She was the Shell grid girl transported to be the girlfriend of the fastest driver alive, at the most glamorous place on earth. On arriving in the principality, they went straight to Senna’s small Monaco apartment to be greeted by his Monte Carlo housekeeper Isabel, who was Portuguese. He only stayed there for a week a year, for the race. He had sold the big apartment he used when Monaco was his permanent home, before moving to the Algarve in Portugal two years before. But for tax purposes he listed Monte Carlo as his home.
Senna walked Adriane around the Monte Carlo track, introducing her to the intricacies of driving a Formula One car. He also took her to the casino, where they quickly lost the $300 they had changed into chips.
Adriane had brought three evening gowns to prepare for the annual post-race ball, where she also sensed her new boyfriend would take the laurels. After all, he had won Monaco five times previously and his car was ideally suited to the tight circuit.
She was hampered at the ball by only being able to converse in Portuguese as her English was very limited. She was introduced to Betise Assumpção, Senna’s press secretary, who was Brazilian herself.
Senna hardly let go of her all weekend in Monaco. Wherever they went they attracted the intense attention of photographers and fans. But on Thursday when the racing proper began, she noticed a sudden change in him. At night he changed into his pyjamas and took the bible to read as he went to sleep. It was a different man to the one she normally shared her life with.
During practice, when Senna had a small accident and hit the guardrail, Adriane quickly ran down to the track from the apartment – but it was nothing. On the Sunday she watched the race from the commentary box of Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo alongside Senna’s friends, Galvao Bueno and Reginaldo Leme.
When he won, she ran from the box to be with him and cried as the Brazilian national anthem was played. In the evening, they dressed up and went to the sporting club to collect his prize. Few journalists knew who she was and hundreds of picture captions on Monday morning, in newspapers all over the world, would call her ‘the mysterious Brazilian blonde’.
The couple sat on the top table at the sporting club. When Adriane turned around she saw she was sat next to Prince Albert of Monaco on one side, while on her other side were Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Cindy Crawford and Princess Caroline. As Adriane ignored the champagne, Senna joined her in drinking Coca-Cola. Afterwards they went to Jimmyz’, the most famous nightclub in the world and a symbol of hedonism in Monte Carlo. As they sat at their table next to the dance floor, Adriane was astonished by the enormous number of girls who threw themselves at her boyfriend, some quite brazenly.
When they got home and drifted into sleep, Adriane thought to herself: “Is it a dream? Is it true?”
After Monaco, they flew from Nice to London in Senna’s HS125 jet flown by Captain O’Mahoney. It was Adriane’s first visit. On 26th May, they flew home to Brazil after an extraordinary nine days. They only returned so quickly because Adriane had bookings and relied on her income as a model to live.
She remembers now: “Looking back, I realise it was a good combination: our first trip abroad had been the best trip of all trips. It’s because later things got complicated on the tracks, problems arose in McLaren, victories became less frequent and tensions built up.”
Back in Brazil, as he left every fortnight for a race, she befriended his brother Leonardo. The young man confided in her and asked her whether he should marry his long-standing girlfriend. Later this relationship would sour and Leonardo perceived that Adriane was driving a wedge between Senna and his family.
That summer she accompanied Senna to Europe whenever she could and stayed at his Algarve house. On one trip his mother and sister joined them, and with Adriane jetted off on shopping trips to Europe’s capitals. The shopping almost got out of hand. When Senna met up with them in Paris in mid-July he went to their hotel rooms and found they had 38 pieces of luggage between four of them. Later that relationship would also sour for the same reasons.
Adriane’s second Grand Prix of 1993 was to be Hungary, where they would stay at the new Kempinski Hotel in Budapest on the banks of the Danube. It was special for her as she had never been and she had Hungarian ancestry. Her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Agnes, had migrated from Hungary to Brazil during World War II.
Hungary marked a low spot in his relations with Ron Dennis and he asked Adriane to teach him Hungarian swear words to use if the need arose.
In the evenings they forgot his troubles and walked by the side of the Danube. They shared the visit with Senna’s close friends, Christian and Birgit Schues and their two young children. Adriane stayed in Budapest for much of the time Senna was at the track.
On race day, Senna retired from the Grand Prix and they were to attend the post-race party at the Gundel restaurant staged by the race organisers. There, now-famous pictures were taken of them being serenaded by a violinist. It was another magical evening. Adriane says now: “It was a photo of two people in love. We were in love.” Hungarian-born publisher, Andrew Frankl was at the Philip Morris-sponsored party. He was a long-time friend of Senna’s from his days as publisher of Truck magazine; and had met him at the Toleman team when it was owned by the eponymous transport company. He says: “Ayrton was in tremendous form, clearly much in love, holding hands with Adriane. It was so obvious. I was convinced they would marry.”
In the middle of August, back in Brazil, Senna bought Adriane a new car, a silver Fiat Uno. He called it ‘her present for August’. She immediately phoned his mother, who said: “Come and take me for a drive.”
All summer it was the same pattern, as Senna returned to Brazil after every race to spend time with Adriane at Angra. Looking back now, she thinks it was someone telling him time was running out and he had to make the most if it.
On one occasion, he returned from Belgium and was angry at coming fourth. When she picked him up from the airport in her Fiat he asked for the keys, saying: “Where is the key to the tin of sardines?” He took the wheel, pursued by waiting photographers keen to have photos of him with the mystery Brazilian blonde. Reporters still did not know her name and the love story was the talk of Brazil. It was getting her plenty of work – her picture was on billboards advertising jeans all over São Paulo.
On 3rd September they boarded a flight to stay at his house in the Algarve and later proceeded to the Portuguese Grand Prix in Estoril. But first it was to Monza and Italy. They flew into Lisbon, where Captain O’Mahoney collected them in the HS125 to fly on to Faro before going to Lake Como for the Italian Grand Prix, the penultimate race of the European season.
Tennis ace Monica Seles was there to cheer her favourite driver, but Senna retired halfway through and drove straight back to the hotel with not a word to Adriane. He ordered room service, choosing for her without asking what she wanted. When crowds began cheering his name in the car park he snapped out of his bad mood. He said to her: “But I lost – these Italians are crazy.” She told him: “They’re crazy for you.” Sensing his mood, she added: “Are you finding it too hard having me around?” He said: “I promise you that when we leave Italy I will leave the frown behind.” That night she went to the hotel bathroom and wrote on the mirror in lipstick:’Good Morning! Smile’.
The next two weeks were spent in the Algarve. Senna trained hard – the Por tuguese Grand Prix was like his home race and he wanted to do well. But this year it was even more important. Inside his briefcase was a fax copy of a signed option with Williams to drive for 1994, replacing Alain Prost, who was retiring.
He was very moody during that period. The fax machine in the Algarve house whirred continually with draft contracts and notes from his manager, Julian Jakobi, in England. Adriane remembers one phone call with Frank Williams in England lasting a staggering five hours and 40 minutes. He couldn’t sleep until the negotiations were over: when the document with Frank Williams’ signature on it was faxed through, he signed it and faxed it straight back.
When they left for Estoril and the race she packed up ready to fly home immediately after the race without him. She would next meet him in Tokyo on the Monday after the Japanese race. The last two Grand Prix events of the year, in Japan and Australia, were a fortnight apart and they decided to take a holiday in-between, joking it would be a honeymoon rehearsal. Senna sensed he was in for a change of luck and indeed he did win both of the last races.
A fortnight later Adriane started the 28-hour flight from Brazil to Japan and she was picked up at Tokyo’s Narita airport by photographer Norio Koike. She found Senna in his hotel cursing an Irish driver, Eddie Irvine, then a rookie. Earlier he had had a bust-up with Irvine who, he made clear, he didn’t like. Senna had ended up hitting him.
Adriane and Senna flew to Bora Bora in Tahiti for an idyllic week before the race in Adelaide. But then Senna fell ill after four days and spent the last two in bed. As they flew to Australia, his strength returned. At the airport he bought a dozen belts. and she knew he was well again.
But help was at hand as Josef Leberer restored him to full fitness with some long massages and he was soon back on top form winning the race.
After two days off in Sydney, they flew back to São Paulo for five months of hedonism. It was a glorious routine, splitting their time between the family farm in Tatui, his São Paulo apartment and the beach house in Angra. It started off with six unbroken weeks in Brazil. Adriane remembers: “Beco and I came back from Europe, and were living together at the apartment in Rua Paraguai, sharing the same friends, going out to dinner, we were a typical boyfriend and girlfriend – although there was no wedding ring, there were intimacies like sleeping together in his parents’ house. I felt he liked to show me off a bit.” At the beginning of December they flew to Europe for a go-kart race at Bercy in France. Belgian driver Bertrand Gachot, a former Grand Prix regular and a friend of Senna’s, recalls: “I saw them at Bercy a lot and he was very much in love with her. They didn’t separate for one minute and it was really nice to see.”
Gachot had a serious soft spot for Senna. When he was jailed for an assault on a London taxi driver in mid-1991, Senna was the only driver who came forward as a character witness, writing a letter of support to the English judge who jailed him.
From Bercy, they flew to Heathrow and on to the Williams factory in Berkshire for a seat fitting. It was his first visit there and the staff were sworn to secrecy. His move had not been declared but Williams wanted to make another splashy announcement for maximum publicity. Frank Williams greeted them personally. Adriane noted that the close relationship with Frank Williams was totally different from Senna’s relationship with McLaren team principal Ron Dennis. He had told her Ron was ‘moody’ which he found increasingly difficult to cope with. He said Frank was a ‘real team manager’, stressing ‘manager’. But he added that although the relationship between him and Dennis had cooled, he loved the McLaren team to the extent that he felt it was his real family and that he would return one day if circumstances were different. In her book Adriane notes that in 1994 she observed, while standing in the pit garage, that Dennis seemed to take a perverse pleasure every time Senna retired that year. For certain relations between them were strained, which Senna told her was a shame after so much success.
But that was all in the past, as Senna took her hand and toured the Williams factory, introducing himself and her to the Williams people – his new home for at least the next three years. His actions were a clear sign she was a fixture in his life and would be a part of his new life at Williams.
From Heathrow again, it was straight back to Brazil, and Christmas with the da Silva family at Tatui. But Adriane decided at the last minute that she must return to her mother and 80-year-old grandmother, who was very ill, and she left on Christmas Eve. She borrowed Senna’s mother’s Volkswagen car to drive back to São Paulo.
The official Christmas celebrations with Senna’s parents lasted until 17th January and, in-between, Senna took a quick trip to Europe, testing the new car and tying up business deals in Germany. He already had one eye on life after Formula One and wanted to create a business to challenge him when he anticipated retiring, at the turn of the century. He wanted to import the best European goods to Brazil. After he returned to Brazil on 24th January, they went straight to Angra. Their happiness was interrupted when Adriane’s grandmother died on 26th January 1994. Otherwise it was an uninterrupted six weeks before his home race opened the season. There would be one more testing trip to Europe before that, but without Adriane.
During the holiday and that period before the first race, they talked deeply. He discussed his past girlfriends with her. She says: “It was done in an atmosphere of passion and confidences. He talked to me about his past love relationships as if to put them behind him.”
She says of that time they had together: “I felt I had been given a present by the gods.” Senna also asked her about her ex’s. And he spoke of claims that were currently being made in the Brazilian press about an illegitimate daughter called Vitoria, who he was supposed to have fathered by a girl called Marcella Praddo. Senna admitted he had spent the previous New Year’s Eve with Marcella but that the baby could not possibly be his. (Later proved by DNA tests after he died). They spoke as the waves lapped their bedroom windows. The idyll was only disturbed when Senna had an accident on his jet-ski, and almost stopped breathing after he hit the water very badly. But it was only a momentary panic. Resuscitated, he recovered by laying perfectly still for a week.
Senna went to Europe again, for a pre-arranged testing and visit to Germany, at the beginning of March and returned to Brazil on the 11th. They then went back to Angra. The sojourn was only interrupted by the return to São Paulo for the Brazilian Grand Prix, the biggest sporting event of the year in Brazil.
But shortly after the dreamy days at Angra, a problem arose that threatened the very existence of the relationship. Adriane was becoming famous as Senna’s girlfriend and he warned her about being exploited by the media for that fame. From being a mystery blonde, in Brazil she was already a celebrity in her own right. She didn’t see trouble coming and his words of warning fell on deaf, 20-year-old ears.
She received the chance of a big photo-shoot with a Brazilian weekly magazine called Caras, the Brazilian equivalent of Hello! magazine. It was a swimwear shoot on Camburi beach. Adriane asked Senna’s permission and, when he realised the photographer would be Fabio Cabral, he agreed she should do it.
Senna initially approved of the individual photos he was shown on 21st March, as he and Adriane celebrated his 34th birthday, before the magazine was published. She also showed them to his mother, who thought they were beautiful. But when the magazine was published, two days later, the photos had been arranged in a provocative fashion over a 12-page feature and on the cover. Senna thought it was cheap, and exploited their relationship. It didn’t help that the magazine was published in the same week as the Brazilian Grand Prix. The magazine’s editor believed he was introducing properly the beautiful girlfriend of the national hero. Senna thought differently and was incensed. As Adriane looked at the magazine, she remembers her inner thoughts: “I felt a shiver down my spine. The article was beautiful. The text was perfect. But I kept asking myself, should I have done it?”
That night in the Rua Paraguai apartment, Senna exploded: “You look like this, I think a commoner. How could you let them do this?” He threw the magazine against the wall of the apartment he shared with his brother.
Adriane remembers: “I didn’t move. Any argument would have been in vain. Dozens of times I had seen him like that, but never as a victim. I never thought it would be me.”
She told him she was a model. That was what she did and she needed the work and the money. He shot back: “You must understand that you are not the same person any more, Adriane. Now you are my girlfriend. You don’t have to show the world you have a beautiful body, this other side of Adriane Galisteu.” She knew she was in real trouble as he had never called her Adriane before. He had always known her as ‘Dri’. She said: “I am not forcing you to understand, I am very happy about my choices.”
She remembers it as if it was yesterday: “I wanted to cry, but I tried not to. I proposed the end of our relationship, but my heart was the size of a pea and cried ‘no, no’. Suddenly, I noticed tears were rolling down his face. I understood that he was telling me ‘Yes, it’s over, goodbye…’ I told him: ‘We have had a wonderful time. We’ve never had a fight like this. I’m really shocked with what happened here today. You showed me an Ayrton that I couldn’t recognise’.”
When she asked him what he specifically didn’t like, he said: “All this shit, especially the photos.” She admitted to him she had been wrong, and apologised. All that night the argument continued. In the morning, he said to her: “I never doubted your character, I only said I didn’t like what happened.” As they parted, he admitted he was also jealous, a trait not usually part of his character, as he said: “You should show your beautiful body only to me.” She shot back: “I am jealous myself.” He asked her to buy the copyright of the photos from the magazine so he could keep them himself.
He later admitted he had been irritated by the photographer’s ‘boldness’. He said: “I am experienced by the banana skins people place in the way of famous and respected people. But you are just a girl and you must be careful not to hurt yourself.”
The Brazilian Grand Prix came and went. Senna got pole position, but retired after a spin, and his new great rival, Michael Schumacher, won. The following Tuesday he had hired an aircraft hangar in which he would announce to the Brazilian motor trade that he was introducing the German Audi range of cars into Brazil. It was the culmination of his winter trips to Germany.
For the evening reception, Adriane accompanied him dressed to the nines. Senna announced he would also have deals with Ducati motorcycles and Mont Blanc pens for Brazil. These would be the first of many products he would import to Brazil for his new business life, when he planned to effect a seamless change from top racing driver to top businessman. He had seen the demoralising effect of retirement on drivers and he did not intend that to happen to him.
Afterwards Adriane had the uncomfortable job of apologising to Milton and Neyde da Silva for the Caras photos. They were also upset. But after a heart-to-heart discussion, she thought they had put it behind them.
However, there were other matters rankling the family, matters that were not discussed. Over the winter weeks at Angra, Senna and Adriane had hatched a plan whereby she would join him in Portugal at his Algarve house for the whole of the European Grand Prix season and they would stay there permanently for five months, and not return to Brazil. His usual style had been to return home after every other race for a week. It bothered the family immensely, but they could say nothing, and do nothing. It created an unseen rift between them and Adriane and that would erupt in the week before the San Marino Grand Prix culminating in Leonardo being sent to Europe to persuade him to give Adriane up.
Senna’s decision not to come home for five months was received very badly by the family and was squarely blamed on Adriane’s influence and it particularly upset his sister, Viviane, and brother, Leonardo. In truth, it had been Senna’s decision and Adriane had gone along with it as his wish. He wanted an uninterrupted summer with her in the Algarve. The family were having to learn the lesson that their famous son was at last ready to flee the nest and settle down with the love of his life. They didn’t take it well. But Adriane knew none of this at the time.
On 3rd April 1994, Adriane saw Senna for the last time. He was going to Japan and she was staying on for a month in São Paulo to take an intensive English language course. If she was to settle in Europe for half the year, she would have to be able to speak English.
She drove Senna to the airport in her silver Fiat Uno for his flight. He would not return to Brazil until the end of September. She would leave Brazil four weeks later and move into his house in Portugal and they would live together. It was clearly the prelude for something big. She felt he had nearly proposed several times and she expected to come back to Brazil as his fiancée.
Adriane says now of 3rd April: “It was a very special day and I didn’t know why at the time. Before he went we had a long afternoon of love. We got to the airport early and we stayed in the car and talked, hugged and kissed. He said to me ‘I’ll keep an eye on you little girl’. He said goodbye, and gave me a long kiss in the car.” She recalls his words the last time they were at Angra together: “One day I will marry you and one day I will work for Ferrari. I will end my career there and end my life with you.”
He told her he planned to leave Williams two years hence, when he believed the team would peak, and move to Ferrari, which he believed would then have its act together after the return of Luca di Montezemolo as boss. He told her: “Even if the Ferrari is as slow as a Volkswagen Beetle, I still want to be driving it on my last start, my last lap, my last race. Ferrari is the myth of Formula One. The tradition, the soul, the passion.”
And that was it. She would never see him again. She threw herself full-time into the English course, which occupied all her time – as well as packing for five months away. Senna went to Japan but retired from the Pacific Grand Prix as his rival for the championship, Michael Schumacher, won again. He later told Adriane, as he told everyone close to him, that he thought Schumacher’s Benetton was running banned electronic aids from time to time. Time differences and a heavy sponsor commitment meant he missed speaking to her on her birthday and did not get through until 6am the following day, desperately apologising for waking her so early. She understood the pressures on him in Brazil, as she had witnessed them herself the previous year. By 21st April, Senna was back at the Algarve house. She was cramming English lessons into the evenings as well. Later that day, she faxed him her first love-letter in English. She carried on with the lessons right up to her Varig flight to Lisbon on Friday 29th April.
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