Senna's bench

"I was sixteen and Senna was already my great idol. It was 1988 and both of us had just won the World Cup, he was in Formula One and I was in the kart, but, incredibly, when we got face to face he was congratulating me. "Congratulations," he told me, "because in the kart you won everything I wanted to win." Unforgettable ... - says Jarno - There are things that one gets inside: my name is so because my dad was Saarinen's fan and told my mom that my name, in Finnish, was the same as Giovanni, in Italian. I did not name my son Ayrton, but I'm fortunate enough to sit in my Francavilla house on the bench where he also sat down to admire the sea when he came to Italy. Yes, because when I bought it from Gino Pilota, a famous character at the beginning of the nineties in the Circus of the F1 and his great friend, the only thing I asked him to leave was this bench: when he came to see him, Ayrton sat there, with his Bible in hand to admire the landscape and pray for four or five hours a day. And I left it where it was ... Schumi can be the record man, Senna was the warmest person: when he died, my uncle was there at Imola and he called me. I had just finished a race and I started crying like a kid: if a bigger brother had gone. "

In the photo, on the left: Jarno Trulli, Max Orsini, Ayrton Senna and Alessandro Manetti

Text from the page "Ayrton Senna my name is legend"