“If you think I’m fast, you should see my nephew,” Ayrton Senna once said about Bruno Senna. But at 42, one question lingers: what if his family hadn’t forbidden him from racing after Imola ’94? About grandpa’s guilt, the heavy burden of a myth, and missed opportunities.
Ayrton Senna once said, “If you think I’m fast, you should see my nephew.” Bruno Senna laughs. “No pressure, right?”
The Brazilian could never really live up to those sky-high expectations. His Formula 1 career was limited to three seasons, during which he mostly raced in the backfield. Helmut Marko once said, ‘you will never be good enough for Formula 1’ and Ron Dennis considered him ‘too old to become a driver’. Did Ayrton get it wrong then? Well, Bruno’s career remains one full of what-ifs. Unfortunate, you might say.
Grandpa Senna’s Farm
For young Bruno, a career in motorsport, with a three-time Formula 1 world champion as an uncle, seems almost written in the stars. On weekends, he endlessly races around the private go-kart track at his grandfather’s farm, Milton da Silva (Ayrton’s father).
“We drove all day, until the tires were worn down to the canvas or we got a flat tire,” Bruno recalls. “When I was seven or eight, I was already driving a two-stroke kart with a 125cc engine. That kart had a smaller seat (adjusted to his height), the pedals were closer to the seat (so he could reach them), and there was extra weight on it (to meet the minimum weight). But despite that, I was driving comparable lap times with those of the professional drivers.”
