The late Ayrton Senna is back in the spotlight after the Italian Supreme Court announced the reopening of the trial over the death of the beloved Brazilian champion. Rather than remembering the details of the criminal case, Atlas F1's Thomas O'Keefe uses "A Tribute to Ayrton Senna, A Music Documentary" - a moving CD created by the Ayrton Senna Foundation - to pay homage to the great Brazilian driver

His blood-stained bright yellow helmet with the green stripe, the one no Formula One driver wanted to see filling up his mirrors, has now been destroyed at the request of his family. Some say that the tangled remains of the blue and white Williams-Renault FW16B he drove to his death at Imola, Italy on May 1, 1994, are hidden away in a dark corner of the Williams factory at Grove in Oxfordshire, England, while others say that the car too has been destroyed.

In Bologna, Italy, prosecutors announced on January 27, 2003, that they are revisiting the criminal case that arose out of the accident at Tamburello and it is entirely conceivable that on the 10th anniversary of Senna's death the case could still be percolating through the Italian court system.

In short, although he left us almost nine years ago now, there is no expunging from our collective memory the life and death of Ayrton Senna who, had he lived, would be turning 43 years-old on March 21, 2003.

Rather than learning about him from a regurgitation of the details of the criminal case, a more mellow way for those who knew him and for those who did not to assess and experience the talented and complex Brazilian as he comes up on the middle age he would never live to see, is to listen to a moving CD put out by the Ayrton Senna Foundation called "A Tribute to Ayrton Senna, A Music Documentary."

Viviane Senna, Ayrton's older sister and a psychologist by training is the catalyst behind the Senna Foundation and its devotion to helping the children of Brazil with programs in nutrition and education as well as sport. Viviane had a conversation with her brother about two months before he died in which Senna told her he wanted to do something more coherent for Brazil's children than the quiet private donations he had been making throughout his career.

When Senna was killed at Imola, Viviane took up the cudgels to use her deceased brother's name to advance the causes he supported in life. This Tribute to Ayrton Senna CD is the latest product bearing the Senna Foundation's imprimatur, 28 tracks in all, including songs donated gratis from Phil Collins, Pink Floyd, the Eurythmics, Queen, Chris Rea, Karla Bonoff, Lisa Stansfield and Milton Nascimento, a Brazilian singer who was, as were many of these recording artists, a fan of Senna's. Interspersed among the music tracks are comments from former teammates, team managers and Senna himself and the combination is strangely evocative of the sadness of the time and place where he left us.

Ayrton Senna was a man who loved his music, all kinds of music it seems from home-grown Brazilian tunes to mainstream soft rock and even the occasional sappy sentimental song. Traveling the world as he did, he would take along his Walkman with him on his trips and found listening to his music a refuge from the constant onslaught of the Formula One world tugging him this way and that. McLaren teammate and friend Gerhard Berger recalls that when Senna would come on Berger's yacht at Monaco "he always had all these discs and cassettes with him, and he went back to the cabin to listen to music." Do we now know the secret to Senna's serenity in putting in those incredible performances at Monaco?

Senna's manager, Julian Jakobi, has another vignette that rings true on this sometimes impish man and his music:

"One year on the grid in Suzuka [1992] Ron Dennis was hovering around the car and talking to Ayrton on the radio. Ayrton had his helmet off, and on his lap he had a CD Walkman plugged in underneath his balaclava. So Ron was talking for two or three minutes and didn't get much response! Ayrton summoned me over, unplugged the wires and gave me the Walkman, which had an Enya CD in it. He said take this and give it back to me in the hotel later on. I didn't think any of it at the time, but later on I said to him were you actually listening to that in the car? He said, "Well, I sometimes do that because I like Enya, its very soothing and calming. And I didn't particularly want to listen to Ron."

As it turned out, 1992 was the year Mansell was winning everything in sight with his Williams-Renault FW14B so the liberties Senna was taking were of no consequence: Senna's engine failed after two laps so he finished in last place in the Suzuka race and was back to his CD player in no time.

Probably the most famous recording artist associated in the public mind with Senna is American singer Tina Turner, who gave a whale of a free concert at the racetrack in Adelaide, Australia after Senna's last win for McLaren on November 7, 1993. It is easy to understand why Senna admired Tina Turner as she sings with the same kind of raw passion and daring that Senna displayed in a race car.

That day in Adelaide, Tina Turner belted out a raucous rendition of "Simply The Best" for Senna and the Australian crowd ("You're simply the best, better than all the rest, better than anyone I ever met"), inviting Senna up on the stage to join in the celebration of the song that has come to typify a man we would lose only six months later. Jo Ramirez, who was McLaren's team coordinator when Senna was there remembers the concert like it was yesterday:

"The Tina Turner concert in Adelaide in 1993 was fantastic, and the video still brings tears to my eyes. He had just won the race, his last with McLaren, and he was there in the front row. Obviously Tina pulled him out on stage and sang "Simply The Best". It was superb!"

"Simply The Best" is featured on the CD and it is easy to see why the lyrics seem so well suited for Senna, particularly after his passing. "I call you when I need you, my heart's on fire, you come to me, come to me, wild and wired." For anyone who has ever seen the in-car video of Senna's high-wire act of qualifying at Monaco in 1991, you can see the partnership of passion this otherwise unlikely couple had going.

Although most Formula One fans would rank Senna amongst the best of all time, his fierce and single-minded pursuit of winning led him to certain excesses such as the episodes with Alain Prost at Suzuka in 1989 and 1990 that are at odds with the high moral and religious tone he, by his own admission, established for himself. So the lyrics of the song "I Want It All" by Queen are particularly appropriate for the kind of determination that fueled Senna, for better or worse: "Adventure seeker on an empty street . . . Young fighter screaming, with no time for doubt, with the pain and anger can't see a way out . . . Gotta find me a future, move out of my way." As Martin Brundle says on one of the narrative portions of the CD: "He took no prisoners whatsoever."

But it was surely that "move out of my way" spirit that marked Senna and in a short and moving song called "Suadade", British pop singer Chris Rea, tries to put into words the loss the sport suffered that day at Imola. "Suadade" is a Brazilian expression (pronounced Su-a-day) that does not translate readily into English but means roughly "the feeling of missing you," which is of course what the Senna CD is all about, as "Suadade" says so well: "Nothings lasts forever, but some things end too soon. Now those fields of fascination [the Formula One circuits?] are dull and empty rooms."

Chris Rea's credentials as a Formula One devotee are at least as strong as his recording artist credits. In the late 1990's, he conceived a movie called La Passione about the ill-fated career of Ferrari-driver Count Wolfgang von Trips and for use in the film he commissioned the creation from the ground up of a replica of the Sharknose Ferrari 156. (Enzo Ferrari had improvidently destroyed the original Sharknose cars that were built for the 1961 and 1962 seasons.) The Sharknose replica is so good that Ferrari borrowed it from Chris Rea so it could be displayed in Italy along with the "real" Ferrari Grand Prix cars on the occasion of celebrating Ferrari's 50th Anniversary. Rea is also given the privilege of reading a statement on the CD translating one of Senna's speeches on the brand of equality that Senna, a son of the privileged classes himself, favored for those less fortunate than he:

"The rich cannot live on an island surrounded by a sea of poverty. We all breath the same air. We should give everyone a chance, at least a fundamental chance."

Like Chris Rea, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and Nick Mason are motorsports people, own historic cars and follow Formula One. The CD track they devote to Senna called "On The Turning Away" in an unvarnished appeal to conscience, encouraging us, on behalf of Senna, not to avert our eyes from the needy amongst us. "No more turning away from the weak and the weary. No more turning away from the pale and the downtrodden and the words they say." Although "On The Turning Away" parallels political Senna's views on "the system", it is Pink Floyd's song from 1987 and not something created especially for the Senna CD.

The Phil Collins track, a 1981 song, "In The Air Tonight," has haunting origins since Senna's family discovered after Senna's death this was the last CD Senna played before heading for Imola. "I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord. I've been waiting for this moment all my life, oh lord." It was Phil Collins (who has attended races over the years as a guest of Jackie Stewart) and his initial agreement to participate in the project that gave momentum to the whole Tribute To Ayrton Senna CD project.

Inevitably, there are some real tear-jerker tracks on the CD, especially "Goodby My Friend" by Karla Bonoff, with lyrics that, the context of Senna's death, sent chills down my spine. "We never know where life will take us . . . it's just a ride on a wheel . . . and we never know when death will shake us and we wonder how it will feel. I know I'll never see you again. But our time together through all these years will take away my tears. You can go now. Goodbye My Friend."

Requiescat in Pace.

Editor's Note: For further information on the Senna CD and pamphlet accompanying the CD which includes the lyrics and a background sketch on Senna's career, you can visit the official website http://www.senna-cd.com.