Gasly donates Imola helmet to Ayrton Senna Foundation

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AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly is donating the special helmet he wore at last year's Emilia Romagna Grand Prix to the Ayrton Senna Foundation.

For the sport's return to Imola in 2020, Gasly opted for a special tribute design based on Senna's own iconic helmet. It was officially authorised by the Senna family.

“Obviously for me, I did this special helmet for Ayrton because I’ve always been a big, big fan of Senna since I was a kid,” Gasly told the media at the time. “He was one of my idols, and it was important for me to do it here.”

Read also: Gasly returns to ransacked home, stolen helmets!

He added on social media that "legends are never forgotten".

It was at Imola that Senna was tragically killed in an accident in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix when his Williams ran off at Tamburello and crashed into the outer barrier.

F1 dropped Imola from the calendar after 2006, but it made a surprise return to the Grand Prix schedule last year as the sport was forced to make changes in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Gasly went on to qualify in fourth place o the grid for the race. Unfortunately he was only able to complete eight laps on Sunday before being forced to retire with a radiator issue.

"It's never nice to retire," he said afterwards. "But it's especially tough here in Imola for our home race, because we knew there was a potential top-five result on the table."

Gasly is giving the special tribute helmet he wore that weekend to the Instituto Ayrton Senna to help raise funds for some of Brazil’s most impoverished children.

The Frenchman himself lost a number of helmets and other memorabilia and valuables when his home in Normandy was broken into last year while he was away taking part in the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya in August.

"Some people really are without values, disrespectful and despicable," Gasly wrote on Instagram, where he also appealed for any information about the theft.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.