Who could have thought that a young boy with poor motor coordination would grow up to become the most influential Formula One driver in the sport’s history?
Yet so it was. Ayrton Senna’s career, brilliant but all-too-short, is a testament to a man’s drive to be the best, and to inspire along the way.
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Born in 1960 to a wealthy family living in São Paulo, Brazil, Ayrton da Silva – who would later incorporate his mother’s maiden name, Senna, into his professional name – struggled as a child. He had poor motor coordination, and was said to have difficulties doing such simple things as climbing stairs.
The cause of these problems was never determined, but Senna refused to let them disrupt his athletic interests. He excelled at a range of sports, including gymnastics, throughout his life.
Senna’s passion for cars spans back to the age of four, when he entered his father’s garage to see him tinkering with a broken motor. Seeing his son’s interest, Senna’s father, Milton, built him a go-kart with a 1 Horse Power lawnmower engine.
By the age of seven, Senna was driving a Jeep around his family’s farm, developing what many would consider his driving school, but what Senna called his “art”.
He entered his first karting competition at the age of 13, and lead the race against experienced competitors for some time, before colliding with a rival. It was not the victorious end Senna had hoped for, but his talent was clear.
Senna studied at a local school, graduating at age 17. He then enrolled in college to undertake a business administration degree, but dropped out after three months. He knew where his future lay.
That same year, he won the South American Kart Championship, and would compete at an international level over the next five years.
It was a time of pure racing, Senna would recall. The politics and money meant little. Love of the race took centre stage.
Senna later called karting champion Terry Fullerton his favourite opponent from across his entire racing career. The Karting World Championship was the only title Senna competed for but never attained. Fullerton remembers the day after he won the title, he came across Senna at the hotel swimming pool. Senna was still so furious at having been beaten that he pushed Fullerton into the water.
“I am not designed to come second or third. I am designed to win.”
By 1981, Senna had set his eyes on the big time: Formula One.
He moved to England with his wife, and was recruited by Van Diemen to race in the Formula Ford 1600 Championships. He would go on to win the title.
Despite this, Senna harboured concerns that he may have been no longer able to continue his career. His wife was having trouble adapting to his lifestyle, and prioritising of the sport, while his parents were pressuring him to return to Brazil to take up a role in the family business.
He did return, but not for long. Shortly before departing for Brazil, Senna was offered a position as a Formula Ford 2000 driver. He was only back home a short while before deciding to accept the drive.
Senna returned to England, and one both the British and European Formula Ford 2000 championships.
In 1983, he raced in and won the British Formula Three Championship, dominating for much of the season.
Senna went on to test for several Formula One teams. While testing for Williams, he completed the quickest laps of the day, beating the team’s reigning world champion, Keke Rosberg.
Three teams offered Senna a contract, but his nationality proved an issue. The British sponsors of Lotus wanted a British driver. The Italian sponsors of Brabham wanted an Italian team. Eventually, he signed to a relatively new, less competitive team, Toleman.
He’d made it…but it wasn’t easy. Senna made his debut at the 1984 Brazilian Grand Prix, but his engine blew up on the eighth lap. He completed his second race in South Africa, and third in Belgium, both while suffering from extreme muscle spasms.
More than in any other sport, equipment is crucial in F1, and in that first year Senna did not have the right equipment. Toleman’s use of Pirelli tyres resulted in issues that saw their drivers unable to qualify for the San Marino Grand Prix; it was the only time this happened to Senna in his career.
Senna’s definitive rivalry was sparked at the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix later that year. Qualifying 13th, Senna proved extremely capable in the wet weather, climbing to second place. Leader Alain Prost was in his sight, and Senna was catching up to him by a remarkable four seconds per lap. Senna overtook Prost at the end of the lap 31, shortly after race martials stopped the race for safety reasons. The rules meant that finishing positions were determined by the placement of drivers at the completion of the previous lap, meaning Senna had come second.
It was later revealed that both cars were having issues – Prost’s McLaren had brake troubles, while Senna’s Toleman was suffering from suspension damage – and that it was likely both would have been forced to retire if the race had continued.
As Senna started to gain fame with fans off the track, so too was he impressing his crew and other drivers. Early racecar telemetry systems would not emerge for nearly a decade, so engineers relied on their drivers to give technical feedback to improve performance. Senna was the best of them all, to an uncanny degree that was later revealed by engineer Pat Symonds in a story about the Dallas Grand Prix:
“The car was reasonably competitive there, so we expected to have a good race but Ayrton spun early in the race. He then found his way back through the field in a quite effective way and we were looking for a pretty good finish but then he hit the wall, damaged the rear wheel and the driveshaft and retired, which was a real shame. The real significance of that was that when he came back to the pits he told me what happened and said ‘I’m sure that the wall moved!’ and even though I’ve heard every excuse every driver has ever made, I certainly hadn’t heard of that one! But Ayrton being Ayrton, with his incredible belief in himself, the absolute conviction, he then talked me into going with him, after the race, to have a look at the place where he had crashed. And he was absolutely right, which was the amazing thing! Dallas being a street circuit the track was surrounded by concrete blocks and what had happened – we could see it from the tyre marks – was that someone had hit at the far end of the concrete block and that made it swivel slightly, so that the leading edge of the block was standing out by a few millimetres. And he was driving with such precision that those few millimetres were the difference between hitting the wall and not hitting the wall. While I had been, at first, annoyed that we had retired from the race through a driver error, when I saw what had happened, when I saw how he had been driving, that increased my respect for the guy by quite a lot.”
After placing third in two more events that year, Senna signed for Lotus in 1985.
It was here that Senna’s reputation as the sport’s quickest driver was formed. In his quick but unreliable 97T, he took seven poles over his first season, far more than any of his competitors. He won his first Grand Prix in Portugal, lapping everyone up to third placed driver Patrick Tambay. Over the next two years, Senna would win five more Grand Prixs, including the 1986 Detroit Grand Prix, after which he took a Brazilian flag from an audience member and drove it around on his victory lap.
This marked the start of Senna’s championing of the poor in Brazil, and around the world. “Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.” He secretly donated millions of dollars to underprivileged children in his homeland, and set up the Instituto Ayrton Senna to provide educational opportunities for local children.
By 1987, Senna realised that he would not win a season with Lotus’s temperamental vehicles. So it was that he signed with McLaren, joining rival and world champion Alain Prost on the team. The two worked closely together, but competition remained fierce. The most serious incident of the year came when Senna nearly ran Prost into the wall of pit lane at 290 km/h in an attempt to stop him from overtaking.
The pair won 15 of the 16 races – Prost seven, Senna eight. This meant Senna had won his first Formula One World Championship.
Senna took the lead in the 1989 season, but the penultimate race at Japan’s Suzuka Circuit saw him disqualified and come out of contention for the title after a collision with Prost. Senna claimed that the French president of the sport’s governing body had forced race stewards to disqualify him so that his fellow Frenchman could win the championship, but this was never followed up.
The next year, with Prost at Ferrari, the tables turned. At the very same track, Senna and Prost collided, taking both out of the race. As a result, Senna won the World Championship.
Soon after, former driver Jackie Stewart interviewed Senna, and brought up the fact that he’d been involved in more collisions in his past four years that all the champions before him combined. Stewart admitted that he believed Senna crashed into Prost on purpose, resulting in Senna refusing to speak with him again.
The following year, Senna once again took the championship, becoming the youngest ever three-time world champion, and furthering his records of most poles obtained by a single driver.
By the next year, however, the Williams team was dominating the track. Senna hoped to join them, but in 1993 Prost joined the team, and had a clause in his contract that barred Williams from picking up his rival.
Prost won that year, and retired thereafter. On his final podium at the Australian Grand Prix, Senna – who had placed first – hugged Prost. The latter was shocked. It seemed that now that they were no longer competitors, Senna was embracing Prost as a friend.
Finally, in 1994, Prost’s position at Williams was given to Senna.
Senna had trouble with the Williams cars, which had been altered from the iteration of previous years due to new rules that banned much of the equipment that had given the team such an obvious advantage. Senna would later tell the press “I have a very negative feeling about driving the car and driving it on the limit and so on … It’s going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I’ll risk saying that we’ll be lucky if something really serious doesn’t happen.”
Incidents saw Senna retire from the first two races of the season, but it would be the San Marino Grand Prix which would mark a fatal end to Senna’s brilliant career.
During Friday afternoon qualifying sessions, Senna’s protege Rubens Barrichello was involved in a serious accident and lost consciousness. He woke up shortly after with Senna above him: Senna had abandoned qualifying to check on his friend.
The following day, rookie Roland Ratzenberger was killed when his car collided with a concrete wall. It was the first death in the sport for over 12 years. Senna arrived at the scene of the accident, where medical chief and friend Sid Watkins pleaded to Senna to retire and go fishing with him. Senna tearfully refused. “Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.”
Before the Sunday race commenced, Senna rallied the drivers, and Prost, who was now working as a media presenter, to discuss the re-establishment of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, with the intention of improving safety in F1. As one of the most experienced drivers, he offered to lead discussions with the FIA; an offer that was most welcome.
Seven laps into the race, Senna’s car left the track at 307 km/h. He managed to slow down before striking a concrete retaining wall, but not enough.
Senna received three brutal injuries to his head and neck. He was airlifted to a local hospital, but it was too late.
Ayrton Senna was declared dead at 34 on May 1st, 1994.
The Brazilian government declared three days on national mourning, as his body was returned to the country in the passenger cabin of a personal jet. It was against airline policy, but such was the respect for Senna.
Since his death, Senna has received a range of awards, including an induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, but his legacy is most noted by how his death impacted on increased safety procedures in the sport. Tracks were redesigned, engine power was reduced on vehicles, and revised on-track medical procedures.
“The harder I push, the more I find within myself. I am always looking for the next step, a different world to go into, areas where I have not been before. It’s lonely driving a Grand Prix car, but very absorbing. I have experienced new sensations, and I want more. That is my excitement, my motivation.”
Though he died so young, it’s not hard to imagine that Ayrton Senna would have been contented knowing that he died doing what he loved more than anything else. His focus on being the best came from determination to prove himself, not arrogance, and undoubtedly that is why so many people – both fans of F1 or otherwise – remember him with such high reverence.