Monaco. A rabbit warren of a racetrack. Even a hundred years ago the running of races around the tight and twisting confines of the principality seemed madness. To master its unique challenge has always required something special. And on his first visit, in just his fifth start and in atrociously wet conditions, in a car that had no right to compete with the best in the world, he came agonizingly close to taking his first-ever F1 victory. The race was stopped by officials after just 26 laps had been completed, and Senna believed he had passed McLaren’s Alain Prost to win. But under the rules, the result was taken from the penultimate lap. He was denied what he believed had been his by right, and the seeds were sown for a rivalry with the great French champion that would define the next decade. 

Senna’s first win came in 1985 with a move to the Lotus team, a powerhouse of the 1960s and 1970s that had struggled in the years since. At its wheel Senna found the tools to display his majesty, scorching to an astonishing 16 pole positions — the starting place awarded to the driver with the fastest qualifying time — a testament to his outright speed and daring over a single lap. 

During the 1987 season, his ascendency was assured when he signed for McLaren in 1988, thereby partnering with Prost. But despite his admiration for his new teammate, the duo were set on a collision course, both metaphorically and in reality. Both believed they were the best. Both believed it was they who led the team. Neither could tolerate a perceived slight against them or a notion of favoritism by any element of the team’s operation towards the other. The tension bubbled to a simmer during their first season together, in which Senna took pole in all but three races, won eight, and took his first title. But in 1989 the gloves came off. All-out war erupted between the drivers of the world’s best Grand Prix team, and when Prost collided with Senna as the duo fought for the lead in the penultimate race of the season in Japan, only acrimony and controversy lay ahead.

The sport’s governing body, run by a domineering Frenchman, sided with Prost, disqualified Senna, and handed the title to his teammate. Senna and his McLaren team were incensed by the injustice and Prost fled to the embrace of Ferrari. The next season, Senna again dominated, but again he and Prost found themselves the main competitors for the crown. The championship fight went to Japan, but this time Senna vowed he would take back what was his. At the very first corner of the very first lap of the race, Prost went for the lead and Senna refused to yield. In a cloud of dust and shattered carbon fiber, the crumbled remains of a McLaren and a Ferrari lay against the barriers as their drivers removed themselves from their stricken vehicles and walked away. Senna had his second crown but was now in the crosshairs not only of the governing body, but of the press. 

Even racing legends had their reservations about his all-or-nothing approach with three-time F1 champion Sir Jackie Stewart famously interrogating him over the tactics that had brought him his latest world championship. Senna’s response has become one of the most quoted in motorsport history. “If you no longer go for a gap which exists, you are no longer a racing driver.”

Senna possessed a self-belief that few in the history of the sport have shared. And while it undoubtedly empowered much of what he achieved on track, it was also the root of many a disagreement with fellow drivers and even journalists where the slightest questioning of him or his craft was seen as a redline one simply did not cross. For those who dared, they were shut out. You were with him or against him. There were no gray areas for Ayrton. 

He was also a man of deep and unshakable faith. He felt his racing brought him closer to God, the heightened awareness experienced in the intensity of the cockpit elevating his sense of spirituality. Racers refer to “the zone,” a flow state of Zen-like peace where time almost appears to slow down in the heat of competition. Senna’s mastery of his craft saw him able to extract the seemingly impossible when possessed by this higher state of consciousness, so much so that while racing in Monaco in 1988 he had an out-of-body experience, watching himself drive while floating above the car. So lost was he in the experience of the moment, he crashed. From the lead.

To his fans, Senna was a god in his own right. To his native Brazilians he transcended the sport and at a time of immense poverty and hardship, gave them something to believe in. Senna himself recognized the importance of carrying his national flag, the colors of which adorned his famous helmet from his earliest years in go-karts. When he took to the top step of the podium in Formula 1, he saw it as an opportunity to lift his compatriots, to raise the national spirit, to give them something and someone to believe in.

His charitable work during his life saw him establish the Instituto Ayrton Senna, a foundation to benefit impoverished children in Brazil. At one time it was said the charity raised more money than the Brazilian coffee industry made in a calendar year. His impact was very real. 

But it was his racing that left people in awe. There was an intensity to it which was wholly reflective of the man’s personality. He left nothing in reserve. His prowess in qualifying was unmatched during his lifetime. Nobody had before or since possessed such an innate ability to extract so much from a car as to make it appear to be defying physics. In the 161 races he entered, he was on pole for over a third of them. 

That seemingly preordained dance he was able to create, pushing his car to the absolute limit of adhesion, to the edge of disaster and yet somehow pulling it back from the brink of beyond and into the realm of the impossible, was mesmerizing.

His refusal to give up regardless of the race conditions became the hallmark of his career. No matter the odds, no matter how unfathomable the challenge ahead of him, there wasn’t an ounce of him that didn’t believe it could be overcome. 

He despised injustice. He hated the politics which had at times threatened to sap the joy from what he termed “pure racing.” And he cared, deeply, about his fellow competitors. When a rival was involved in a huge accident in Belgium, he stopped his car on the track and ran to his aid as all others swept past the scene of destruction. His friendship with the sport’s medical delegate Sid Watkins became one of the most profound of his life. In his final season, the elderly and wise Professor Watkins suggested to an increasingly jaded Ayrton that he simply give it all up and go fishing.

The great Brazilian would never have that chance.

After amassing three world championships, the competitive order in Formula 1 shifted to a British team called Williams, which had harnessed the advantage presented by complex and innovative electronics. But by the time Senna secured a move to the new powerhouse of the sport in 1994, many of the gadgets and gizmos that had created their speed had been outlawed. The greatest drivers in the world found these new cars to be balanced on a knife’s edge. Even the great Senna struggled to come to terms with their skittish nature.

In the early laps of the third race of the season, his car left the Imola circuit at the terrifyingly fast Tamburello corner. It slammed head-on into a wall, and as it skidded to a standstill that famous yellow helmet sat still and slumped. Watkins attended to his stricken friend, but many years later admitted that as he lay him down next to what remained of his car, he felt his soul depart. Ayrton Senna was gone, at just 34 years of age. 

When Senna’s car was examined, they found an Austrian flag which Senna had intended to raise to salute fellow F1 racer newcomer Roland Ratzenberger, who had died the previous day in the qualifying round. The world, however, was now placed into mourning not only that first-season rookie, but also one of the greatest racers who had ever lived. 

A young Sir Lewis Hamilton, progressing up the junior ranks of karting, was given the news by his father at a race meeting that afternoon. He hid behind his team truck and wept. It remains one of the most visceral and impactful moments in the career of the man who would follow his hero to Formula 1, to the world championship, and to his own legendary status. 

Senna’s death, for those who followed the sport, and for many millions who didn’t, still resonates three decades on. Just as those alive at the time can recall with absolute clarity what they were doing when they heard of JFK’s assassination or even 9/11, the uttering of Ayrton Senna’s name inspires an immediate transportation to the moment they learned he had gone. His importance and the impact of his passing was simply that big.

His funeral was watched around the world. Three million lined the streets to witness his coffin’s journey from the airport to a funeral home in São Paulo. Rivals and friends acted as pallbearers, Prost front and center, the duo having begun to clear the air and rediscover a friendship their competitive spirits had made impossible as younger men. 

His statistics of 161 starts, 41 wins, 80 podiums, 65 poles, and 19 fastest laps remained the benchmark for years. He has more wins in Monaco than anyone in history. Thirty years on, racing drivers who never even saw him race still reference him as their idol, as much for his craft as for his personality. He has become sanctified in the world of motorsport, deified to many. 

To the people of Brazil, he remains one of their great heroes. Someone who, despite his hatred of politics, many think would have eventually moved towards a broader role in helping people — be that for the U.N., or even running for the very highest office in Brazil. And just as he did on the track, he’d likely have won that too. 

It is almost impossible to compile a list of the greatest F1 drivers of all time. The huge shifts in technology, speed, and challenge over the 75 years of the championship make such comparisons almost meaningless. And yet whenever anyone attempts to do so, one name almost always finds its way to the top, because Ayrton Senna possessed the kind of natural ability that could and would have been not just competitive but the benchmark in almost every era of the sport. 

He was more than exceptional. More than a driver. More than a figurehead, a hero, an idol. More than a racing driver. More than a champion. 

He was Senna.