Ayrton Senna

    Probably the most committed competitor of the current Grand Prix generation, Ayrton Senna realized a major ambition in 1988 when he won his first World Championship by scoring a record eight victories in a single season.  Yet this achievement was merely a staging post in a journey which Senna homes will take him to the very pinnacle of Grand Prix history as the man who wins the most races, pole positions and Championships.  With sixty pole positions by the end of the 1991 season, this was another milestone achieved.  But at the start of 1992, although he still had twelve more Grand Prix victories and three more world Championships to win in order to realize his grand ambition, you would have been hard pressed to find many who would bet against him.

The son of a wealthy Sao Paulo businessman who built him a kart when he was only four years old, Ayrton had been racing such cars very seriously for eight years by the time he exploded onto the national British Formula Ford scene in 1981.  Immediately this quiet and shy young Brazilian proved that he had enormous talent.  At the wheel of a Van Diemen, he took two of the British championships by storm, winning twelve times in twenty outings.

Briefly dissipointed by the shortage of sponsorship, he returned home to Brazil before graduating into FF2000 in 1982 with similarly spectacular results.  In 1983, he won the British F3 title after a season-long battle with Martin Brundle, then catapulted into Grand Prix racing with Toleman.

He scored a Championship point in his second race and it soon became clear that Senna was a potential winner, even at this early stage of his career.  This was apparent when he forced his Toleman through to second place at Monaco and had closed right up to the tail of Alain Prost's McLaren by the time the race was flagged to a premature halt in torrential rain.

Thereafter it was clear that his talent considerably outstripped the Toleman's potential and, by the time he ended the season with a third behind the McLarens of Prost and Lauda at Estoril, he had already decided on a move to Lotus for 1985.

It was a good move, although the manner in which he removed himself from his Toleman contract was controversial for the team to suspend him from the 1984 Italian GP at Monza - a move which stopped Ayrton in his tracks.

His switch to Lotus was absolutely the correct career decision.  Senna achieved his first Grand Prix victory on his next return to Estoril, a race held in monsoon conditions which caused even Prost to spin into retirement on the straight.  He followed this with a succession of superb performances in the Renault-engined Lotus 97T.  In 1986, he started from pole position on no fewer than nine occasions, beating Nigel Mansell's Williams-Honda by one-hundredth of a second to win the inaugural Spanish GP at Jerez, and then adding Detroit to his tally of triumphs, despite being delayed with a puncture.

These successes aside, it was becoming apparent to Senna that as long as Williams had Honda power, the only way to beat them was to join them.  So Lotus contracted to use Honda engines for the 1987 season and Ayrton began the year feeling optimistic.  Disappointingly, the Lotus 99T simply was not the same aerodynamic league as the Williams FW11B and, although he applied his customary total commitment to the project, the year yielded only two victories for Senna.

The answer to all this frustration was plain to see.  He accepted an offer to join McLaren who were to replace Williams as one of the Honda-supplied teams for 1988.  Of course, partnering Alain Prost at McLaren was clearly going to be an enormous challenge which the Brazilian vowed to confront head on.  He would, he told his colleagues, out-run Prost by being quicker, fitter, more determined, and faster.

Senna was as good as his word.  In this final season of the 1.5-liter regulations, he plundered Prost's personal domain and came away with first prize.  He won the San Marino, Canadian, Detroit, British, German, Hungarian, Belgian and Japanese Grand Prix - and would have added Monaco and Italy to that tally had it not been for minor driving errors.  He also stalled on the grid in Japan, but managed to pump-start the engine and then performed with dazzling rally to climb back from fourteenth place to win, clinching his title.  Prost won seven races, giving McLaren an overall total of fifteen wins from sixteen events, a matchless record in contemporary F1 history.

For 1989, with the new 3.5-liter V10 Honda engine, the rivalry between Senna and Prost was very high.  There was a major row when Prost accused Senna of not honoring the "no passing" agreement on the first lap at Imola.  An uneasy peace was restored, but the trouble exploded again at Suzuka where the two McLarens collided while battling for the lead on the Japanese GP.

Prost emerged champion after this incident, as although Senna won the race, he was later excluded for  avoiding the chicane. It seemed as though FISA, the sport's governing body, had initiated a witch hunt against the Brazilian.  Senna, in turn, leveled some incautious accusations against FISA President, Jean-Marie Balestre.  He later had to withdraw them before FISA would issue him his 1990 F1 license. 

Senna won the 1990 World Championship, but yet again the Brazilian was thrown into more controversy after his McLaren plunged into the back of Prost's Ferrari in a first corner collision at Suzuka which finally tipped the title battle in Ayrton's favor.  A year further on, with Balestre now unseated from the FISA presidency, and having clinched his third Championship, Senna ensured Suzuka was the center of controversy for the third successive season by launching into an angry attack on the former President's behavior.

1992 was not a great year as Williams and Renault found their form.  Senna put in some fantastic performances from his unusual place of underdog but became more and more disillusioned with McLaren.  He would have liked a place in the Williams team for 1993 but this failed to materialize so he settled for a race-by-race contract with McLaren who hoped for better things from their new Ford engine.  Arguably some of Senna's best performances were given during this year and, although he did not gain the title, he did gain his place in the Williams team.  The combination of team and diver looked unbeatable in 1994 although he had some problems getting to grips with the new FW16 car.  He struggled in the first two races and his early lead at Imola looked shaky in that restarted race.  Tragedy occurred when his steering column seems to have sheared approaching the Tamburello corner and heft him unable to control the car as it headed for the concrete wall there.  On impact, the suspension then came back and hit him.  He was pronounced dead in hospital later that afternoon.  Although new safety measures were brought to Grand Prix racing as quickly as they could be, the effect of the death of such a talent was far more wide-reaching and to many he still seems irreplaceable.