Ayrton Senna

Senna at his family home, aged three. Ayrton Senna was born at 2:35 BRT on 21 March 1960, in the Pro-Matre Maternity Hospital of Santana, a neighbourhood of São Paulo. The middle child of a wealthy Brazilian family, he was born to landowner and factory owner Milton Guirado da Silva and his wife Neide Joanna Senna da Silva; he had an older sister, Viviane, and a younger brother, Leonardo. Senna was of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese descent: his mother was the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and his father was the son of a Brazilian father of Portuguese Quatrocentão descent and a Spanish mother from Tíjola, Andalusia. The house where Senna spent the first four years of his life belonged to his maternal grandfather, João Senna, located less than 100 metres (330 ft) from Campo de Marte, where his family operated the Aeronautics Material park and an airport. Senna was highly athletic—excelling in gymnastics and other sports—and developed an interest in cars and motor racing by the age of four. He had poor motor coordination and had trouble climbing stairways by the age of three; an electroencephalogram showed no abnormalities. Senna's parents nicknamed him Beco. At the age of seven, Senna first learned to drive a Jeep around his family's farm and also how to change gears without using a clutch. Senna attended the Colégio Rio Branco in the São Paulo neighbourhood of Higienópolis and graduated in 1977 with a grade 5 in physics, alongside other grades in mathematics, chemistry, and English. He later enrolled in a college that specialised in business administration, but dropped out after three months with an average grade of 68%.

Karting (1973–1980) Senna began kart racing at 13. Senna's first go-kart was built by his father, who operated an automotive factory, using a small 1 hp lawnmower engine. Senna started racing at Interlagos and entered his first kart racing competition at the age of 13. He started his debut race on pole position, against drivers who were several years older than him; he managed to lead most of the race before retiring after colliding with an opponent. His father supported him throughout his karting career, with Lucio Pascal Gascon becoming his manager. Senna won the South American Kart Championship in 1977. He contested the Karting World Championship five times from 1978 to 1982, finishing runner-up in 1979 and 1980. From 1978 to 1980, he was the teammate and rival of Terry Fullerton at DAP; their fierce rivalry saw several 1–2 finishes in major competitions. Senna later stated that Fullerton was the rival he got the most satisfaction racing against, owing to the lack of money and politics at that level, describing it as "pure racing". Lower formulae (1981–1983) Senna won the 1981 British Formula Ford Championship with Van Diemen. In 1981, Senna moved to Eaton, a suburb of Norwich in England, to pursue an open-wheel racing career; he began his career in Formula Ford 1600, winning the British and Townsend Thoresen Championships that year with Van Diemen, amid a fractious rivalry with teammate Enrique Mansilla. At the end of that season, under pressure from his parents to take up a role in the family business, Senna announced his retirement from Formula Ford and returned to Brazil. Before leaving England, Senna was offered a drive with a two-litre Formula Ford team—Rushen Green Racing—for £10,000. Back in Brazil, he decided to take this offer and returned to live in England. As da Silva is the most common Brazilian surname, he adopted his maternal surname, Senna. For 1982, Senna arrived with sponsorship from Banerj and Pool, dominating the British and European Championships, winning 15 of 17 races held at the former. In 1983, Senna drove in the British Formula Three Championship for West Surrey Racing. He dominated the first half of the season until Martin Brundle, driving a similar car for Eddie Jordan Racing, closed the gap in the second part of the championship. Senna won the title at the final round after a closely fought and, at times, contentious battle with Brundle. In November that year, Senna also triumphed at the inaugural Macau Formula Three Grand Prix with the Toyota-powered Theodore Racing Team, owned by Teddy Yip. Senna was managed for most of his junior career by Armando Teixeira, who was assisted by Domingos Piedade.

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Main article: Death of Ayrton Senna 1994 San Marino Grand Prix The 1994 San Marino Grand Prix was held on the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari circuit located in Imola, Italy, between 28 April and 1 May 1994. The race was marked by a string of accidents suffered by Rubens Barrichello, Roland Ratzenberger, JJ Lehto, and Pedro Lamy, as well as Senna. Ratzenberger was killed by his crash in the qualifying session, and Senna brought an Austrian flag with him for the race, which he presumably intended to raise in honor of Ratzenberger. Senna was heavily disturbed by the crashes. On the morning of the race, Senna spoke with the now-retired Alain Prost about re-establishing the Grand Prix Drivers' Association to organise for driver safety. Senna confided to Prost that "I'm not optimistic at all about this race." On lap 7, Senna fatally crashed at the high-speed Tamburello corner. He was airlifted to Bologna's Maggiore Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 18:40 CEST (16:40 GMT). The official time of death under Italian law was 14:17 CEST (12:17 GMT), the time of the crash. The hospital's head of emergency medicine, Dr. Maria Teresa Fiandri, stated that Senna sustained fatal skull fractures, brain injuries, and a ruptured temporal artery, any one of which would likely have killed him. Senna's friend and Autosprint's picture editor Angelo Orsi took photographs of Senna being treated on track, but out of respect, they have never been made officially public. An analysis of the crash primarily focused on Senna's steering column, which broke during the crash. The night before the race, Senna asked for the steering wheel to be adjusted. There was no time to build a new steering column from scratch, so Williams welded together different parts to extend the existing steering column. Following the race, six defendants—three senior Williams employees, the Formula One race director, the race organiser, and the Imola track director—were charged with manslaughter in Italian courts. The Williams defendants argued that the crash broke the steering column, while prosecutors argued that the column broke first and caused the crash. It was also charged that the Imola Circuit was in poor condition. The defendants stood trial in 1997. Before the verdict, the prosecutor asked to drop the charges against everyone except Williams' Patrick Head and Adrian Newey, for whom he recommended suspended one-year sentences. Head and Newey were acquitted, and an appeals court upheld the acquittals in 1999. However, the Supreme Court of Cassation ordered a retrial to clarify facts about the steering column breakage and other potential causes of the accident. In 2005, a court found that the steering column was poorly modified and that its breakage on track caused Senna's accident. Newey was acquitted, as he was not responsible for the modifications. Head was found culpable, but was protected from prosecution by the statute of limitations. He appealed anyway to clear his name, but his appea

Senna (left) won the saloon exhibition race to celebrate the opening of the GP-Strecke layout of the Nürburgring in 1984. Senna did not participate in many other forms of motorsport once he reached Formula One. He took part in the 1984 Nürburgring Race of Champions, an exhibition race where all drivers competed in identical examples of the then-new Mercedes 190E 2.3–16 with minor race modifications. The race was held on the then newly opened Nürburgring Grand Prix track, before the European Grand Prix. Notably, this race involved several past and present Formula One drivers, including Stirling Moss and past World Champions Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme, and Alan Jones, driving identical touring cars. Alain Prost started from pole position. Senna, who was a last-minute inclusion in the Mercedes race taking over from Emerson Fittipaldi, took the lead in the first corner of the first lap, winning the race ahead of Niki Lauda and Carlos Reutemann. After the race, Senna was quoted as saying: "Now I know I can do it." Senna took part in the Nürburgring round of the 1984 World Sportscar Championship, driving a Porsche 956 for New-Man Joest Racing, alongside Henri Pescarolo and Stefan Johansson. He finished in 8th place but impressed the team and his co-drivers. He took part in the Masters of Paris-Bercy event in 1993, an indoor all-star kart racing competition held on a temporary circuit at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy. The event notably hosted the final on-track duel between Senna and Prost. In December 1992, Senna partook in an IndyCar testing session with Team Penske, mediated by compatriot and Penske driver Emerson Fittipaldi at the Firebird International Raceway in Chandler, Arizona, where he tested a 1992 Penske PC-21 CART IndyCar. Unlike the more advanced Formula One cars, this IndyCar was powered by a turbo Chevrolet-Ilmor V8, had a traditional transmission with clutch pedal and iron brakes, and was markedly heavier due to its bigger physical size in comparison to a smaller Formula One car; IndyCar teams were run with significantly smaller budgets than Formula One teams and did not have to make their own cars. To familiarise himself, Senna initially ran 14 relatively slow laps before completing a further 10 laps on the same tyres and setting a best time of 49.09 seconds. By comparison, Fittipaldi had set a best time of 49.70 seconds, which he later improved to 48.5 seconds while testing the new 1993 Penske PC-22 later in the session. In a 2018 interview, Fittipaldi revealed that Team Penske owner Roger Penske was ready to enter a third car for Senna to drive at the 1993 Indianapolis 500, which is one of the most prestigious races in the world and a race that reigning Formula 1 champion Nigel Mansell was competing at. These plans were curtailed by McLaren boss Ron Dennis who banned Senna from competing at Indianapolis as the Month of May preparations would clash with Senna's Formula 1 commitments.