On the morning of the San Marino Grand Prix on 1 May 1994, Ayrton Senna placed an Austrian flag in his racing car. The great Brazilian champion had planned to wave the flag as he passed the finishing line...
In 1991 three Autocar journalists shadowed Ayrton Senna for 24 hours, gaining an insight into the world champion's life. Here is that story from the archives.
Sunday 23 June 1991, 6:30pm, Kidlington Airport – Michael Harvey reports
The sky is as...
A McLaren-Lamborghini connection was first rumoured in August 1993. Italian papers stated that McLaren was building a car for Chrysler. The rumour was more than a rumour because a test car was actually being built. There seemed a possibility...
Double world champion Fittipaldi is at the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. The event and the venue — where a teenage Senna first made his mark on the kart track beside the F1 circuit — always evoke memories of...
Mika Häkkinen had raced Ayrton Senna; had hoped for the best while fearing the worst next to Michael on the Imola 1994 podium. And, six years on, he understood immediately, put an arm around a heaving shoulder and requested...
While Brazil cheered Emerson Fittipaldi’s wins in F-1 (in 1972, he became the country’s first world champion), a kid from São Paulo walked anonymously around the go-kart track of Interlagos. Ayrton Senna started his career in go-karts with a...
Before the pair started talking a video clip was played. The film showed Senna’s white-and-red McLaren ploughing into the rear of Alain Prost’s scarlet Ferrari at the start of the previous race in Japan. The crash put both out of the race...
Ayrton had travelled to Britain in 1981 as a 20-year-old to further his racing career after success in karting in his native Brazil. Like many aspiring drivers before and since, he decided that Formula Ford was the ideal environment...
1991 season saw big progress by the Williams Renault team that had it running close to the McLaren Honda team that had won the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship titles four years in a row. The Drivers’ Championship of that...
Imagine if Diego Maradona, when arriving in Europe in the 1980s, signed not for Barcelona but for Norwich City, turning them into championship contenders for several seasons. A little far-fetched? Perhaps. But it is a pretty solid analogy for what...
