Ayrton Senna

Senna famously described entering a trance-like state during his 1988 Monaco qualifying lap, when he set a time so far beyond anyone else that he scared himself and eased off. He wrote about the experience in detail: 'I was already on pole... and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team-mate with the same car. And I suddenly realised I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was in a different dimension.' He pulled into the pits immediately after.

Senna kept a Bible at his home and in the paddock, and was photographed reading it regularly. His faith was not a public performance — colleagues and friends describe it as central to his daily life. He crossed himself on the grid and at the finish line, and would withdraw to pray before important races. He described his faith as the foundation of his confidence and his acceptance of the risks of racing.

Senna trained as a pilot and regularly flew himself between destinations in Brazil in small aircraft. He found flying peaceful in a way that motor racing — despite its technical similarities — did not offer. He piloted a helicopter to the circuit on occasion and was by all accounts a competent and serious aviator.

Throughout his career, Senna donated significant sums to support impoverished Brazilian children, doing so with minimal publicity. After his death, his family established the Ayrton Senna Institute, which has since supported educational programmes reaching millions of Brazilian schoolchildren. The scale of his charitable giving only became fully apparent after he died.

Senna's performances in the rain were so extraordinary that they acquired a mythological quality even within his lifetime. At the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix — his first season in F1 — he was closing on race leader Alain Prost at over a second per lap in torrential rain when the race was controversially stopped. His wet-weather driving was something many of his rivals described as being in a different category from everyone else.

Senna played tennis regularly as part of his fitness routine and genuinely enjoyed the sport. He was competitive enough to hold his own against good club players, and friends from the paddock recalled him using tennis as a way to decompress during race weekends.

Despite spending most of the F1 season in Europe and maintaining a home in Portugal as well as in São Paulo, Senna remained deeply identified with Brazil. He was acutely aware of the political and economic struggles of ordinary Brazilians during the 1980s and 1990s and spoke about this in interviews. His death in May 1994 resulted in three days of national mourning in Brazil and a state funeral attended by three million people.