Ayrton Senna's early days: five moments from five people

When he arrived in the UK in 1981, having cut his teeth karting in Italy, Senna entered all three of the separate Formula Ford championships that existed in the country back then. For a young Brazilian, not yet fluent in English and with a distaste for the climate in England, Snetterton in Norfolk was a considerable culture shock. But Senna was there to try the Van Diemen (pictured), the most competitive single-seater at the time.

Snetterton manager Peter Staymer later recalled: "At the time he was another of the Van Diemen rookies. He was very young, very shy: yet another Brazilian. We were a sort of clearing house for the good, the bad and the ugly when racing drivers came to Snetterton because we ran seven days a week and, if you had a Van Diemen FF1600, this was where you started. Van Diemen was run by Ralph Firman and it became a bit of a joke with Ralph when Ayrton was running because they would ask to keep the circuit open ‘just another lap. Just another lap! Ayrton’s got to see if this works.’ He would have lived in that car if he could."

McLaren boss Ron Dennis offered to fund Senna’s 1983 F3 campaign, so long as he signed an option to drive for him in F1. Even then, Senna was so confident that he was reluctant to do so, in the event that it got in the way of a drive with another F1 team. According to Ron Dennis, "he made it apparent – not in a rude way – that he wasn’t interested. He felt he had the ability and he wanted to be independent. I didn’t exactly like that attitude – but I did respect it. I remember [at the first F1 test] that he was keen to gain an advantage, asking if he was going to have fresh tyres and making sure the car wasn’t damaged by other drivers… He was clearly impressive, but he was still young. You could see in him an 'I’m always right' attitude. He was a very principled individual but, if I’m perfectly honest, he didn’t appeal very much at first."

In his last-ever start in F1, in the 1985 European Grand Prix held at Brands Hatch, John Watson was standing in for an injured Niki Lauda. He had a ring-side seat as Senna passed him during qualifying. "I witnessed visibly and audibly something I had not seen anyone do before in a racing car. It was as if he had four hands and four legs. He was braking, changing down, steering, pumping the throttle and the car appeared to be on that knife edge of being in control and being out of control. It lasted maybe two seconds. It was a master controlling a machine. I had never seen a turbo car driven like that. The ability of the brain to separate each component and put them back together with that rhythm and co-ordination – it was a privilege to see."

"[He] had flawless balance in low grip conditions and a surreal feel for the very limit in changing track conditions. Also uncanny was his apparent total recall of everything that was happening in the cockpit. At the very edge of the performance envelope in the car, he could separate so completely the physical requirements of driving the car from the mental processes. Time and again he would astound the engineers by telling them exactly what was happening with the chassis or the engine before they had seen the computer printouts."

Lotus team manager, Peter Warr, from his biography, Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall

The late, great writer Russell Bulgin had known Senna since his earliest days in the UK. For the November 1986 edition of the much-loved magazine Cars & Car Conversions, Bulgin arranged for F1’s rising star to sample several different rally cars, including Phil Collins’ Brooklyn Motorsport Ford Sierra RS Cosworth. The piece is now regarded as a classic of modern automotive journalism.

"I know nothing about rallying. I’ve seen pictures in magazines, sometimes watched it on television. And I deliberately haven’t listened to anyone about rally driving. I want to find out for myself," Senna said.

"Well you can see the talent of the guy within two-and-a-half miles. He made a right balls of the first corner, but you could feel the embarrassment coming down the intercom. Straight away he said 'I’m so sorry' and he realised it’s no good driving this car slowly, you’ve got to get to grips with it," Collins told Bulgin.

"It’s much more exciting than in a Formula One car. Because here you don’t have the top, top speed, but you have a tremendous acceleration. Unbelievable acceleration – and it’s rough. It’s a much more instant emotion than it is in a Formula One car," Senna concluded.

Bulgin noted: "Senna’s last try in the Cosworth is wonderful. He takes the final left-hander in three jolts of oversteer, running the car up the shale piled on the track edge to strengthen his exit. The engine note doesn’t waver, the hands pummeling the steering wheel. He looked like a rally driver: a brave rally driver."

(For more, check out Maurice Hamilton’s excellent book, Senna, available from Blink Publishing)