A detail of the monument dedicated to Ayrton Senna during an event to commemorate the 30th anniversary. Photograph: Emmanuele Ciancaglini/GettyThirty years have passed since Ayrton Senna’s untimely death at the San Marino Grand Prix on May 1st, 1994, but the fascination with the mercurial Brazilian driver remains almost as mesmerising as ever it was on the track.
Much has been made of how Senna applied this talent, that alongside the extraordinary skill he was dangerously uncompromising, arguments over which still rage, but he was without doubt a singular and driven man. “He had his aggressive side in the car but I don’t agree with people who say he was over-aggressive, he just drove very, very hard. As he said: ‘If there is a gap I am going to go for it’. He had that aura just by people seeing the helmet in their mirrors. That’s what he created.”
Some of these attributes have endured beyond his death. In F1 the single biggest effect of that dreadful weekend was a renewed effort to improve safety. In the decade that followed the changes were wide-reaching and effective. Only one driver has died as a result of an crash on track during an F1 race since 1994, when Jules Bianchi struck a recovery vehicle at the Japanese GP in 2014.