Ayrton Senna da Silva – A Formula 1 Legend.

Ayrton Senna da Silva – Picture Courtesy of Club Sportiva

AYRTON SENNA da SILVA , known as Ayrton Senna, was, in my humble opinion the greatest Formula 1 driver to have graced this dangerous and compelling sport.

Ayrton began his racing career racing go karts, and he then transitioned to open wheel racing and then moved onto Formula 3, he won the British Championship in 1983.

Ayrton started his Formula 1 career in 1984, joining the team Toleman-Hart. He then moved on to Lotus-Renault the next year where he achieved success over three seasons, winning six Grands Prix.

The year 1988 saw Ayrton move again, this time to join the team McLaren-Honda, where he joined Frenchman Alain Prost, whom was to become a strong rival in the years to follow.

Between both drivers, they won all but one of the 16 Grands Prix that year, and Ayrton landed the first of three Formula 1 World Championships that he would claim.

He won these Championships in 1989, 1990 and 1991.

In the year 1992, the Williams-Renault team began to dominate Formula 1 strongly, and considering this, Ayrton still managed to finish the season as runner-up in 1993. He won five Grands Prix and then a move to Williams was negotiated the next year.

Ayrton was an exceptional driver, and was completely at ease in both dry and wet conditions. He excelled in the wet, particularly in the Monaco Grand Prix in 1984, the Portuguese Grand Prix in 1985, and the European Grand Prix in 1993.

From the year 1989 until the year 2006, he was the record holder for the most pole positions.

He holds the record number of victories at the Monaco Grand Prix, six, and is the third most successful driver of all time in terms of the most race wins.

Ayrton Senna tragically died in the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994 in Imola, whilst leading the race on lap seven, his car left the track at the Tamburello corner, and he crashed into a concrete wall. Ayrton Senna suffered serious head injuries and injuries to his face, he was pronounced dead hours later in Bologna’s Maggiore Hospital.

An estimated three million people lined the streets of his hometown São Paulo in Brazil to mourn him, this is accepted as one of the largest gatherings of mourners of modern times.

It was a tragic weekend, and not only because of the death of Ayrton Senna, another driver, Austrian Roland Ratzenberger also died during qualifying that same weekend, and suffered the same tragic fate, he also crashed into a concrete wall, on the fast Villeneuve right hand bend.

It was discovered in Ayrton Senna’s car after the tragedy that there was a furled flag, an Austrian flag, that Ayrton had planned to raise in honour of Roland after the race, what a tragic shame that he never finished that race, and the World is a sorrier place for not having Ayrton Senna da Silva in it.

God Bless Ayrton Senna da Silva.

THIS is a video about Ayrton Senna from the British Television Motoring Show, Top Gear. The show is presented by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond.

I say thank you very much to pastaM3 for the uploading of this video on You Tube, thank you very much sincerely.

My Internal Citation:

• Grand Prix statistics Courtesy of Wikipedia

• Ayrton Senna da Silva – Picture Courtesy of Club Sportiva

Thank you very much sincerely to all concerned.

Thank you very much to all of you for reading and watching, any views, likes, comments are greatly appreciated and thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Chris Bailie.