Ayrton Senna's Formula One career witnessed a meteoric rise to prominence, first with Team Lotus in the early 1980s and then with Team McLaren from 1988-93, where he waged several close battles with Alain Prost. Senna won the Monaco Grand Prix a record six times and was clearly the best qualifying F1 driver of all time, with 65 pole positions (although second on a percentage basis to Jim Clark). His uncompromising driving style led to extreme reactions among F1 aficionados — either adulation or hatred — but his skill and bravery were unmatched.
In 1991, driving a plainly inferior McLaren-Honda MP4/6, Senna amazingly recorded four pole positions and four wins in the first four races. No one had ever started a Formula One World Championship campaign with four straight victories, and for the rest it was more than demoralizing. With an increase in the points for a win from 9 to 10 (and all races counting for the championship for the first time in F1) Senna had 40 points, his nearest challenger 11, and Nigel Mansell of Williams just six. After holding off Mansell's late-season charge, 1991 was to be Senna's third and last World Championship, but by no means the end of his influence in Formula One.
In 1993 Senna put on another spectacular show, once again in an outmatched McLaren MP 4/8, to win five GPs. The most impressive of these, and perhaps the finest victory of his career, was at the European GP at Donnington Park, where Senna won after picking up five places in the rain on the first lap, cementing his place in history as the rainmeister. And so, with a final victory at Adelaide in the last race of the 1993 season, Ayrton Senna prepared to move on to Team Williams, at long last striking a $20 million per-year deal with the team, and owner, who had given him his first test ride in an F1 car more than a decade before. But as all F1 enthusiasts know all too well, that was not to be. With new rules declaring the "active cars" unlawful, Senna did not post a single point for Williams — despite three consecutive poles — in 1994.
In the last years of his life, Senna seemed to mellow a bit, becoming almost philosophical about the relationship between Grand Prix racing and personal growth. Many who had despised him when he was younger had, with the passage of time, come to understand that Senna's brilliance as a driver was matched by a depth of character and compassion uncommon among the elite of F1. Senna's last race was the 1994 San Marino GP, where he crashed and died — after taking his final pole — while leading the race on lap seven. Senna's untimely death (one of only two in F1 since the late 1970s) left Formula One without its shining star and ushered in a renewed concern for safety. A highly religious man, Senna ironically had a premonition on the evening before the race that he would die. This painting is based on his final win at the Australian GP in 1993.
