Ayrton Senna

Ayrton Senna won everything worth winning in Formula 1, yet the title he chased hardest as a young man never came. Five times between 1978 and 1982 he lined up for the Karting World Championship. Twice he finished runner-up. Decades later he was still calling karting the purest racing he ever did — and still naming a karter, not a grand prix driver, as his favourite rival.

The karting years

The story starts at Interlagos. Senna's father built his first kart around a one-horsepower lawnmower engine, and at 13 the boy entered his first proper race against a field of older drivers. He took pole on debut, then got punted out in a collision — a first outing with everything except the result.

The climb from there was steep. Senna worked through the Brazilian ranks and took the South American Kart Championship in 1977, the springboard that carried him to Europe. In 1978 he joined the Italian DAP squad and made his Karting World Championship debut, opening a five-year assault on the biggest prize of the 100cc direct-drive era. The near-misses came quickly: runner-up at the Worlds in 1979, runner-up again in 1980. Even after graduating to cars he kept coming back, contesting the championship again in 1981 and 1982. It never fell to him.

At DAP he was paired with Terry Fullerton, the 1973 world champion and the benchmark 100cc driver of the age. Teammates and rivals from 1978 to 1980, the pair traded one-two finishes across the major internationals — and more often than not it was the Englishman who held the upper hand.

What made him different

Intensity, mainly. Pole position in his very first race at 13 set the tone: Senna treated every session as a referendum on himself. He kept entering the World Championship long after his single-seater career had taken off, because an unfinished job gnawed at him in a way trophies never fixed. That refusal to let the karting account close is one of the most revealing facts in his whole biography.

The Fullerton rivalry defined him. Asked years later, as a triple F1 world champion, which opponent had given him the most satisfaction, Senna did not name Prost. He named Fullerton, and explained why: no money, no politics — just pure racing. Karting people have been quoting the answer ever since, because it is the best one-line case for the sport anyone has ever made.

Legacy

Senna set the template for the modern karting-to-F1 superstar, and every generation since — from the 1990s F1 pipeline onwards — has been measured against his path. His verdict on karting as the purest form of racing remains the sport's favourite endorsement, wheeled out wherever direct-drive racers gather. In cars he won three Formula 1 world championships and 41 grands prix before his death at Imola in 1994. Karting remembers him differently: as the brilliant Brazilian who never quite won the big one, and never stopped caring that he hadn't.