In his words Quotes by Ayrton Senna

It was raining at Monza on the third day of a McLaren test in September 1990, and Gerald Donaldson was interviewing him under the awning beside the team’s motorhome about Monaco, God, fear, love and money. A fan came to the table with a ceramic sculpture bearing his name and a cake his wife had baked, and spoke to him in Portuguese. Senna hugged him, brushed away a tear and needed a pause before he could talk about it. When he could, he said that in many ways drivers like him were “a dream for people, not a reality”.

He spoke on the record for 18 years, from a 16-year-old karter in 1976 to his last press interview, at Imola on 29 April 1994: in Portuguese at home, and in a fluent English of his own to the international press. Most of his best-known lines exist in several versions, spoken, written down by different people and often translated twice. The richest sources are a long studio interview in São Paulo on 15 December 1986, for TV Cultura’s Roda Viva; Donaldson’s; an unguarded interview with Mônica Bergamo for the Brazilian Playboy in August 1990; his exchange with Jackie Stewart on Australian television that November; and Asif Kapadia’s film Senna (2010), made entirely from archive footage.

His words stand as they were printed or transcribed. Portuguese and French come first, with this book’s translation beneath; a few English lines from the film were probably spoken in Portuguese and come from its subtitles. A line with no mark comes from the record itself: the film, a broadcast, a signed statement, or a report printed within about a year by someone who heard it. A line this book knows only at second hand, through a later recollection, another person’s account or a copy of a source it has not seen, is marked attributed wherever it is set apart from the text, and so is any line whose speaker is uncertain. Sayings that cannot be traced at all are gathered at the end, under Misattributed; what others said of him is on the next page, What they said.

Winning

Quero ganhar sempre. Essa história de que o importante é competir não passa de demagogia.

I always want to win. This business about competing being what matters is nothing but demagoguery.

He won 41 Grands Prix, the first at Estoril in the rain on 21 April 1985 and the last at Adelaide on 7 November 1993, from 161 starts. Second place, he said more than once, was not what he raced for.

Motor Sport printed a saying of his in 1992 without a date or an occasion, and David Tremayne quoted it again in 1994: “I’m not designed to finish second or third. I am designed to win.” Its nearest recorded form is what he told Jackie Stewart on camera in Adelaide in 1990: “I race designed to win”.

Straight after that first win he said: “It’s marvelous! It’s an extraordinary feeling. I’m delighted because in my second year in Formula One, I achieved my first dream, which was to win a Grand Prix.” In an interview that the film Senna sets beside the pictures of the race, he tried to say what winning did to him.

It’s a unique thing. It’s like a drug. It is something so strong and so intense. And once you experience it, you keep searching for it all the time.

To Gerald Donaldson he drew a line between winners and champions.

And we are all different. Therefore what holds people, what gets people and holds them in admiring you, is what you are. Not just because you win. They are after winners of course, and there are several winners in a season. But there are maybe one or two that really shine and the rest are just winners. There is a difference between a true champion and just another champion, The true champion who shines is one who people love to see, love to know, love to think about and to be with in their minds.

Fear and risk

He never claimed to be without fear. Of his crash at Sainte-Dévote in practice at Monaco in 1993 he said: “For sure I was afraid I was gonna lose my legs, that I was gonna be very badly hurt.” Two years earlier, with stitches in his head after a jet-ski accident, he had arrived in Mexico with a joke: “If I leave here with as many points as stitches, I’ll be happy.”

At Jerez on 28 September 1990 Martin Donnelly crashed in practice and was badly hurt. Senna went to the scene to see for himself, then went out and drove faster. Recalling it on film, he said he had not been ready to give up “my passion, my dream, my life”. To David Tremayne, at Jerez, he put it more plainly.

Some of the things as a racing driver are not pleasant, but in order to have some of the nice things, you have to face them.

On Roda Viva in 1986 he had said what fear could do to a driver.

E o medo é uma das piores coisas que pode acontecer com um piloto, porque você nunca pode perder a confiança.

And fear is one of the worst things that can happen to a driver, because you can never lose confidence.

Gerald Donaldson quotes him, early in 1994, on living fully. A longer version circulates that is not his: see Misattributed.

I want to live fully, very intensely. I would never want to live partially, suffering from illness or injury. If I ever happen to have an accident that eventually costs my life, I hope it happens in one instant.

Brazil

The public at home was never far from his mind, by his own account. In 1994 Folha de S.Paulo recalled what he had said in about 1983, the year he won the British Formula 3 title.

Sou tão calculista que, durante uma corrida, não penso apenas em chegar na frente dos outros penso no que implicaria uma vitória em termos de repercussão no Brasil, junto à imprensa ou aos patrocinadores. Tudo isso passa pela minha cabeça.

I’m so calculating that during a race I don’t just think about finishing ahead of the others. I think about what a win would mean in terms of the impact in Brazil, with the press or the sponsors. All of that goes through my head.

On Roda Viva in 1986 he said: “There’s no one who demands the championship more than I do of myself.”

At home he could not go out unnoticed. Veja wrote in 1990 that in Brazil he was always running away, to his parents’ house or to the farm. How Brazil watched him, and what his death meant there, is told in Senna and Brazil.

The rivals

Alain Prost partnered him at McLaren in 1988 and 1989, and was his rival for four championships. Senna won two of them, Prost two.

All drivers go on their limit. My limit is different from Prost’s, that is the reality. And instead of trying to improve his own skills, he found it easier to attack me.

At Suzuka in 1989 they collided at the chicane; Senna rejoined, won on the road and was disqualified. That day he said: “Somebody who was there closed the door. I was the moral winner.” The appeal court in Paris upheld the disqualification, fined him US$100,000 and gave him six months’ probation.

In São Paulo in November, as Motor Sport retold it in 2020, he said: “It was clear that political and economic pressure groups manipulated behind the scenes to make Prost world champion.” In February 1990, to keep his super licence, he signed a statement that neither a pressure group nor the president of FISA, Jean-Marie Balestre, had influenced the results of 1989. On film, after the appeal, he had said:

The way the whole affair has been treated, it’s like I have total responsibility for everything that took place there. I was blamed for everything and I was penalized for everything. I was treated like a criminal. And this is totally unacceptable.

That year he told Gerald Donaldson why, in the end, he had given in.

If I had pushed for what I think was right, and what I thought was true, I would have created a major problem with everybody on the team. I practically gave up racing. Then I had to face up to it and give in, not for myself, but in the interest of a whole group of people, particularly those who really work, day after day. They need their work, so I gave in. But for no other reason than the responsibility I felt to those people who gave me the chance to win races. It was the least I could do for them.

At Suzuka in 1990 he walked out of the drivers’ briefing when a rule on cutting the chicane was agreed that, in effect, reversed the one that had disqualified him a year before.

I can’t stand it. I can’t stand this. It’s a joke. After what happened last year, it’s a joke, this situation. You just proved here... I said nothing, and you see somebody raising the point, and you see everybody agreeing. And last year was really bad for me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I have to leave.

At the first corner of the race he and Prost, now at Ferrari, collided, and Senna was champion. In Adelaide Jackie Stewart put it to him on camera that in three or four years he had made contact with more cars than earlier champions had in their whole careers. He answered:

I find amazing for you to make such a question, Stewart, because you are very experienced and you know a lot about racing, and you should know that by being a racing driver you are under risks all the time. And by being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you’re no longer a racing driver. Because we are competing. We are competing to win. And the main motivation to all of us is to compete for a victory. It’s not to come third, fourth, fifth or sixth, right?

Four years earlier, on Roda Viva, he had described the gap from the other side.

Em muitos momento dá vontade, eu estou atrás de alguém, dá vontade de passar naquela fenda mesmo. E dá! Mas é arriscado, então você é obrigado a segurar um pouco e isso é o que é o mais difícil.

At many moments you feel the urge. I’m behind someone and I really feel like going through that gap. And it can be done! But it’s risky, so you’re forced to hold back a bit, and that is the hardest thing.

Less than a year later, at Suzuka, having just clinched his third title, he said that he had decided before the 1990 start what he would do if Prost beat him off the line.

at the first corner I’ll go for it. And he had better not turn in, because he’s not gonna make it

It was not his responsibility, he added, though he had contributed to it.

Their last race together was at Adelaide on 7 November 1993, Prost’s last Grand Prix and Senna’s last win. On the podium Senna pulled Prost up beside him and put an arm round him.

Our attitude on the podium speaks for itself. There is not much point in words. The action means more. It reflects my feeling and, I believe, his too.

Asked that day which rival had given him most satisfaction, he went back to karting, and to his team-mate of 1978, Terry Fullerton.

I would have to go back to ’78 and ’79 and 1980, when I was go-kart driving. I came to Europe for the first time to compete outside Brazil as a team-mate for Fullerton. Named Fullerton. He was very experienced. I enjoyed very much driving with him because he was fast, he was consistent. He was, for me, a very complete driver. And it was pure driving, pure racing. There wasn’t any politics then, right? No money involved, either. So, it was real racing.

Children

On Roda Viva in 1986 Galvão Bueno asked him what he owed the young Brazilians who idolised him. His responsibility, he answered, was greatest to the children.

Mas voltando ao assunto das crianças, eu acho que a maior motivação que qualquer esportista pode ter, é admiração e o afeto das pessoas, em especial das crianças, porque elas são puras, elas só transmitem coisas boas.

But going back to the subject of children, I think the greatest motivation any sportsman can have is people’s admiration and affection, especially children’s, because they are pure; they only give out good things.

In 1991 he held a party at his farm to open a kart track, with a race for children aged mostly between eight and 10. His nephew Bruno won, and, by the official site’s account, his uncle teased him: “Well done, brake-foot.”

Life can be very difficult in Brazil. You have... Brazil have all the extremes. You have the fantastic nature. You can have all the good material things that money can buy. But at the same time, you have lots of problems. Social problems and poverty. Some violence as a consequence. I try to help a little bit. For children, particularly.

In the spring of 1994, by his sister Viviane’s account, he asked her to plan something more organised than the help he gave case by case. In November 1994 she set up the Instituto Ayrton Senna; Legacy follows its work.

The Instituto uses as its motto words he spoke in an interview at Angra dos Reis.

Seja você quem for, seja qual for a posição social que você tenha na vida, a mais alta ou a mais baixa, tenha sempre como meta muita força, muita determinação e sempre faça tudo com muito amor e com muita fé em Deus, que um dia você chega lá. De alguma maneira você chega lá.

Whoever you are, whatever social position you have in life, the highest or the lowest, always aim for great strength and great determination, and always do everything with great love and great faith in God, and one day you’ll get there. Somehow you’ll get there.

And the portfolio of his own company, Folha reported after his death, carried this line:

Como em tudo na vida, vão-se as pessoas, mas as idéias ficam.

As with everything in life, people go, but ideas remain.

Misattributed

Many of the most shared Senna quotes have no traceable origin. Each saying credited to him below was searched for in the sources this page rests on, from the Roda Viva transcript to Folha’s reports of 1994 and Motor Sport’s archive, and on the web; none has a primary source for these words. Several sit, undated and unsourced, on lists of motivational sayings on his official website, and most live on quote sites and social media.

O segundo nada mais é do que o primeiro dos perdedores.

Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose.

This one heads the official list, and is a stock sporting saying credited to many people. When Galvão Bueno put a version of it to him on Roda Viva in 1986, crediting Jackie Stewart, Senna called it a Brazilian habit of mind.

Então brasileiro só vê primeiro lugar, porque está acostumado, pô! Quem está acostumado a comer caviar, não acostuma a comer arroz e feijão, não é verdade?

So Brazilians only see first place, because they’re used to it, damn it! Someone who’s used to eating caviar doesn’t get used to eating rice and beans, isn’t that right?

Lines no one has traced

• “Winning is the most important. Everything is consequence of that.” The official list and quote sites only, with no date, outlet or occasion.
• “I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence.” No source, and contradicted by his own words: in 1986, under The self, and again in 1990, he named the drivers he admired.
• “If a person has no dreams, they no longer have any reason to live…” Quote sites only.
• “The rich cannot live on an island that is surrounded by an ocean of poverty. We all breathe the same air.” Often shared beside the Instituto, but found in no source in either language. What he did say about poverty is under Children.
• “To win without risk is to triumph without glory.” Pierre Corneille, Le Cid (1637): À vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire. It is on the official list with no source.
• “In adversity some give up, while others break records.” The official list and quote sites only.
• “If you want to be successful, you have to have total dedication, go for your last limit and give your best.” The official list and quote sites only.
• “With commitment and dedication there is no middle ground…” The idea is his (in 1984 he said “you either do well or forget it”); this wording has not been traced.
• “You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.” Quote sites only; no Portuguese original has been found.
• “Fear is exciting for me.” No occasion, and the opposite of what he said on Roda Viva in 1986, under Fear and risk.
• “If you have God on your side, everything becomes clear.” A compression of the kind of thing he said, not a sentence anyone recorded.
• “Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it want it badly. People who have it find a lot of problems.” Quote sites only.
• “Winners’ secret: no fear, total dedication…” A social-media composite of real and invented fragments.
• “If you think I’m fast, just wait until you see my nephew Bruno.” Credited by Wikipedia to a 2009 Formula1.com feature that has not been found. He did race karts with Bruno at the family farm, which fits the story.

Words bent out of shape

• “There are no small accidents here.” Said at Imola on 29 April 1994, supposedly, but found only on a fan site cited by Wikiquote, and not in Folha’s full reports of that day.
• “If I’m going to live, I want to live fully, very intensely, because I am an intense person. It would ruin my life if I had to live partially… I would not like to be in a wheelchair…” Often dated to the days before his death, it traces to a blog of 2008. The shorter version Gerald Donaldson quotes is under Fear and risk; neither was his last word.
• “I was no longer driving the car consciously… I was in a different dimension… the circuit was a tunnel…” A splice of two separate accounts of Monaco 1988, Donaldson’s and the film’s.
• “I saw Jesus… dressed in ordinary clothes… rising to heaven on the Spoon curve on my victory lap”, an English retelling of a 2010 paraphrase. In the 1990 Playboy text Jesus appears in his usual clothes, not ordinary ones, and on the last racing lap, not the lap of honour.
• “Sometimes I think I know some of the limits…” A garbling of what he told Donaldson in 1990, under The limit.
• “A special hello to our dear friend, Alain. We all miss you, Alain.” The message is real: he recorded a greeting to Prost for French television on a lap of Imola, and Folha reported it on 2 May 1994. The words are not settled (we all miss you or I miss you), and the broadcast has not been transcribed.

Plausible, but unconfirmed

• “On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, ‘Okay, this is the limit.’ As soon as you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.” Credited to the 1992 documentary Racing Is in My Blood, but only by Wikiquote, whose clip has been deleted. It may be his; the film could settle it.
• “Racing, competing, is in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I’ve been doing it all my life. And it stands up before anything else.” Dated by Wikiquote to the Australian Grand Prix of 1989, but its clip has been deleted and no other source has been found.
• “I would like us to put an end to everything that divided us in the past. It is all forgotten, for good, today.” Said to Jean-Marie Balestre at the FIA’s prize-giving in Paris in December 1991, by a later French narrative on StatsF1; it has not been checked against the French press of the day, and his own words are not known.

Said about him

The companion page, What they said, holds only what can be sourced. These lines about him cannot, or not as they usually appear.

• Alain Prost to Senna, after Estoril in 1988: “If you want the World Championship badly enough to die for it, you are welcome.” David Tremayne’s version of 1994. He printed another in 2024, and the Irish Examiner a third in 2019: that Prost said something like it is well attested, the words are not.
• Prost after Imola: “A part of me died with him”, a tidy short form. His words on French television survive only in Folha’s Portuguese; his own later version is on the companion page.
• Jackie Stewart to Senna, 1990: “You have had more collisions than all the world champions put together.” A paraphrase: his question on camera was longer and more hedged.
• James Hunt, 1990: “Ayrton Senna may be a genius, but he is a flawed genius.” Found only on Wikiquote, citing a 2014 feature that no longer carries it. David Tremayne called Senna a flawed genius in Motor Sport in June 1994, which may be the root.
• James Hunt, Montreal 1993: “Probably the greatest racing driver of all time.” From fan transcriptions of the BBC commentary, in two forms; the broadcast has not been checked.
• Jackie Stewart, 1991: “Senna really is the best racing driver in the world, not only the fastest”
• James Hunt, Brazil 1993: “The best driver in Grand Prix racing, the best driver in the world by a long way”
• Alan Jones, 1993: “Without any doubt the best driver in Grand Prix racing today”
• John Watson, Imola 1993: “Without doubt the greatest racing driver ever”
• Jonathan Palmer, 1 May 1994: “To my mind, he was the best driver Grand Prix racing has ever seen”. These five are known only from Wikiquote’s transcriptions of video uploads: plausible, checkable against the broadcasts, but not usable as they stand.
• Murray Walker, 1985: “if there is a man who can win the World Championship in his first season in a competitive car, it’s this man.” Remembered by Manish Pandey, a writer of the film Senna, 26 years later and in two wordings; the programme has not been found.
• Frank Williams: “Ayrton was no ordinary person. He was actually a greater man out of the car than in it.” Three wordings circulate, none with a primary source.
• Nelson Piquet, as reported by Peter Warr: “the São Paulo taxi driver”. Warr recalled Piquet’s jibes in 2008; Piquet’s own words have not been found.
• A 2012 obituary of Sid Watkins: “saw the Brazilian’s soul depart as he performed open heart surgery on him”. Wrong: there was no such surgery.
• Galvão Bueno: “Ayrton Senna do Brasil!” The cry is real and famous; its first use is uncertain. Senna’s official website dates it to Monaco in 1987, and no other source confirms it.
• Ron Dennis, 2014: “Ayrton won 40 percent of all the races he started for McLaren.” The figure is wrong: he won 35 of his 96 races for McLaren, 36.5 per cent, or better than one in three, as Dennis also said.
• Gerhard Berger: “I taught him how to laugh, he taught me how to drive.” The popular inversion of Berger’s line, which is on the companion page.