Ayrton Senna: 20 years on

I'm writing this whilst watching the Portuguese Grand Prix of 1985, Ayrton Senna's first race victory. On Thursday it will be 20 years since that fateful day in May when Senna lost his life, so I thought I'd give you my thoughts.

I first started watching Formula 1 when I woke up early to find my Dad watching TV on a Sunday morning in 1986. It was unusual as my Dad used to enjoy his lie-in. He was watching F1; it happened to be the Australian Grand Prix. I'd never watched it before but a British man was about to win and then bang his tyre blew up. That scene has been replayed many times when Nigel Mansell lost the World Championship slithering down the slip road at 200 mph. I was hooked and gutted, it may have been patriotism or just the excitement of this high speed incident but I've been hooked ever since and not missed a race.

That race gave me my first hero. Mansell was just so exciting to watch. Wherever he was, something was about to happen or just had. I had to wait a few years for him to win the World Championship, and his big rivals each won their own Championships in between. Alain Prost in 1986 and 1989, Nelson Piquet in 1987 and Ayrton Senna in 1988, 1990 and 1991.

Piquet didn't seem that fast to me, Prost was too calculating to be exciting, but in my eyes as a partisan fan, Ayrton Senna was the enemy. To me, he was the only equal of my hero. Super fast, super committed and super ruthless. In truth I knew he had the edge.

Of course the rest of the F1 community was consumed with the rivalry of Senna and Prost. Maybe because Prost had reached his peak in 1985 and 86 and Senna was just reaching his, I thought that Senna was much faster and way better in rain. And just to prove it, on my TV screen Prost has just slithered off the race track into the wall. The only man to beat Senna, in my eyes, was Mansell-  if only he had reliable cars!

The races which stick out were the Hungarian GP of 1989 and Spanish GP of 1991. In both cases Mansell pulled off spectacular overtaking moves on Senna. It's a measure of my underlying respect for Senna that it was that beating him meant more than beating Piquet at Silverstone in 1987 and Prost in Magny Cours in 1991.

Even when Mansell had the best car in 1992, it was Senna who deprived him of sure race wins in Canada and Spa, and spectacularly so at Monaco when Mansell was 2 seconds per lap faster.

Looking on after all these years, I appreciate that Senna was by far the best at the time. So quick. So precise. Watching the Marlboro McLaren dance around the streets of Monaco in 1988 qualifying is sheer mesmeric. The fact that he won so many pole positions when the car had no right to be there is testament to his speed.

The man oozed charisma, interviews left you hanging on every word. The most interesting of all was after he won the World Championship in 1991. He opened up about the fact that he had deliberately taken Prost out the year before, which takes me to his ruthlessness. For all his brilliance, he did start the trend for none sporting behaviour which has been the hallmark of Schumacher and Vettel, which is not to be welcomed.

I remember the race in which he died in 1994. The weekend was awful. Rubens Barrichello's accident on Saturday, Roland Ratzenberger's horrible fatal accident on the Saturday and the start line horror for JJ Lehto were all signs that this weekend should not have happened. When the Williams shot off on lap 7 at Tamburello it didn't look too bad, but there was no sign of movement from Senna. Me and my F1 friends in Portsmouth sat on the sofa, fearing the worst. We watched as Schumacher won again, but we all felt that a light had gone out. Indeed it had. Senna had died. We all realised what we had lost. A great talent, and what what would have been a fantastic season between the best in the World and the Young Pretender. We were robbed that day.

But on that note, on my TV, Senna has just crossed the finish line in horrible wet conditions to take his first win. Let's remember that sublime talent and thank our lucky stars that this man found a way to demonstrate it so emphatically.

Squiffy.