Do we like Ayrton Senna?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent and on the right side, with one real stain: a deliberate crash he later admitted to.
Senna was a Brazilian driver who won three Formula One world titles and became a national hero. He was killed at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola on 1 May 1994, leading the race. Thirty-odd years on, he's still the yardstick people reach for when a young driver does something special.
The big stain is Suzuka. In 1989 he lost the title after a collision with Alain Prost and a disqualification, which came with a US$100,000 fine that McLaren paid. In 1990 the pair collided again at the start of the same race, and Senna later admitted he'd done it deliberately to win the title. Even FIA boss Max Mosley said he should probably have been excluded for something that dangerous.
He was also a handful off the track. After he accused the governing body of manipulating the 1989 title, president Jean-Marie Balestre's council refused his 1990 licence until he withdrew the claim. He did, grudgingly, saying he "may not come back" if it came to that. It reads as a proud man in a real political stoush, not a man who punched down.
On the harm test, we found nothing. No sources we read showed him attacking anyone's rights, pushing conspiracies or hanging out with people who do. That's honestly a thin record on his politics, since he died in 1994 and most of the coverage is about racing, so call it a pass on what's there, not a deep dive.
The good stuff is the real deal. Before he died he gave privately to people and causes brought to his attention, and in early 1994 he asked his sister Viviane to help organise a more structured way to help poor kids through schooling. The Instituto Ayrton Senna was up and running by July 1994, and Motor Sport says it has reached tens of millions of children since.
Nothing new on him lately in terms of scandal. The recent noise is Alain Prost slamming Netflix's Senna drama in 2025, telling French radio he doesn't accept it and that you shouldn't tell things that aren't true. That's a rival defending his side of an old story, and the family took part in the series.