Ayrton Senna Mini Helmets

Ayrton Senna da Silva was born into a wealthy São Paulo family in 1960 — the son of a businessman and factory owner — and never needed to race for money. That didn't make the need for speed any less consuming. His father gave him a miniature go-kart at four years old; by thirteen he was racing competitively and won his first time out. He took the South American Kart Championship in both 1977 and 1978 before leaving Brazil for England in 1981 to climb the professional single-seater ladder — Formula Ford, then Formula Ford 2000, then British Formula Three, which he won outright in 1983 alongside the Macau Grand Prix.

He arrived in Formula One with Toleman in 1984 and announced himself immediately: a sensational second place at a rain-soaked Monaco Grand Prix, a race stopped early on a scoring technicality that arguably cost him the win. Toleman's resources couldn't match his ambition, so he bought out his own contract and moved to Lotus in 1985, winning in Portugal and Belgium and starting from pole 16 times over three seasons — a preview of a qualifying record that would eventually reach 65 poles, a record that stood for twelve years.

McLaren, from 1988, was where the legend was built. In his first season he won a then-record eight races and his first World Championship, beating new teammate Alain Prost in a fight that would define both their careers. What followed was one of Formula One's most infamous rivalries: Prost took the 1989 title after a collision at Suzuka; Senna took his revenge — and the 1990 title — with a near-identical collision at the same corner a year later. His third championship, in 1991, was more straightforward: by then his dominance barely needed controversy to assert itself. He finished runner-up to Prost again in 1993, closing the season with a win in the year's final race — the last victory of his life.

For 1994 he moved to Williams. During the San Marino Grand Prix on May 1, his car left the track at Imola's Tamburello corner and struck a concrete barrier. He was airlifted to a hospital in Bologna, where he was pronounced dead. He was 34. An investigation later concluded the cause was a snapped steering column; manslaughter charges brought against members of the Williams team were ultimately dismissed on appeal in 1997. His death led directly to a sustained era of safety reform in the sport — no driver has died at a Formula One Grand Prix since.

Off track, Senna gave a substantial share of a fortune estimated at $400 million at the time of his death to causes supporting underprivileged children in Brazil — work formalized after his death through the Instituto Ayrton Senna, which his family established and which has since supported educational programs for millions of Brazilian children. His state funeral in São Paulo drew the entire Formula One community, Alain Prost among the pallbearers. He has been repeatedly voted the greatest driver in the sport's history, including in a 2010 poll of over 200 fellow F1 drivers and a 2012 BBC poll.