They say seeing is believing. If you didn’t see it or it wasn’t caught on camera, then it didn’t exist, right?

That’s especially true of Formula 1, where the ever-present television cameras capture every incident from every angle, replaying them in slow-motion, warts and all, for us to analyse and critique on social media.

But, as used to be the case, if the TV cameras missed the moment, then it escaped – recorded for posterity in the record books, but dangling frustratingly, tantalisingly beyond the grasp of our greater understanding.

Take, for instance, Ayrton Senna's mesmeric pole-position lap for the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix - widely regarded as the sport’s finest-ever Qualifying lap.

The sport’s greatest driver, armed with one of its all-time greatest cars, driving flat-out at its most iconic venue, producing a legendary lap so incomparably quick that it transcended the sport.

So special it became a metaphor for the great Brazilian’s approach to spirituality, to life itself. A lap that mere mortals could not comprehend, so dizzyingly fleet that it felt more supernatural than supersonic.

And yet, you’ve never actually seen it.

The TV cameras that May afternoon were switched on, but failed to capture a single one of the incendiary 84 seconds it took for Ayrton to scorch to pole. It’s incredible to think that the director missed one of the sport’s all-time great laps. But they did, and so it lives on only in our fading imagination.

But how did Senna do it? And how did it come to be missed?

Missing from the archives

Broadcast media now defines how we consume the sport, but before proper TV coverage, F1’s superstars existed only in gritty black-and-white newsreel footage - the heroics of Bruce McLaren, Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, and Jim Clark were never shown in their full glory.

Television, by contrast, has made the sport’s greatest achievements indelible. We all remember the Senna vs Prost feud because every race was televised and we can all re-live the tension of that final lap around Interlagos for Lewis Hamilton back in 2008.

Whether it be Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Räikkönen, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso or Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, we’ve been able to watch their combative styles set our screens alight.

Perhaps, that’s also why our old-school heroes are remembered more now for their finesse and skill - we celebrate the likes of McLaren, Fangio, Moss and Clark for their inherent ability rather than their fighting attitude - because the archaic broadcast equipment of the time simply wasn’t up to the job of capturing anything other than fleeting glances of the cars at speed.

And perhaps, that’s why Senna is so pivotal.

More than any other driver, Senna straddled the link between the un-televised and televised eras. Indeed, it was largely his skill and commitment that helped popularise the sport enough to bring it to TV screens across the world. His blend of charisma, aggression, and sheer speed meant he appealed to both the old-school and the new breed of fan, attracted to the drama, glamour, and danger of Formula 1.

That, too, is why the strange omission of that 1988 pole lap is so frustrating. Here was Formula 1’s greatest star taking his first steps onto the world’s stage, and his defining moment was taken from him and from us.

Achieving the supernatural

Without pictures, we are left with just words and timesheets. Neil Oatley played a key role in designing McLaren’s Formula 1 cars and engineered both Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna during their stints with McLaren.

Neil was in Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix in 1988 and recalled Senna’s spellbinding lap in Maurice Hamilton’s McLaren-produced books on Senna and Prost, saying: “I was running Alain Prost’s car. Alain had got down to 1 minute 26.9 seconds. And then Ayrton produced a 24.4 second-lap.

“Alain improved to 25.4 seconds, but then Ayrton did 23.9 seconds. I remember a kind of ghostly look coming over Alain’s face. He just couldn’t understand how or where Ayrton’s time had come from. It illustrated that, despite all the technology, the driver could still make quite a big difference.”

Senna treated Qualifying laps as a “religious experience”, according to former Team Principal Jo Ramírez. The Brazilian was able to enter a state of mind that mere mortals cannot comprehend, driving on pure instinct, operating in a different realm from everyone else on the track. You suspect he could have completed that lap around Monaco in 1988 blindfolded.

“That day, I suddenly realised that I was no longer driving conscious. And I was in a different dimension, for me. The circuit for me was a tunnel, which I was just going, going, going. And I realised I was well beyond my conscious understanding…”

McLaren had begun the season in imperious form and went into the third round with a 14-point lead in the Championship, having won and taken pole in both of the opening races. Senna – in his first season with McLaren – would go on to clinch the first six poles that season. His confidence - while never lacking - was soaring.  

Senna had clinched pole in the previous round at Imola by 0.771s over Prost, but was a mind-boggling 3.352s faster than reigning World Champion Nelson Piquet in a Lotus powered by the same specification turbocharged Honda engines as McLaren – he had proved untouchable, as he so often did.

Unsurprisingly, Monaco proved to be a very similar story for Senna. The Brazilian set a lap of 1m 23.998s. Prost, meanwhile, recorded a 1m 25.425s. It’s no wonder the Frenchman – one of Formula 1’s all-time great drivers – was left with a ghostly look on his face. Video footage may not have been able to show it, but the data doesn’t lie. Around the principality, on Formula 1’s grandest, most famous, and most challenging track, Senna had somehow carved out 1.427s over his biggest rival in the exact same car.

Senna, recalling the lap in an interview with late motorsport journalist, Russell Bulgin, said: “In Qualifying, we used race tyres, not qualifying tyres, so you could do many laps. I remember starting, going quicker and quicker. I was on pole by a few tenths [of a second] and then by half-a-second, and then almost a second and then over a second. I was just... going, more and more, and there was a stage when I was over two seconds quicker than anybody else, including my team-mate with the same equipment.

“I realised at that moment – suddenly! [snaps fingers] – that I was well over something conscious. Monaco is small and narrow, and at that moment, I had the feeling that I was in a tunnel; the circuit was just a tunnel for me. It was going-going-going and within the physical limit of the circuit. It was like I was on rails. Of course, I wasn’t on rails.

“Then, suddenly, I realised it was too much; I slowed down, drove back slowly to the pits and said to myself that I shouldn’t go out any more that day. Because for that moment I was vulnerable for extending my own limits, and the car’s limits: limits that I never touch before. It was something that I was not – not that I was not in control – but I was not aware, exactly of what was going on. I was just going-going-going. An amazing experience.”

You’d love to hope that there’s some dusty old VHS cassette, lying undisturbed beneath a pile of old paperwork, that contains the footage from that mighty lap, but it is something of a forlorn hope.

Well, here’s to hoping…