Over the course of his brilliant but brief career, Ayrton Senna guarded his privacy with as much zeal and determination as he demonstrated behind the wheel. On the championship trail, he surrounded himself with a small group of mainly Brazilian friends and confidants, who were also fiercely protective of him. But there are still nuggets to be found from what was a pre-social media age, to afford a glimpse into Senna the man as opposed to the racing driver.

At the height of his powers in Formula 1, Senna wasn’t always the easiest to get along with, having morphed from a shy and quiet young man when racing first brought him to the UK in 1980, into the serial-winner who became accustomed to getting his own way.

Regarded as arrogant by some of his peers, Senna once thumped a rookie Eddie Irvine in Japan for simply having had the audacity to unlap himself. Ayrton had a great sense of self-belief that, combined with an otherworldly manner and a precise, careful choice of words, allowed him to hypnotise a room.

Journalists tended to be on their best behaviour whenever he was in a press conference, aware of Ayrton’s mixed feelings towards the media. He was known to strike up a rapport with those he considered to be serious F1 specialists while having less time for those who needed to chase the tabloid headlines.

Equally, interviews requested to satisfy the needs of sponsors wouldn’t go down well with him. Over time, Honda’s PR man got in the habit of having to tap his watch, indicating that, yet again, Ayrton had taken 15 minutes to explain why he couldn’t do a 10-minute interview.

But this was Senna the athlete and racer. Senna, the man, was a vastly different character. If a young fan wanted his attention, he was as smiley and charming as anyone. He was also an entirely different person when with his family back in his native Brazil – the two most important elements in his life.

He was never completely happy when away from either of these two cornerstones of his existence, and it was clear that having his brother, sister or parents at the race track always improved his mood.

In return, it’s fair to say his family idolised him. When playing card and board games with his family, he’d often get away with cheating. Like the rest of the world, they simply loved to see him smile, and Ayrton was at his happiest when winning. He also found it endearingly funny to bend the rules of something seemingly so trivial. This, though, only contributed to his impatience with those who wouldn’t let him have his own way.

While his Monaco apartment was little more than a basic base, Ayrton found something of the peace and contentment he enjoyed in Brazil after he acquired a villa in Quinta do Lago in the Algarve region of Portugal. Set in an exclusive resort, with golf courses, swimming pools and lakes, the other residents afforded him the anonymity he craved. His girlfriend Adriane Galisteu was waiting for him there over the 1994 San Marino GP weekend and they had a long phone call the night before the race, with Galisteu letting him know that his housekeeper was preparing a grilled chicken for his return on Sunday night.

Although he raced hard, Ayrton had the compassion to match his passion. His more caring side was evident in his genuine concern for his peers whenever one was in trouble. He rushed to the scene of Martin Donnelly’s life-threatening accident in Jerez in 1990, later offering to provide a private plane to fly him home.

Staff who worked with Ayrton at McLaren recall another occasion where Gerhard Berger crashed during a test in Estorial, and before they’d even had the chance to react themselves, Ayrton was on the track sprinting towards his teammate’s striken car to check he was okay.

He was also the first driver to stop when Erik Comas had a high-speed crash at Spa in 1992, switching the Frenchman’s engine off to prevent it exploding, and in Imola, the day before he died, Ayrton commandeered an official car to drive round to the scene of Roland Ratzenberger’s fatal crash, the only driver to do so. The Brazilian had also stored an Austrian flag in his car to raise in Roland’s honour after the race – sadly, he would never get to do so.

This side of Senna sits at odds with the man who almost put McLaren team-mate Prost into the Estoril pit wall on Lap 2 of the 1988 Portuguese Grand Prix, or who drove into the Frenchman, this time in a Ferrari, at the first corner of the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix at a speed in excess of 130 mph. A year later at Suzuka, in a foul-mouthed tirade during the post-race conference, having just clinched his third world title, Senna admitted he had done it deliberately.

Not only was Senna a daunting adversary on track, he was a fearsome negotiator, but he could also be playful in his dealings with his McLaren boss Ron Dennis. Depending on the mood of these two giants of the sport from one day to the next, it was either a perfect symbiotic relationship or an example of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

When the Brazilian was due to switch from Lotus to McLaren for the 1988 season, the ace up his sleeve was the fact he brought the Honda engines with him. The salary negotiations, however, reached an impasse over a difference of half a million dollars, and eventually, Dennis suggested it be decided on the toss of a coin. Ayrton saw the funny side and agreed… and lost. Later, the (expensive) penny dropped that he was out of pocket to the tune of 1.5 million, it being a three-year contract.

After that, you’d think Senna would have known not to gamble with Ron, but he still did, losing US $10,000 one year in Mexico, after challenging Dennis to eat a bowl of incredibly hot chili sauce, which the team boss promptly did.

Few at McLaren saw the less serious side to Senna in the early years, and yet when Gerhard Berger took the place of Alain Prost, the Brazilian notably changed. Even Senna was not immune to Berger’s charms and contagious love of the less serious things in life. The pair became as thick as thieves, enjoying each other’s differences as much as their shared love of racing.

Out of the cockpit, and increasingly so with Berger on the other side of the garage, he developed a love for practical jokes, and whether it was family, friends or colleagues, few were immune – including Gerhard, who encouraged the behaviour. 

On one occasion, the Austrian snuck into Senna’s hotel room in Adelaide and released a box of frogs. When confronted by the Brazilian, Gerhard simply asked: “Have you found the snake?” Ayrton retaliated by placing a particularly smelly cheese in his teammate’s air conditioning unit. In reply to another trick, Senna superglued all of Berger’s credit cards together

His family also remembers his penchant for pranking well - they’d often fall foul to his habbit of sneaking extra hot sauce into their food and drinks. Thankfully for them, however, he’d always be sure to push them into the pool to cool off.

Taking a more light-hearted approach didn’t always go quite so well for Ayrton, though… After clinching one of his titles in Japan, Ayrton joined in the fun at Suzuka’s famous Log Cabin bar. Not really a drinker and having just completed a Grand Prix, he soon lost control of those feet that, hours earlier, had danced him to another world title. Fortunately, a group of McLaren mechanics demonstrated that their teamwork was not just restricted to pit stops and they had him tucked up in bed before he could do himself any real damage.

Despite their firm friendship, Ayrton and Gerhard had very different approaches to life. This was exemplified whenever they were sat down to autograph posters together. Gerhard would have his done in a flash, while Ayrton meticulously applied himself to the task, blowing on each signature to dry it before turning the page.

When Ayrton suffered his tragic accident on 1 May 1994, the pair were no longer teammates, but they were friends to the very end. Gerhard was by Ayrton’s side in the Bologna hospital and, many years later, discussing the events of that fateful day in Imola, he recalled Senna’s reaction to the Tifosi’s wild cheers for the then Ferrari driver on the grid, who had qualified third. “I remember looking at him (Senna) and he was laughing underneath his helmet,” Gerhard said. “He had always been happy when something good was happening to me.”

Senna was undoubtedly Honda’s favoured child, not just because he worked so hard for them but because made every effort to understand them. It afforded him god-like status in Japan, but the crush of fans around him at Suzuka was such, that in the end, he resorted to using a helicopter to make the one-kilometre hop from the hotel to the paddock.

Helicopters are a recurring theme in the Senna legend, including the tale of Berger throwing the Brazilian’s carbon fibre briefcase out of one, after listening to him boast of its indestructibility.

His interest in flying stretched beyond helicopters. Ayrton became interested in model aircraft when he moved to the UK, before his love for it really took off in Adelaide prior to the 1985 Australian Grand Prix. Leo O’Reilly, the owner of a company that made model aircraft, spotted Senna on TV arriving at Adelaide airport with a small model plane as part of his hand luggage. He got in touch and O’Reilly and his son took Senna to an open space and schooled him in the fine art of flying model planes. Apparently, Ayrton took to it far quicker than mere mortals.

It was a hobby he pursued with Belgian F1 driver Thierry Boutsen and one of the Goodyear tyre fitters. One year in Suzuka, he was gifted a model helicopter. The only problem was that it was so big it would not fit in the actual chopper that was due to take him back to Tokyo after the race.

As well as playing host to all three of his title triumphs, Japan was also the scene of more light-hearted moments, including the unusual sight of one of the world’s most famous sportsmen checking in for a flight from Tokyo to Adelaide with an almost human-sized Mickey Mouse soft toy that he had bought for one of his sister’s children. Drawn in – as we all were - by his charisma, the airport staff unsurprisingly fussed over him.

That strong character and magnetic personality explains why, on 1 May this year, more than 20,000 people flocked to the Imola circuit to remember Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, the Austrian who had been killed on the Saturday of that same fateful San Marino GP. Ayrton most certainly would have approved of Roland being honoured in this way. On the race track, only one person mattered to Ayrton, but away from it, he would always make time for others.

There would be no TV punditry for Ayrton come the end of his career, no F1 team management role or a career in politics, just a brilliant sportsman who, tragically, left us at the top of his game.