Senna's first Formula One win, in the Estoril rain, 1985

The sky over Estoril was briefly blue on the morning of Sunday 21 April 1985. By the warm-up the clouds were thickening, around noon it began to rain, and by 1.30pm it was torrential. Nobody suggested delaying the race. In the words of the Motor Sport writer Nigel Roebuck, television waited for no man.1 source1 source

On pole position, in a black and gold Lotus with the number 12 on its nose, sat Ayrton Senna, a 25-year-old Brazilian in his second season of Formula One and only his second race for the team. He got away cleanly, without much wheelspin. Into the first corner the car in his mirrors was his team-mate Elio de Angelis, who had jumped from the second row past Alain Prost's McLaren.3 sources3 sources

After two laps Senna was three seconds clear. After twenty he was half a minute clear. Two hours later, when the chequered flag came out, he was more than a minute ahead of the only driver he had not lapped. Before he reached the first turn on his slowing-down lap he had thrown off his belts and was half out of the cockpit.3 sources3 sources

Standing at the first corner was Denis Jenkinson, Motor Sport's veteran Grand Prix correspondent, cap dripping and glasses misted. For some time he had refused to talk to drivers, calling it a waste of time. He would talk to this one, all the way home on the Monday flight to London.1 source1 source

Ayrton Senna da Silva was born on 21 March 1960 into a wealthy Brazilian family. He first raced a kart at 13 and won. At 21 he moved to Britain to race single-seaters and won five championships in three years before reaching Formula One with the small Toleman team in 1984.1 source1 source

He already knew Estoril. In September 1979 the world karting championship was held at the circuit, and Senna tied on points with his Dutch team-mate Peter Koene. The organisers gave the title to Koene on the semi-final results. Senna's team argued that it should have been decided by the last final, which Senna had won.1 source1 source

His first season showed what he could do in the wet. At Monaco on 3 June 1984, in torrential rain, he brought the Toleman home second behind Prost in a race stopped after 31 laps. At Estoril that October he finished third. He then bought himself out of his Toleman contract and signed for Lotus.3 sources3 sources

Lotus needed him. The team founded by Colin Chapman had not won a race since de Angelis took the Austrian Grand Prix in 1982, and Chapman had died since then. The car for 1985, the 97T, used a turbocharged Renault engine of around 1,000 horsepower. It had a manual H-pattern gearbox and no traction control.3 sources3 sources

The team to beat was McLaren. Its cars had won 12 of the 16 races in 1984, Niki Lauda taking the title from his team-mate Prost by half a point at Estoril, and Prost had won the 1985 opener in Brazil on 7 April. Senna had retired there with a fuel pump problem, while de Angelis finished third.5 sources5 sources

Portugal had held the world championship before, on street and park circuits: at Boavista in Porto in 1958 and 1960, and at Monsanto in Lisbon in 1959. Stirling Moss won the first two races and Jack Brabham the third. Then the Portuguese Grand Prix disappeared from the calendar for 24 years.4 sources4 sources

The idea of a permanent track near Estoril dates from October 1966, according to RTP's history of the circuit, and work began in August 1967. It was driven by the Portuguese-Brazilian businesswoman Fernanda Pires da Silva, whose Grão-Pará group dealt in property and tourism and who had already worked on circuits in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. Her company, Autodril, built it on land bought from Tomé Feteira, in the municipality of Cascais.2 sources2 sources

The track was meant to be the centre of a resort with a hotel, a drive-in cinema, tennis courts, exhibition halls and a motor museum. Almost none of it was built. The circuit was inaugurated on 17 June 1972 before it was finished, and work carried on afterwards.2 sources2 sources

The circuit fell into disrepair in the late 1970s. The European Formula Two championship came in 1982, and in 1984 Formula One needed a replacement for the last race of the season. Jenkinson called it a little “mickey-mouse” autodrome that had needed a lot of facelifting. Drivers found it quite fun, he reported, though hours of rain on the Friday of the 1984 meeting turned the car parks into quagmires and left the pits nearly awash.3 sources3 sources

The 1984 race settled the championship. Prost won, and Lauda came through to second, which was enough to give him his third title by 72 points to 71.5. Six months later Estoril hosted the second round of the 1985 season.5 sources5 sources

Portugal itself was changing. On 29 March 1985 the European Communities, the forerunner of today's European Union, had agreed terms for Portuguese and Spanish entry, and Portugal's accession treaty would be signed in Lisbon on 12 June.2 sources2 sources

Practice did not go smoothly for Senna. The mechanics took time to find the cause of a misfire that had troubled his car in Brazil, and his spare car stranded him on the circuit with clutch trouble during an untimed session.1 source1 source

In qualifying he was fastest in both official sessions. His best lap, 1 minute 21.007 seconds, beat Prost by 0.413 seconds and de Angelis by more than a second. It was the first of his 65 pole positions. His engineer, Steve Hallam, said Senna had a gift for judging the soft qualifying tyres: “It’s like tying a tie.”4 sources4 sources

Prost was not worried. He had run low turbo boost in qualifying, he said, and had the handling exactly as he liked it for the race. The rain on Sunday wiped out everyone's set-up work. Hallam remembered that the only wet preparation the Lotus got was the classic one, brake bias two turns to the rear and “Good luck chap!”2 sources2 sources

Behind Senna the race fell apart. Keke Rosberg stalled his Williams on the grid and was clipped by Jonathan Palmer's Zakspeed. Nigel Mansell had spun on the warm-up lap, damaged his car's nose and started from the pit lane. Cars on Pirelli tyres were hopeless in the wet: Nelson Piquet stopped so often that on one visit to the pits he changed into dry overalls before giving up.2 sources2 sources

Jacques Laffite parked his Ligier after 15 laps, saying the race should have been stopped, as Monaco had been the year before. Rosberg crashed at the long right-hander before the pit straight and hurt his hand, and his car sat in the middle of the track while drivers swerved round it. Senna himself waved repeatedly to officials to call a halt. They did not.4 sources4 sources

Senna's own method was simple to describe. He ran in the highest gear he could, which cut wheelspin on the flooded surface. When Roebuck later asked whether he had taken the first corner a gear higher than usual, Senna replied: “Of course I was! Less wheelspin… easier to drive. Wasn’t everyone doing that?”3 sources3 sources

McLaren's afternoon went wrong as Prost began his 31st lap. Running behind de Angelis, the car weaved left, then right, then spun into the barrier. “I was doing maybe 290kph,” Prost said, “and once you start aquaplaning at that speed, you are finished.” When Lauda's engine failed after 49 laps, McLaren had lost both cars.3 sources3 sources

Alboreto took second from de Angelis on lap 43. De Angelis then slid wide, picked up a slow puncture and was caught near the end by Patrick Tambay's Renault, which had started 12th. Senna was never caught. He was not, though, untouchable, and he said so.2 sources2 sources

Motor Sport's race report, initialled A.H., placed that excursion on the downhill stretch behind the paddock. It noted with approval Senna's “intelligent self-appraisal” after the race, and remarked that top drivers seem to make their own luck.1 source1 source

Senna left Portugal level with Prost on nine points, three behind Alboreto. Lotus had its first win in almost three years. And for the first time since Dallas in July 1984, a McLaren had failed to win a Grand Prix.4 sources4 sources

How slow the race was shows in the numbers. Divide each winner's official race time at Estoril by the laps completed, and 1985 stands alone at almost 108 seconds a lap. In every other year the winner averaged between 78 and 87 seconds.13 sources13 sources

Few people saw it in person. Roebuck later put the crowd at only 10,000, because grandstand tickets were expensive for local fans. Bernardo Sá Nogueira, then a 15-year-old karter whose father imported Lotus cars into Portugal, cleaned Senna's helmet that weekend. “I still never saw him, or anyone, so happy to win a race,” he told Motor Sport in 2018.1 source1 source

Senna won once more in 1985, at Spa in September, and finished fourth in the championship with 38 points as Prost took the title. He stayed at Lotus until 1987, taking 16 pole positions and six wins there. Peter Warr, the team boss, summed up the new task for his staff, Hallam recalled: “if we can make the car finish the race, he’s gonna win it.”4 sources4 sources

In 1988 he joined Prost at McLaren and won the first of three world championships, adding the others in 1990 and 1991. By the end he had 41 wins and 65 pole positions. On 1 May 1994, leading the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola in a Williams, he crashed at the Tamburello corner and was killed.2 sources2 sources

Many people rank his win in the rain at Donington Park in 1993 as his greatest drive. Senna did not. He had traction control that day, he said later, and the car was much easier to drive: “compared with Estoril ’85, it was nothing, really.”2 sources2 sources

Portugal stayed close to him. After European races he often stayed at a friend's house at Quinta da Penalva, in the Sintra hills about ten minutes from the circuit, and he tested at Estoril whenever he could. He was there testing ten days before Imola.1 source1 source

Estoril held the Portuguese Grand Prix every year from 1984 to 1996. After 1985 the race always took place in September. Senna raced there ten times and won only once.14 sources14 sources

The circuit had its own landmarks in those years. In 1993 Prost clinched his fourth title there and announced his retirement on the same weekend, and Michael Schumacher took his second win. The pits, paddock tunnels and control tower were rebuilt that year. After Senna's death the Tanque corner was replaced in 1994 by a slower section, the Variante.3 sources3 sources

The 1996 race was the last. Formula One was expanding beyond Europe, and Estoril closed for two years of heavy rebuilding, reopening in 1999. It hosted the Portuguese motorcycle Grand Prix from 2000 until 2012, but never another Formula One race.3 sources3 sources

Ownership passed to the state. The Grão-Pará group handed over 51% of the company in 1997 to settle tax and social security debts, and the state holding company Parpública has owned all of it since 2002. The newspaper Público estimated, ECO reported, that the state put €68 million into the circuit between 1997 and 2016. In January 2024 ECO reported that Parpública was preparing to sell the company that runs the track. The company's website now announces a different plan: a market consultation on granting a surface right, a long-term right to use the land, over the site.2 sources2 sources

When the Portuguese Grand Prix returned, in October 2020 and May 2021, it was held at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve at Portimão, and Lewis Hamilton won both races. It was the first Portuguese Grand Prix since 1996.3 sources3 sources

For Senna, Estoril was the first of 41 wins and 65 poles, and the race he himself rated far above his celebrated win at Donington in 1993. Hallam said the team saw that day that he was no one-off. Motor Sport's report at the time came close to saying he had brought a fresh standard of driving to the sport, and stopped just short.3 sources3 sources

For Portugal, the Grand Prix years, and this race above all, put a circuit dreamed up by a private developer in the 1960s in front of Formula One's television audience. The track still runs under its official name, Autódromo Fernanda Pires da Silva, owned by the state and used for racing, testing and track days. Its final corner is called the Parabólica Ayrton Senna.5 sources5 sources