Almost nobody knows this and, for sure, it had a huge influence in the course of his life: if he had conquered the kart World Championship — and he told me this several times – he would have stopped his racing career immediately and worked in his family business. Ayrton Was obsessed with the idea of being Kart World Champion and he tried to do that from 1978. In 1981 he was already racing single-seater cars in England but he managed to compete in the karting championship because he couldn’t let his dream go away just like that.
Ayrton was always very close to karting and he only stopped trying to win the championship because he was becoming so established in single-seaters.
I always say that if he had won it he’d be here in Sao Paulo selling screws and bolts in his autoparts store! He’d have ceded to his family’s pressure. Because the title never came he kept going and going, breaking the family resistance, sticking to the racing career and becoming the Ayrton Senna that we all know.