The racing rivals of Ayrton Senna: where are they now?

Some, such as Senna’s title fights with Alain Prost and Martin Brundle have become established racing legend. Others — with the likes of Peter Koene and Enrique Mansilla — will be new to most Netflix viewers.

Nevertheless, each played a key part in shaping the driver who would ultimately be recognised as a racing hero and one of the best to ever sit behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car.

While we know the tragic end to Senna’s tale, what happened to the Brazilian’s racing rivals? Motor Sport looks back.

Peter Koene 

Karting

Peter Koene makes a brief appearance in the new Senna series as one of Ayrton’s early karting rivals. The pair seen battling wheel-to-wheel at the final race of the Karting World Championship at Estoril in 1979.

On-screen, Senna is seen passing the Dutchman — who was also his team-mate at DAP — for the lead on the final lap of the last heat. In reality, the Brazilian’s win was much more dominant. Nevertheless it was a result that he though should have earned him the title, as the pair were tied on points and Senna had been told that the championship would go to whoever finished highest in the final round.

But he was mistaken. Officials used the results of the semi-final, in which Koene had finished fourth and Senna in eighth.

As a result, Koene was rightly crowned champion, but that was seemingly as good as it ever got for the Dutchman, with little record of racing past his world championship success in 1979.

Terry Fullerton 

Karting

In 1993, shortly after securing his 41st and final Formula 1 race victory, Senna was asked by the media who he considered his greatest racing rival. The answer was an unexpected one.

“I’d have to go back to 1978, 1979, 1980…when I was go-kart driving,” he said. “I had a team-mate, Fullerton. He was very experienced and I enjoyed very much driving with him. Because he was fast, he was consistent. He was, to me, a very complete driver.”

Fullerton, who makes brief appearances throughout the first two episodes of Senna, had initially burst onto the racing scene in the British Junior Karting Championship, winning consecutive titles in 1966, 1967 and 1968. In 1973, he then became the first Briton to win the Karting World Championship and later raced for the Italian DAP factory team — of which Senna became a member of — from 1978 to 1980.

Terry Fullerton wins 1973 World Karting Championship

The pair had a “good relationship” in their early years according to Fullerton, but things turned sour after he pulled off a gutsy last-lap pass on Senna at Jesolo to win the Champions Cup — a series which, at the time, was second only in importance to the world championship.

“I’d got a good run on him and got up the inside on the way down to the first hairpin,” he told F1.com. “We touched, he went up on two wheels, and I got around the corner without a problem. I looked back and he was maybe 10 metres behind, and all I had to do was finish the lap and I’d won the championship, which I did.

“I’ve got a photo of him sitting on the tyre of his kart about 10 minutes after the end of the last final and he looks completely drained and devastated. You can understand it, but the picture does speak a thousand words, without a doubt. He saw the situation as him completely in the right and me completely in the wrong. He wasn’t seeing the real situation, and he really believed it.”

The pair spoke little to each other after that, and Senna soon moved up the motor sport ladder: racking up successive titles in Formula Ford and Formula 3. Fullerton, meanwhile, decided to commit his entire racing career to karting after having witnessed his elder brother lose his life in a motorcycle racing accident.

He won five more British Karting Championships and also won the European Championship four times during his 40-year career, before retiring and becoming a driver coach and team owner in 1984.

Since then, he has taught and developed the likes of former F1 drivers Paul di Resta and Anthony Davidson, double Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon and double Le Mans 24 Hours winner Allan McNish.

Fullerton has also coached three British Junior Karting Champions: Jake Dennis (2010), Callan O’Keefe (2011) and Jehan Daruvala (2013).

Enrique Mansilla 

Formula Ford

Enrique Mansilla was a talent worthy of an F1 shot, according to his former racing school coach John Kirkpatrick — a point arguably proven by his various run-ins with Senna.

‘Quique’ as he was universally known, hadn’t even sat in a race car before his 19th birthday, but quickly developed into a flourishing Argentine talent and earned a seat with the Van Diemen Formula Ford 1600 team for 1981 — partnering Alfonso Toledano with his eyes locked on the title.

But just before the season got underway, Senna joined the squad — competing in a third car — and it only took a handful of races before South American tempers started to flare.

Senna was photographed grabbing Mansilla by the throat

As shown in the first episode of Netflix’s Senna series, Mansilla and Senna were closely matched, as the pair took points off each other throughout the early rounds.

But during a last-lap tussle at Mallory Park, Mansilla turned up the heat: putting Senna on the grass with an aggressive defensive move that ultimately earned him the race win.

A heated exchange in the paddock soon followed, in which Senna was photographed grabbing Mansilla by the throat.

Although the Senna series later shows the Brazilian ultimately besting his Argentine foe, in reality, the pair were made to race in separate Formula Ford series: Senna won the Townsend Thoreson Championship and Mansilla won the P&O Ferries series.

In 1982, while Senna moved to Formula Ford 2000, Mansilla moved up to Formula 3 with Dick Bennetts’ West Surrey Racing Squad.

The Argentine got his campaign off to a slow start — disqualified at round one at Silverstone for overtaking under yellow flag conditions — but his undeniable talent soon began to shine through: scoring four wins and eight podium finishes to finish just three points shy of the title to Tommy Byrne.

Although he finished in the runners-up spot, Mansilla’s performance was enough to convince McLaren that he was worthy of a Formula 1 test in Niki Lauda’s MP4/1B. The test reportedly went well, and the Argentine was offered a contract to do several thousand miles of testing and two races with the Woking outfit.

But Mansilla was now running short on funds and soon saw his F1 prospects dry up as he struggled to find sponsors when he returned home to Argentina — which had been decimated by the Falklands War.

Throughout the rest of the 1980s, Mansilla completed a handful of races in Formula 2 with March and in CART with Hemelgarn Racing, but decided to step away from the racing limelight toward the end of the decade.

He moved to Liberia, pursuing opportunities in the mining industry, but his life was soon thrown into turmoil when the country became plagued with a civil war. Mansilla was kidnapped from a hotel during the conflict and held captive for six months but was later freed.

He continues to work in the region to this day, but has also since returned to motor sport: heading PMO Motorsport — which won the 2022 TCR South America Touring Car Championship — as well as acting as a consultant for other national series.

Martin Brundle 

Formula 3 

Long before Senna clashed with Alain Prost at McLaren, it was Martin Brundle who was the greatest thorn in the Brazilian’s side.

His rise through the motor sport ranks was a unique one, given that he never graduated into the higher ranks through karting. Born the son of a Norfolk motor trader who had competed in rallies and rallycross, Brundle instead started in grass track racing with a Ford Anglia during 1971 and then switched to short-track hot rods four years later. He then made the leap to single-seaters in 1979, racing in Formula Ford 2000, but briefly returned to saloon car racing: winning the 1980 BMW County Championship for Norfolk before becoming Audi team-mate to returning veteran Stirling Moss in the 1981 British Touring Car Championship.

But it was in 1983 when Brundle’s career really caught fire, as he became Senna’s main adversary in a drama-fuelled British Formula 3 championship that went down to the wire — Brundle missing out by just nine points after losing to the Brazilian at the season finale at Thruxton.

“I wish now I’d robbed a bank to buy a new engine,” he told Motor Sport. “Ours were knackered by this time, and Thruxton is a power circuit. Meanwhile, Ayrton had been to Italy, seen his new engine on the dyno, and brought it back himself for this last race. It was no contest.”

Despite losing out on the title, Brundle still graduated into Formula 1 in 1984, bagging a seat with Tyrrell while Senna joined Toleman.

Although significantly down on power compared to the might of the turbo teams, the Briton thoroughly impressed throughout his rookie season: finishing fifth on debut in Brazil and securing second in Detroit. Things were looking up, but a horrendous crash in Dallas, in which Brundle broke both ankles, changed the trajectory of his F1 career.

He remained with Tyrrell for the next two seasons but struggled for performance and after a disastrous season with Zakspeed in 1987, the Briton switched to sports cars — where he found much more bountiful success.

A World Sportscar Championship and victory at the Daytona 24 Hours for Tom Walkinshaw’s Jaguar squad came Brundle’s way in 1988 and the following year he rejoined the F1 grid with Brabham, although the majority of the season was hampered by the team’s financial uncertainty. Brundle and Jaguar reunited in 1990 and together claimed victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

In 1991, Brabham persuaded Brundle to rejoin for 1991 but fifth in Japan was his only top-six finish. In 1992 he joined Benetton and looked to finally be in contention for regular race victories, but his efforts were eclipsed by the performance of his team-mate Michael Schumacher who finished third in the drivers’ standings while Brundle finished sixth.

Further ever-worsening campaigns with Ligier (1993 and 1995), McLaren (1994) and Jordan (1996) marked the end of Brundle’s F1 career and in 1997 he accepted an offer from ITV to become part of its commentary team.

In the 27 years since then, Brundle has become a staple of almost every F1 race weekend: his natural ability behind the microphones of BBC and Sky Sports are beloved by many — as are his world-famous grid walks.

He has also combined this with occasional competitive appearances. He returned to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2012 and finished 15th overall with Greaves Motorsport’s Zytek Z11SN-Nissan, alongside his son Alex and Lucas Ordóñez. He was second in the GT3/LMP3 race that supported the 2016 event with United Autosport’s Ligier JSP3-Nissan.

Alain Prost

Formula 1 

The fractious rivalry between Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna is remembered as one of the greatest in racing history, despite the fact it lasted, in reality, for just three seasons.

The pair’s heated relationship began in 1988 when Senna joined a well-established Prost at McLaren.

‘The Professor’ was a canny and clinical racer who, like Senna, raced to win, but did so with his own mathematical approach. During his early racing years, his talent was obvious, as he picked up titles in karting’s 1973 Junior World Cup, Formula Renault 2.0’s French and European Championships and Formula 3’s French and European Championships.

Prost continued to impress in Formula 1, out-performing John Watson during his rookie year at McLaren in 1980, before switching to Renault where he scored his first victory at the 1981 French Grand Prix and was even a title contender in 1982 and 1983.

Upon moving back to McLaren in 1984, a first-world title seemed inevitable. Prost missed out by half a point to Niki Lauda in his first season back at the Woking outfit but bounced back to claim consecutive titles in 1985 and 1986.

When Senna arrived in ’88, Prost was still widely considered the best driver around and the pair started on good terms. But their relationship slowly deteriorated as they grew increasingly aggressive toward each other on track. The Brazilian would ultimately come out on top in their first year as team-mates, clinching the title in Japan, but Prost ensured he would not be beaten again in 1989: crashing into Senna at Suzuka to hand himself the title.

After two seasons of intra-team battles with Senna, Prost moved to Ferrari for 1990 in the hope of besting the Brazilian with better machinery. Instead, the two were again closely matched all season long, and, again, they made race-ending contact at the Japanese GP — after which Senna was handed the title.

In 1991, Prost and Ferrari struggled for performance and the Frenchman was fired shortly after the Japanese GP for criticising the car.

After taking a year-long sabbatical, he returned in 1993 and took up a seat at Williams, whose car possessed high-tech features that had not yet been adopted by other teams, including active suspension, and secured his fourth and final world title with consummate ease before retiring.

There were tests for McLaren in 1994 and 1995 but it was as a team owner that Prost returned to the sport. He acquired the Ligier team in 1997 and Olivier Panis finished that year’s Spanish GP for the renamed Prost Grand Prix. Jarno Trulli repeated that result in the 1999 European GP at the Nürburgring but the debt-ridden team eventually closed its doors at the end of 2001.

Prost, who has been awarded the Légion d’honneur and OBE, remains a legend of French motor racing and most recently has been a partner in the Renault e.DAMS Formula E team.