With the same tenacity they brought to the race and to speed, Socrates and Senna fought to see the light return to a wounded Brazil

At Zandvoort, on the quintessential Dutch track with its banked Tarzan curve, the insanely brave Gilles Villeneuve caught Alan Jones off guard, leaving the crowd breathless as they watched in stunned silence while the diminutive French-Canadian sent his Ferrari to the outside of the turn, sending it into a massive, uncontrollable slide with no way back. Just as the crowd braced for the crash into the steel barrier, Gilles pulled his Ferrari right through the jaws of death and, without hesitation, overtook Jones’s all-powerful Williams, leaving Jones to watch the scene pass by him like a mirage.

At almost the same moment, on the other side of the Atlantic, a certain Diego Maradona, with the Argentine jersey clinging to him like a second skin, continued to dribble past five, six, and seven opponents in a row to find the back of the net, outwitting the goalkeeper’s logic and sending the crowds into a frenzy.

Those of us who were around for the 1,200-horsepower Formula 1 era, during the 1982 World Cup in Spain and the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, feel that we witnessed an era when the impossible couldn’t be explained—it simply happened.

There was also Brazil’s Eder Aleixo, “the cannon man,” (whose shot reached 174.5 km/h), who put such spin on the ball that it dictated its own movement, tracing trajectories that seemed impossible, as if defying gravity and logic.

With the incomparable Socrates—philosopher of life, revolutionary, doctor, and legend—who was succeeded in the hearts of Brazilians by the undisputed Ayrton Senna, a philosopher of speed, with the heart of an Olympian and a religious aura; the entire planet had then become a die-hard fan of Brazil.

“Socrates” was not a nickname for this brilliant soccer player, but the name given to him by his father, a devotee of Greek philosophy. “For me, soccer is an art. Not a competitive game as people see it today,” he used to say. And it was indeed an art. A form of creation in which the artist takes the ball and transforms it into an extension of his inspiration, performing moves that catch the opponent off guard and leave the stands in a collective state of ecstasy.

At almost the same time that Socrates was crafting images with the ball that left spectators and opponents spellbound, Senna was painting with a steering wheel. The track became his canvas and the steering wheel his brush, while inside the cockpit his body seemed to pulsate, as if he were battling invisible forces. Turn after turn, he defied the laws of physics and rewrote them from scratch.

“When my car is in one turn, my mind is already on the next one. In a way, I try to anticipate what will happen so that I can correct it before it even happens. Who knows, maybe that’s how I manage to stay a few tenths of a second ahead of myself,” he said.

What captivated us as we watched these two idols was not the victory—which often came—but the very journey toward it: the moment when the effort transformed into something otherworldly.

“Victory isn’t everything,” Socrates once said. “If van Gogh had known he would become a legend, would he have changed the way he painted? You have to enjoy the moment of creation and not think about whether you’ll win or not.”

With the same tenacity they brought to the game and to speed, Socrates and Senna also fought for something greater than themselves: to see the light return to a wounded Brazil.

The former stood up to Brazil’s military dictatorship—which had been supported and encouraged by the U.S.—demanding the restoration of democracy through his voice, his presence, and his example. The second, leaving behind a legacy that did not fade with his death, continues to live on through the Instituto Ayrton Senna he founded, offering thousands of Brazilian children to this day the opportunity to escape poverty and strive for a different tomorrow.

“We cannot live on an island of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty,” Senna used to say. “Every time I win, our flag flies high in one of the corners of the globe. Perhaps in this way, too, I am helping in my own small way to put our unfortunate country on the map, before the eyes of our fellow human beings.”

One might say that the only news that didn’t disparage Brazil—but rather elevated it—at that time came through the artistry of its national soccer team and the philosophical aura of Senna, which ultimately transcended the country’s borders and shook the entire world.

In our time, works of art have taken a back seat to grand rhetoric. The reverse scissors and reverse steering that once made history on soccer fields and racetracks have been replaced by the “guaranteed points” of victory, while the artistry with which a Socrates and a Senna expressed themselves seems to survive now only within our still-enchanted minds.

Read more in my book *Ode to Speed* – Dimitris Giokkas