Most elite drivers believe that in racing, there are moments to push and moments to throttle down. Ayrton Senna wasn’t one of them.

By age 34, this brooding, intellectual, deeply religious Brazilian genius had dominated Formula One for a decade. What made him a champion was his freakish ability to balance a car on the knife’s edge of its physical limits longer than anyone else. What made him a legend is that he never let up, even in the most treacherous conditions.

In...