July 1990 was surely a month that remained forever etched in Akira Toriyama’s memory, the creator of the popular comics and cartoons of Dragon Ball, who passed away in the last hours at the age of 68. It was at the end of that month that he met his idol, race car driver Ayrton Senna.
The Japanese was invited to draw a cartoon of the McLaren team, and on the sidelines of the German Formula 1 Grand Prix, the meeting of two masterminds at the peak of their careers took place. By then, Dragon Ball had started to gain worldwide fame thanks to its animated adaptation on television launched in 1988.
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Senna had been the Formula 1 champion in 1988, the following year he finished second behind the Frenchman Alain Prost, and would be crowned again in 1990 and 1991. The Brazilian was very popular in Japan for his victories on the island circuit and for the association of the Honda company to provide engines and technology to McLaren.
From that meeting came creations used in the popular manga magazine Shonen Jump, the same one in which Dragon Ball was first published. In those drawings, you can see Goku as Ayrton Senna, with his friends accompanying him as fans, with the car and all the McLaren merchandise.
His idolatry was such that Toriyama also created two original manga comics called GP Boy and The Flash of F1: Ayrton Senna’s Challenge, inspired by the Brazilian’s biography.
