It's difficult to imagine now, but in the wake of the cataclysmic weekend at Imola, during which Senna and Austrian novice Roland Ratzenberger were killed, there were calls for the sport to be banned.
I well remember the shocked atmosphere at the next race at Monaco, where - in the very first on-track session following Senna's death - the Austrian Sauber driver Karl Wendlinger crashed horribly and ended up in a coma.
The next morning, the headline on the influential French sports newspaper L'Equipe said simply: "Stop this". And F1 came under scrutiny from politicians all over Europe.
Mosley acted rapidly and decisively. The very next day he announced a series of rule changes aimed at improving safety, some to be introduced immediately, others over the succeeding weeks and months.
It did the trick. The politicians backed off, and F1 breathed a sigh of relief. And Mosley, and other key lieutenants, have to be applauded for never letting up in the quest for further safety improvements ever since.
F1 as a sport is immeasurably safer now than it was then, and it gets safer every year - and for that the sport is in Mosley's debt.
The same is true of every person who drives a car on the roads of Europe today.
Probably Mosley's greatest achievement as FIA president has nothing to do with F1 - he was responsible for the introduction of the now-mandatory Euro NCAP crash tests which all road cars have to pass before they go on sale.
It would be nice to think that the new FIA president will continue the good work where Mosley left off and set about trying to repair the damage of the bad.
Whether he will remains an open question.
People tend to be in two camps when it comes to their assessment of Todt, and they are easily split into people who have worked with him and those who have been his competition.
As Ferrari team boss for 15 years, the Frenchman was an incredibly divisive figure in the F1 paddock, ruthlessly pursuing his team's aims with no regard for what effect it was having on the wider sport.
Todt is inextricably bound to the controversies and questionable ethics of the Michael Schumacher era at Ferrari. He is notorious for his bulldozing manner and ruthlessness, and his marshalling of a team renowned for bending the rules to breaking point and beyond.
A perfect example of this was Ferrari's fixing of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, when in only the sixth race of a season the team were clearly going to go on to dominate, Todt ordered Rubens Barrichello to hand victory to Schumacher on the final lap.
The decision - and the manner in which the positions were changed - caused uproar, and it was clear in the aftermath that Todt simply did not understand - or did not want to - what the fuss was about.
It is little surprise that people have questioned his fitness to act as the ultimate authority in an organisation that, to maintain credibility, must be seen to be acting objectively in the interests of fairness for all.
Probably the final example of Todt's antagonistic stance before leaving Ferrari was at the Canadian Grand Prix in 2008, when the teams wanted to sign a letter indicating their lack of confidence in Mosley in the wake of his sex scandal, only for Todt to refuse to do so.
That decision may well have been critical in Mosley being able to hold on to his position - and it takes on a new light following the events of this FIA presidential campaign, which has seen Mosley back Todt and aggressively try to undermine his rival Ari Vatanen.
But listen to those who have worked with Todt - whether it be at Ferrari or, before that at Peugeot, where he led successful campaigns in the world rally championship and in sportscars - and a different picture emerges.
They speak of his superb management skills, his willingness to delegate successfully, his loyalty, integrity and - incredibly to those on the outside - his warmth and understanding.
The question is, what kind of FIA president will Todt be? Will he see the F1 teams as he did his employees and act in a supportive and conciliatory manner - or will he act as he did to his rival team bosses and be antagonistic and disruptive.
An FIA president could operate successfully in either manner. Todt has talked about himself as the candidate of "consensus not conflict". F1 will be waiting anxiously to see whether he is true to his word.
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