There was no helicopter at the track and it was over half-an-hour before one arrived to take de Angelis to hospital in Marseilles. He had gone into cardiac arrest, probably as a result of being deprived of oxygen during the fire, although his burns were comparatively light. He died the following day, aged just 28. The official cause was given as serious head and chest injuries, but several witnesses claimed that the real reason had been the length of time he had spent deprived of air in the upturned car and that his other injuries had been relatively minor.
De Angelis was one of the most popular drivers on the grid, and the circumstances of his death made it all the more difficult to bear. For Senna it was the first time someone he knew well had been killed in a racing accident, someone who had been his team-mate just months earlier, and it affected him deeply, although he continued to race. He explained from the peace of Oporto a few days later: “I race because I enjoy it and because I feel a very strong and special motivation for what I do. That’s why I intend to carry on. Elio was a very special driver because he did what he did out of love for the sport, not for any commercial reason. He was well educated, a gentleman, someone who was good to know as a person. I am sure he was not responsible for the accident at Ricard, because he was someone who never went over the limit, who never pushed his luck.”
Elio de Angelis was the last man to die in a Formula One car until Roland Ratzenberger’s accident on the Saturday of the San Marino Grand Prix on 30th April 1994. As with Ratzenberger and Senna, his death triggered a new wave of safety measures in the sport, and there were changes made to the tracks over the following year. As a result, marshalling and medical standards during testing were improved to match those during a Grand Prix.
When Mansell won the following Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he dedicated the victory to his former team-mate. Senna had qualified fourth and raced to second, pushing the winner Mansell hard but unable to catch him. Senna did regain the lead in the drivers’ championship from Alain Prost, but it was now looking certain that it would be very close between at least four drivers.
Mansell was off on another winning streak. At the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, Senna struggled to control his fuel consumption and finished in a careful fifth. Mansell won and Senna slipped to third in the championship, two points behind Prost and equal with Mansell, who was ahead because he had won twice to Senna’s once.
Senna redressed the balance at the US East Grand Prix in Detroit. He was a master of the American street circuit and took pole by half-a-second. As Brazil were playing France in the World Cup quarter-finals, he decided to skip the post-qualifying press conference and rush back to his hotel to watch the match on TV, leaving behind a tape recording of his pole position comments. Brazil lost the match on a penalty shoot-out and five Brazilians were reported dead as a result – four from heart attacks and one shot in a heated argument about the match. It showed how passionate the country was about competition, although Senna seemed unaffected by the defeat. Despite a puncture that forced him into the pits, he won the race by half-a-minute and regained the championship lead by three points from Prost.
Pole position followed at the French Grand Prix on the harshly modified Paul Ricard circuit, but Senna spun off after three laps when he hit oil from Andrea de Cesaris’s stricken Minardi as Prost romped home. He slipped to third in the championship behind Prost and Mansell, and solemnly apologised to the team for the misdemeanour. He failed to score again at Brands Hatch when his gearbox went on the blink, and remained third in the championship as Mansell took victory and the championship lead. Hockenheim delivered second place, but a win for Piquet meant that Senna was by then fighting to hold on to second place in the championship. Even that second place had been in doubt, as Senna had had to weave his Lotus from side to side to drain out the last drops of fuel and make it to the finish line.
Some good did come out of Hockenheim for Senna, as Lotus announced it would be switching to Honda power for the 1987 season. Renault was pulling out at the end of the season and so far in 1986 the engine had been thirsty, unreliable and underpowered compared to its rivals. Honda, the choice of Williams, was generally agreed to be the most powerful engine of the current crop. The switch would bring Senna a new team-mate: Japanese driver Satoru Nakajima would replace Dumfries. Williams had frustrated Honda by refusing to give the Japanese driver a race seat, but for Senna the affable Nakajima seemed like an ideal number two. Dumfries, who had yet to score and made it into the points on just two occasions that season, was to be pushed out of Formula One after just a single season at the top level.
Renault received a lot of flack from people who felt it had failed to develop the engine and reduce fuel consumption. Peter Warr dismissed that with remarkable honesty: “People were saying ‘The Lotus is a good car, Senna is an up-and-coming driver, but they are handicapped by the Renault engine, which hasn’t got the fuel consumption’,” he says. “But who knows if the truth wasn’t that the engine was absolutely fantastic and very powerful, the chassis wasn’t that good and Senna was having to drive it above the level of which it was capable to be competitive – which was why fuel consumption was bad.”
Formula One went behind the Iron Curtain for the inaugural Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring in Budapest. Senna took pole and finished second to Piquet, but his compatriot’s victory meant that although Senna moved into second in the standings, he was hanging on to the place by a single point. He was, however, just seven points behind Mansell and with five races remaining it looked as if the championship was still on target.
Then it all went wrong. Senna qualified eighth for the Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring after an engine problem forced him to switch to Dumfries’s car. The troublesome Renault lasted just 13 laps and Prost won again, as Senna dropped to third in the table behind Mansell and Prost.
The Italian Grand Prix at Monza brought more bad news. Senna qualified just fifth after another blown Renault ruled him out of most of Saturday’s session, and he didn’t make it past the grid when a transmission failure left him stranded on the line. As Piquet won he slipped to fourth in the championship standings, 13 points behind Mansell with three races to go. With two other better-placed competitors for the crown, the dream was starting to look like an impossibility.
Senna could only hope that all three of his rivals would fail to score well in the remaining three Grand Prix races, and that he would have better-than-usual reliability for the remainder of the season. It was the closest championship battle that had taken place under normal circumstances for years. The 1982 season had been more open, but been marred by a series of tragedies and political upheavals that gave no one an advantage. This was real racing. Sensing a great occasion, Bernie Ecclestone got the four challengers together in the pitlane at the Portuguese Grand Prix for a photo session attended by over 50 photographers. Senna, Prost, Mansell and Piquet were all smiles as they perched on the pitlane wall, arms round each other’s shoulders. Ecclestone had sensed the occasion for a unique photograph which today counts as one of the most memorable ever.
Ironically, a few years’ later it was almost impossible to get two of them to pose together, let alone all four.
Senna then made clear his intentions by taking pole position, his seventh of the year, by over eight-tenths of a second from Mansell. He knew that if he could win he would still have a slim chance of taking the title; and that if Mansell failed to finish, so much the better. Senna also had the advantage that only the best 11 scores of 16 counted, and as he had already failed to finish five times, every point counted. Prost and Mansell had good reliability records and would be dropping scores. And Estoril was the track where Senna had scored his superb first win 18 months before.
Senna could do nothing, though, when Mansell powered into the lead at the start and began to pull away into the distance. He held on to second strongly, for almost all the race, knowing that it gave him an outside chance of the title and that if Mansell hit trouble, victor
y for the Brazilian would close the deficit to just four points. But it was not to be. With a single lap remaining, the thirsty Lotus Renault drank the last of its fuel and coasted to a halt with its display still claiming there was enough fuel for 1.4 laps left in the tank. Senna was lucky to be classified fourth, but the loss of three points meant his championship bid was over.
It was a downcast figure that traipsed back to the Lotus pit after bringing his car to rest out on the circuit. As Mansell, Prost and Piquet celebrated side by side on the podium, Senna was left with fourth place, no trophy and no chance of the championship. In the excitement over Mansell’s strengthening lead in the standings, the fourth challenger was almost forgotten. Senna went straight to the motorhome and turned his thoughts to 1987.
Pole position in Mexico did nothing to cheer the Brazilian, and a third place in the race with another Renault-prompted non-finish at the final Grand Prix of the season in Adelaide did nothing to quell his disappointment. In a bizarre twist, Prost sauntered on to the title as a blown tyre suddenly and cruelly ended Nigel Mansell’s bid. Senna ended the year 17 points behind Prost, 15 behind Mansell and 14 behind Piquet.
Of the 16 races, Senna had taken eight pole positions, winning Spain and the USA East, finishing second in Brazil, Belgium, Germany and Hungary, third in Monaco and Mexico, fourth in Portugal, and fifth in Canada. Fifty-five points was worth only fourth place in the championship in an amazingly competitive season.
He had suffered six non-classifications compared to five for Piquet, four for Mansell and three for Prost, plus several classified results where he had failed to make it to the line. With a more reliable engine with better fuel consumption, the championship might have looked very different, but the record books say that Senna merely finished a distant fourth while the other three battled to the wire.
It was a miserable end to a season that had initially promised so much. Senna’s dreams had crumbled. He had taken eight poles, but fell one short of the record nine in a season; he had led the championship, won twice and scored more points than in the previous two years of his Formula One career combined, but ultimately failed to play a starring role in the title’s thrilling conclusion. For Senna, 1986 had not been a failure, but it had fallen short of the success he had desired.
At the end of the season, Peter Warr commented that he thought Senna would have been better off with Derek Warwick supporting him. Senna was beginning to think he would not make it with Lotus. But he gave the team one more year, with the Honda engine. Lotus also had a new big-bucks sponsor in the shape of RJ Reynolds, the giant tobacco company which introduced its Camel brand for the first time to Formula One. Imperial Tobacco had withdrawn its John Player Special brand from the Lotus team for the second and last time, and had been replaced by the even bigger bucks of Reynolds. With Honda power and plenty of cash, Senna had a right to think the world championship was winging his way. But Peter Warr was about to blow his career in the biggest possible way. With all the advantages, the Lotus team fluffed it. When the team was wanting a good chassis from Gerard Ducarouge, the reason that Senna was at Lotus, he could not deliver.
In-between Mexico and Adelaide, Ducarouge holidayed with Senna in Mauritius, before the island was fashionable. They were high with hopes for the following season, as Ducarouge remembers: “He was a kid and like all kids he loved to play. He was playing like a kid all the time, making jokes. There were one or two people from TV Globo who were very good friends, and myself, and he was absolutely going crazy for everything, doing sport, flying the little aeroplanes, and the jokes. That was the man that no one had seen. It was great to have that privilege, to follow his real moments. In the car or at the circuit he was a totally different man. But on an island like Mauritius he could say ‘Now I’ll have fun, now I won’t be criticised for what I’m doing, nobody will write silly things in the newspapers about this, deforming the truth’. He was completely free to do what is normal when you are 26 and should be enjoying yourself.”
But the fact remained that Senna’s two years with Renault engines had been blighted by poor fuel consumption, blamed squarely on the Renault turbo engine, and the French manufacturer was harangued for failing to rectify it. The engines were seemingly the thirstiest on the grid, and this had cost a probable four race wins in 32 races, forcing Senna time and time again to slow down and conserve fuel.
After Senna’s death, Peter Warr made a telling observation about the fuel consumption problems. He said the team had found that in 1987, with the Honda engine, Senna’s fuel consumption was the worst in the field. Warr believed that he was driving it so fast that its fuel consumption was higher. He told Senna biographer Christopher Hilton: “It was because he had this throttle control technique – blip-blip-blipping in the corners. The reason we had these suspicions was because he kept coming up as the worst of the Honda drivers on fuel consumption. That was partly because he was going the quickest and partly because he was blipping the throttle.” The revelations forced him to adapt his driving style. He would not be caught out again.
CHAPTER 12
1987:
The start of the Honda years
Giving up on Lotus
After a successful 1986, and with a Honda engine firmly fastened in the back of his Lotus, Ayrton Senna was one of the hot favourites to win the world championship title in 1987. It was reasoned that if he had been able to take the fight to Williams Honda while running on a less-favoured Renault engine, with the same power unit in the back the title might soon be his. The threat from McLaren, in particular from Alain Prost, was also expected to be strong, and it looked as if a replay of the close battle of 1986 was on the cards.
For Senna it was the beginning of a six-year relationship with the Japanese manufacturer that would ultimately deliver him three drivers’ titles, on the back of 32 victories and 46 pole positions. He would become one of the most popular international celebrities in Japan, and win the affections of Honda’s top management in a way that was unmatched by his team-mates and even team principals. It was an extraordinary relationship.
Japan was about to make a mark on Formula One in a big way. Honda had returned to the sport as an engine manufacturer in 1983, after the Honda outfit of the 1960s had been aborted in tragic circumstances. The 1986 constructors’ crown for Williams marked Honda’s first world title. In 1987, for the first time, all 16 races of the season were to be televised in Japan and the Japanese Grand Prix was set to return to the calendar at the end of the year after a 10-year absence, at the Honda-owned racetrack of Suzuka. Senna’s new team-mate, Honda protégé Satoru Nakajima, was the first Japanese driver to compete full-time in Formula One.
Once he had realised that Renault would be quitting the sport, Senna had been instrumental in bringing Honda to Lotus after its three-year exclusive with Williams expired. He later explained: “I very much enjoyed working with Renault. I think it was saddled with limited conditions at that stage, in terms of producing the engines and developments, etc, whereas Honda was unlimited in that respect. But as far as individuals were concerned at Renault, I had a good relationship and a good environment to work in. And the company gave me a lot of success. Of course it’s no secret that I particularly wanted to go in the Honda direction at that time, which is what happened eventually. I did it because I believed it could do a better job with what it had available. Not that each individual was better than those at Renault, but as a package… As far as the commitment from the company was concerned, I realised that Honda was much further ahead than anybody, not just Renault. And that commitment is fundamental for success.”
Senna had worked his charm to get himself the best possible package, just as he had done on so many previous occasions in his career. Honda clearly saw that Senna was the future and his pursuit of perfection held strongly with the Honda ideals. The gruff down-to-earth Williams approach, with the team’s warring drivers, did not fit so easily with the Honda philosophy, and the team firmly wanted to do things its own way. Honda was
still seething that Williams had lost the 1986 drivers’ title and was adamant that this could have been avoided if team orders, most likely for the good of Piquet, had been imposed. Honda also questioned whether Frank Williams was capable of running the team following his car accident. Williams had recovered well from the accident in early 1986 and was attending all the races, his mental capacity undimmed. But the Japanese, who detested weakness of any kind, whatever its cause, were not convinced. In February 1987, Honda moved out of the Williams factory in Oxfordshire and into a new facility in Langley, Berkshire, from which it would supply both teams. It was a symbolic as well as physical move.
Honda’s arrival was not the only major change for Lotus in 1987. After 18 years with the team on and off, Imperial Tobacco pulled its sponsorship after it was taken over by the cost-conscious Hanson conglomerate. There would be no more JPS Lotuses.
Imperial may have publicly blamed escalating costs, but the real reason was that it was unimpressed with Lotus’s failure to sign a top-flight British driver. In a way the loss could be attributed to Senna, but the inclusion of Nakajima in the team had strengthened the Honda relationship and that was ultimately what mattered. A replacement title sponsor was easily found in the shape of another cigarette company, RJ Reynolds, and its Camel brand. The familiar black and gold was replaced with sunny yellow.
There was also technical innovation. Fuel was still limited to 195 litres in order to keep some power control over the turbo engines, and boost pressure was limited to four bar. But the big innovation was suspension. The new Lotus Honda 99T was the first Formula One car with active suspension.
The computer-controlled active suspension was a bold and risky leap forward and true to the team’s tradition of invention. It had been a long time coming, and was the biggest car development since ground effects, also introduced by Lotus. But the system was far from perfect. It had been instigated by Colin Chapman before he died and would not be perfected until Williams’ refinements in 1992.
The Life of Senna Page 18
