The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  In 1987 there were inevitably problems. Originally the system was bulky and unwieldy, but it had great promise – if only it could be made to work consistently. After pre-season tests using cars with both active and conventional suspension systems, Senna was convinced that the active car should be the choice for the following season, and pushed the team towards finalising the details. For Senna it was a supreme technical challenge. He said after he first drove the car with the new suspension: “This is what we’ve got to have for the whole season, from the start – and nothing else.”

  But at the start of the year there was some doubt that Senna would even start the season with Lotus, as rumours flew thick and fast. One had Senna dumping Lotus to drive for McLaren. The team didn’t have a team-mate for Alain Prost, as 1982 world champion Keke Rosberg had retired at the end of the year. Team principal, Ron Dennis had hung on, hoping Rosberg would change his mind. But he had had a lacklustre 1986 season and been deeply affected by the death of his friend Elio de Angelis. Stefan Johansson, always the most likely choice to replace him, was waiting in the wings. But McLaren never looked like a move that Senna would be willing to make, even though Ron Dennis had made it known that he would be welcome in the team. The TAG turbo engine was fading and just didn’t have the legs of the Honda, as 1987 proved.

  The Brazilian had gone to great lengths to build Lotus into exactly the team he wanted – carefully selecting his team-mate, encouraging the deal with Honda and showing enthusiasm for the active suspension – and a last-minute leap to McLaren would have wrong-footed him in a team focused on Prost. The power of the Honda engine and the seeming promise of a Ducarouge chassis meant it was not the right time for Senna to make the move and he knew it. But the seeds had unwittingly been sown for 1988.

  Meanwhile, Senna put everything he had into developing the new car. His new team-mate, Satoru Nakajima, proved his worth when Lotus tested at Donington with Honda for the first time. Senna brought the car into the pits after a few laps and said: “There’s something wrong with it because it’s vibrating, it feels like it’s going to shake itself to pieces.” Nakajima then jumped in, and after two laps returned and said: “There’s no problem. That’s the way the engines always are.” Senna was impressed.

  The season began in Brazil, as was tradition, at the Rio de Janeiro track of Jacarepagua. Senna proved wrong those who had doubted the new active suspension when he qualified in third place, and then in the race pushed into the lead by lap eight. The Brazilian crowd went wild when he overtook Piquet for the lead, and showed their shifting allegiance, from the old hero to the new. Four laps later, however, Senna was forced into the pits – he complained of handling problems and eventually rejoined in midfield. He had fought back into second place by the time his oil tank broke in the closing stages. He followed Rio with pole position in Imola and also led a few laps, finishing second to Nigel Mansell’s Williams. It seemed that in the Honda-powered battle,Williams had taken the upper hand.

  The next race was the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. Senna qualified third, behind the two Williams cars, but at the start he leapfrogged them both, although Mansell was right on his tail. As they powered down to the fast Fagnes curve, Mansell made his move and pulled alongside the Lotus, but as he moved left to overtake, Senna drifted to the right. Mansell did not give way and the two cars tangled and spun off the circuit.

  Senna was eliminated immediately while Mansell continued at the back of the field for a few laps before he was forced to abandon the car in the pits. He was furious. He stormed down to the Lotus pit, where he pushed Senna against the wall and zipped his overalls up to his nose. Some Lotus mechanics intervened before the confrontation grew nastier and Mansell was led away shouting. When asked what Mansell had wanted, Senna replied with one of the classic all-time Formula One quotes: “When a man holds you round the throat, I do not think that he has come to apologise.”

  Mansell was fuming. “I turned into the corner and the next thing I knew he was sliding down the inside,” he said. “I felt a bump from the rear and I was off, spinning into the sand. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more angry in my life. What he did was totally unnecessary and ridiculously dangerous, and it was about the fourth time he had done it to me in the past three years. When I climbed out, I had only one thought on my mind and that was to get Senna. I found him in the Lotus garage and I can only say he was lucky some bystanders kept us apart after we’d had a bit of a scuffle. There could have been a bit of a mess on the garage floor.”

  Senna naturally saw the incident a different way. “I couldn’t believe what he was trying to do – overtake on the outside at a place like that,” he said. “I tried to get out of the way, brake as much as possible, but you can only do so much in a situation like that. I was committed to the corner – there was no way I could stop.”

  Monte Carlo was Senna’s 50th Grand Prix and he put the Mansell controversy behind him to celebrate in style. Everyone was still talking about Spa, but both drivers were determined to let bygones be bygones. “My sights are on the world championship, not on any other driver,” Mansell said. “I feel the same about him as I feel about all the other 25 drivers in the world championship. They are all drivers I have to beat. I don’t want to think about Senna for even 30 seconds.”

  The battle was hotting up. Mansell beat Senna to pole by over half-a-second, but Senna was himself more than a second better than next-placed man, Piquet. They were so fast that if the current 107 per cent qualifying rules had applied, then only 16 cars would have made it on to the grid. Everyone was predicting a thrilling race, but the battle failed to materialise. They left the grid in formation, with Senna struggling to match the pace of Mansell, who was pulling away by a few tenths of a second every lap.

  But on lap 30, when he was 11 seconds in the lead, Mansell’s turbo blew and Senna took the lead. To the chequered flag it was a near-flawless drive to victory for Senna, black-marked only when the back end of the Lotus twitched wide in the closing stages. History was made – it was Senna’s first victory in Monte Carlo and the first ever for a car with active suspension.

  “It is fantastic to win here,” Senna grinned. “It is the most prestigious place to win and I am delighted. My main concern was the tyres and keeping a nice steady pace. Mansell was pushing very hard and I don’t know if he could have kept it up all the way anyway. It was easier to win this race than to finish third last year. When Mansell pulled away at the start, I just kept him around eight seconds ahead – I wanted to preserve everything and not push too hard.”

  Not everyone was impressed by this consummate display of Senna’s Monaco skill. Nelson Piquet, who had finished second, grumbled: “We have the same engines. The main difference must be the suspension.”

  As the Formula One circus temporarily left Europe, Senna headed back to Brazil for a well-earned rest. But it was not all relaxation. On the weekend after the Monaco Grand Prix he launched his own line of men’s sportswear in a Rio de Janeiro nightclub. It was an early sign of his ability to think as a businessman as well as a sports star. “This is just a way of investing part of the money I’ve made on the track,” he said. “Racing is still my life.”

  The next race in Montreal was cancelled, ostensibly because of a dispute between sponsors, but more plausibly because the addition of the Japanese Grand Prix to the calendar had meant 17 races in the season, and the teams were happy with 16. This meant that the next stop was the US East Grand Prix at Detroit and a street circuit at which Senna had always done well.

  Mansell continued his dominance of qualifying by taking top spot by over 1.3 seconds from Senna, although the race seemed to prove the jinx that the only race he had won so far that season was the only one where he had not started from pole position. He led until half distance when a lengthy pitstop ruined his chances and Senna took the lead to cruise to his second victory in a row, waving a Brazilian flag from the cockpit as he took his lap of honour. He again insisted that Mansell was pushing the
car too hard to keep up the pace, and revealed that a crucial strategic decision on his own part had enabled him to win without the need for a pitstop. “I made the decision halfway through and decided to go for it. We were supposed to stop. Nobody knew we were going all the way except me.”

  Victory in Detroit gave Senna the lead in the drivers’ championship with 25 points, two ahead of Prost, four ahead of Piquet and 10 ahead of Mansell. It looked as if he could go all the way, especially as the active suspension had proved reliable and successful. But the team still had doubts, as the two wins had come on the slow street tracks of Monte Carlo and Detroit. “We have a lot more to prove on the fast circuits to show we are the best,” Senna said tellingly. “I think the championship is just starting.”

  He qualified third at the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard and raced to fourth, holding onto the championship lead by a single point as Mansell romped to victory. Mansell was dominating the season and was destined to be on the front row in every race he ran. If his car held together it was clear he would be champion whatever Senna did.

  The British Grand Prix at Silverstone marked a watershed for Honda, when the Japanese manufacturer took the first three places in qualifying with Mansell, Piquet and Senna; and the first four places in the race, with Mansell the victor, Piquet second, Senna third and Nakajima fourth. In the world championship Piquet and Mansell were by then behind him in the standings by just one point. “We could not match them for performance or fuel efficiency,” Senna admitted. “I just tried to hang in there.” Once again problems with fuel consumption were emerging.

  Senna had started to realise that although Lotus could deliver him victories on tracks to which the car was suited, to mount a consistent championship challenge he would have to look elsewhere. He had spoken to Ron Dennis about a move to McLaren before, and so he began to solicit the team boss in earnest. Dennis was used to running a team with two championship material drivers, but the retirement of Keke Rosberg at the end of 1986 had forced him to take on Sweden’s Stefan Johansson, who while a good driver was not a great one. Dennis wanted to return to the glory days of the Prost-Lauda, Prost-Rosberg partnerships and the cool perfectionist Senna seemed ideal to fill the gap. Besides his talent Senna had something else very special to offer: Honda. As its relationship with Williams turned sour, Senna knew he could persuade the company to instead supply McLaren alongside Lotus in 1988 and end the Williams deal.

  On the weekend of the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, Senna hinted to Peter Warr that he was intending to leave the team. The decision was compounded by his third-place finish in the race, a lap behind Piquet’s winning Williams, and with a car in which the pedals had worn through the floor. Senna lost the championship lead to Piquet as a result. The rivalry between the two very different Brazilians was growing intense. Piquet was used to being the nation’s hero, but Senna had just been voted Brazil’s favourite sports personality with 17.5 per cent of the vote – Piquet had finished back in fifth with 8.5 per cent.

  Senna had yet to sign for McLaren, but he had a verbal agreement with Dennis that he would drive. A couple of days after the German Grand Prix, Warr received a letter from the Brazilian’s solicitors informing him that he should look for a new number one driver for 1988. Senna was taking a chance as he had not yet signed his contract with McLaren. “Nothing was signed but all the negotiations had taken place, and I believed in Ron’s word on the deal,” he said.

  Warr immediately realised that Senna had taken the high ground in the round of driver negotiations for 1988 and that Lotus was about to be humbled. If he could not keep his driver he at least wanted to win the PR war. He immediately began scheming to bring the driver market back under his control. “It was quite obvious that Senna thought he would be the first to sit down in the game of musical chairs and that everything else would then follow,” said Warr. “I wasn’t prepared to wait for him – and run the risk of having to choose from the left-overs at the end of the season.”

  As Warr pondered his options he realised that Honda loved Nelson Piquet almost as much as it loved Senna, and that Piquet was the key for Lotus in 1988. There was no attraction for Piquet at Williams with the engine gone. Piquet had also heard the engine rumours and was pondering his future. The weekend after the German race, Warr flew out to Nice and then helicoptered into Monte Carlo for discussions with the championship leader. The two men talked long and hard that Saturday night.Warr said: “I hadn’t spoken to Nelson before that Saturday but I felt we had to act.” It went like clockwork and the following Wednesday Piquet flew to Heathrow to meet with Warr and Fred Bushell. Piquet, sensing that Williams was about to lose its Honda engines a year early, had nothing to lose and everything to gain. He signed a two-year deal to drive for a Honda-engined Lotus team. Warr had effectively stolen Senna’s thunder.

  On Thursday evening, Senna arrived in Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix, completely unaware of the deal with Piquet. He found out when the news was made public the following morning, 20 minutes before qualifying. It looked as if Senna had been pushed out of the team in favour of Piquet, and with the Lotus door closed he had lost a powerful bargaining tool with Dennis. He was furious.

  “There is no reason for me to rush to announce my plans,” he told assembled reporters. “I am open to suggestions, but I am certainly finished with Lotus. That happened a long time ago. It amazes me that a company as big and famous as Lotus should behave so unprofessionally. They could have called me on Wednesday – the day he signed – to let me know. Instead I found out here on Friday morning.”

  Senna qualified just sixth, but finished second in the race – to Piquet.

  In Austria Senna qualified seventh and after a bad start raced to just fifth. It seemed as if the Lotus title challenge had gone off the rails. Piquet moved 11 points ahead of Senna in the championship and it was looking as if Lotus would have the number one on its car in 1988 after all.

  There were no snags in the final negotiations and Senna took his father Milton, who came over to England specially, down to Woking to sign his contract with Ron Dennis. His father was with him because it was a very big deal, involving over $20 million for three years. They left Esher early in the morning, then got delayed at the McLaren factory as they looked around and met all the people. By all accounts Ron Dennis did not offer them any lunch, and they got home late and very hungry. Milton da Silva was an extremely methodical man. He liked his lunch at 12:30, his supper by 7:30, and was in bed by the stroke of 10. If these things didn’t happen he got upset.

  When they finally arrived home to the Esher house he shared with Mauricio Gugelmin, it was after 11. His father simply made a few sandwiches in the kitchen and took them up to his bedroom. As it happened, Gugelmin, who had been left at home, had decided to play a joke on Milton. He filled up his bed with weightlifting irons he had brought from his gym. Gugelmin remembers: “We only heard a horrible noise and a scream.” “Son of a bitch!” yelled Milton in Portuguese. Exhausted, he had apparently collapsed onto his bed.

  On 1st September, in an interview with Brazilian newspaper O Globo, Senna made it public that he would switch to McLaren for 1988 in a three-year deal. That did not come as a shock, but there was plenty to surprise and anger at Lotus in Senna’s vitriolic statement. “I’m in Formula One to be a winner,” he said. “My goal is to win while Lotus’s is merely to survive. We just couldn’t continue together. They knew I was on my way out. I just didn’t tell them that my next stop would be the McLaren team, with which I had everything straightened out, as well as with Honda. It’s a question of philosophy. Warr does not like to take risks, and he runs Lotus with an iron hand. But when the competition starts, it’s each man for himself. The amount of money behind the Formula One circus is so high that no one could care less for anything else. I behave just like any driver in search of winning. Once a new driver comes along, many people want to knock him down. The only reason I’m still racing is because I want to become a world champion.” He added: �
��From a personal point of view I am very happy to work with Alain: two top drivers working together can only make a team stronger.”

  At Monza the official announcement was made that both Senna and Honda would be joining McLaren in 1988. There had been another year to run on the Williams Honda deal, and the team was left without another top engine manufacturer to turn to. It had refused to take on Satoru Nakajima, and the following season would, as a result, be using the debuting normally-aspirated engine from an English engine-builder called John Judd. It effectively ruled the team out of the championship before it had even started. To soften the blow, Honda paid Williams $24 million in compensation for breaking the contract and agreed to pay for a year’s supply of the Judd units. But the team was left in the lurch until it was rescued by a few Renault managers knocking on its motorhome door with the offer of help in 1989.

  Senna had turned 27 and was no longer the young rookie with nothing to lose. He knew he should have won at least one world championship between 1985 and 1987 and possibly all three. But in the wrong choice of team he had won none. The hard truth was that Lotus was incapable of taking the championship, and he was sorry he had not recognised that in 1984. He was certain he could take the team and mould it into his own. Now he realised that Formula One was moving and Lotus was stuck in a time warp after Chapman’s death. The team did not want to leave its roots behind and enter the new technological data-driven world of Formula One. Its roots were mechanical.

  Senna and Dennis had struck a hard bargain. Dennis later revealed: “He was incredibly tough, even in those early days, and in the end we just came to a complete stalemate over the last $500,000. I suggested that we flipped a coin for it but he did not understand what that meant. Having had it explained to him that it was the simplest way to break the deadlock, I then had to draw a picture of a head and a tail to make absolutely sure that there was no doubt as to the interpretation. I wrote down on a piece of paper the rules to this very simple thing but he still did not have a complete command of the English language. I won the toss and he never forgave me for it – I paid a million times over for that. It was only about 10 days later that it suddenly dawned on him that it was not $500,000, but $1.5 million because it was a three-year contract.”