The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  To Senna’s favour, neither Ferrari finished and the biggest threat to his championship challenge was defused when race-leader Nigel Mansell mysteriously coasted to a halt on the final lap and Riccardo Patrese managed only third as he struggled with his gearbox. Senna’s championship lead was still a healthy 24 points over Nelson Piquet in a Benetton, who had been the lucky winner in Canada, and he was 29 points over Prost, 30 over Patrese and 33 over Mansell. Canada, however, had proved that he was not invincible and with the increasing pace of the Williams Renaults it had become clear that the battle for the championship was going to be a lot tougher from then on.

  Mexico was next and Senna flew straight off home to São Paulo. He spent a glorious week and a half at his beach house at the resort of Angra dos Reis. It was his paradise, where he could indulge in every form of water sports or simply fly off in his helicopter to a deserted beach for the day.

  On the following Monday he was indulging in his love of jet-skiing with friends from São Paulo who were staying with him at the house when he fell off the jetski and cut his head open. Luckily he was not knocked out and was able to return to the shore unaided. He was rushed off to the local hospital with a towel around his head. The gash required 10 stitches straight across the back of his head. Being Brazil the news got out – there was much speculation about the accident, the upcoming Mexican Grand Prix and his race fitness.

  Senna was remarkably unperturbed by the accident. It was speculated he would not race, but he did not consider such a prospect. At São Paulo airport he joked with Brazilian journalists: “Everything is well. I was playing with some friends and I fell off my jet-ski. If I win as many points on Sunday as I have stitches I will be doing very well.” The journalists questioned whether he should be indulging in such dangerous extra-curricular activities during the Formula One season, with so much at stake. He replied: “Driving in the São Paulo traffic is more dangerous.”

  One side-effect of the accident was a modified helmet. He would be wearing a special helmet with space carved out to avoid putting pressure on the wound. But the accident had dulled his senses and whether he should have been racing at all was a moot point.

  In Friday qualifying, Senna suffered his second big accident in five days when he spun in the closing minutes of preliminary qualifying on the exit of the notorious 130mph Peraltada turn. He skidded across the track into the tyre barriers backwards, with the wheels off the track and the car flying through the air in reverse, as caught dramatically by photographers. The McLaren was flipped over and he was trapped in the cockpit until marshals arrived and helped him out.

  It was a big shunt, but Senna was not flustered. What did disturb him was that he finished the day only third, unable to match the pace of Williams. It was the same story on Saturday, and Senna had to settle for best of the rest and third on the grid as Patrese and Mansell again monopolised the front row.

  There was no change for the race: Senna was forced to follow Patrese and Mansell home, 56 seconds behind. Ominously there was now no sign of the gearbox problems that had plagued Williams in the early stages of the season, and with the reliability issue sorted out, the car’s outright pace was showing through. Senna still led the championship by 24 points from Patrese. It was Williams’ first win of the season and a firm message to the rest of the field that the car with the revolutionary but complex electronics, designed by ace young designer Adrian Newey, was coming together.

  None of this was lost on Senna – he saw it as a sea change reflecting the fact that the first four straight wins had been a fluke. He was in a reflective mood following the race: “It was tough for anyone to match Riccardo and Nigel here today. I tried my best but I could not overtake them – it was just not possible. The two Williams were much faster than us the whole weekend. They demonstrated how much superior they are. At one stage I was able to maintain the same pace as Nigel but I could not overtake him, even when he had engine problems. Realising my engine was on the limit with its temperature, I eased off and decided the best thing was to try and finish on the podium and take four points towards the championship. I hope this will gain us some time to help Honda and McLaren make improvements to the engine and chassis. We need these corrections. Williams showed here what it can achieve. I have said for some time that the championship is still open and this proves it.”

  Once again Senna implied that the Honda V12 was lacking power. Reports surfaced that the power had begun to lag in comparison to the Renault V10 that Williams was using and Senna had demanded revisions. He was not looking forward to the return to Europe and the run of high-speed tracks that was coming up, including Silverstone, Hockenheim, Spa and Monza. He hammered the Honda engineers in meetings and told them he was relying on them to win the championship. They scuttled off back to Japan to redesign the engine.

  But first came the inaugural French Grand Prix at the new track of Magny-Cours. No one was happy about the new track and in qualifying Senna could again only manage third behind Patrese and Prost but ahead of Mansell. However, it was Mansell who had the better race, bringing his Williams home for his first win of the season, followed by Prost, with Senna over half a minute behind in third. Senna still had a lead in the championship of 25 points, but now Mansell was in second.

  The next race was Mansell’s home Grand Prix at Silverstone. He traditionally flew in front of his fans, whereas Senna did not perform well at the circuit and had won there just once, aided by a downpour of rain in 1988. Silverstone produced a thrilling qualifying battle; Senna took provisional pole with 10 minutes of the session to go, but in the dying moments Mansell slashed his time by six-10ths of a second. In the face of it, Senna was magnanimous. He said: “I did my best but Nigel really deserves to be on pole.”

  The new Honda engine appeared for the first time at Silverstone. But McLaren told no one. Senna said much later: “We tested it at Silverstone, and I raced it at Silverstone. Gerhard and I both had the engine available – I chose to race, he didn’t, because the performance was very similar between the two engines. It was a completely new thing and we had to develop it in order to go further.”

  At the start Mansell made a bad getaway as Senna out-psyched him and took the lead. However, the Williams driver had caught Senna by the time they reached the Hangar Straight and he powered through at Stowe. The crowd was as vociferous as when Senna had won in Brazil. From then on Mansell never lost the lead. Senna was comfortable in second place, but on the final lap he ran out of fuel and saw his six points transformed into three for fourth and a lead of 18 points in the championship.

  Famously Mansell stopped on his slowing-down lap to pick up Senna and give him a lift back to the pits on the back of his Williams. He recalls: “Ayrton got a lot of flack at Silverstone because we were closing up in the standings. When he broke down I thought it would be good camaraderie to give him a lift. What is amazing is that some journalists actually criticised me for it, because they said he could look at the dials on my steering wheel and find out the secrets of the car. I had never heard anything so ridiculous.” Nor had Senna, who wished he had thought of it afterwards. He was similarly generous towards Mansell and it seemed that their past disagreements had been put behind them. Senna said: “What happened? It was just incredible. Mansell simply flew past me and I could do nothing. He drove so well and was so quick. It was a great victory for him.”

  Senna blamed the team for miscalculating the fuel consumption, but it was to prove much more fundamental than that. McLaren simply didn’t make that sort of mistake.

  A few days later, Senna had his third big accident of the year, when he suffered a 150mph crash at Hockenheim in testing for the German Grand Prix. Driving behind him, Patrese saw the McLaren ride over a kerb and somersault five metres into the air. Senna was rushed to the medical centre, where he was treated for whiplash and bruising before being moved on to the hospital at Mannheim, where he stayed overnight. His friend and countryman Mauricio Gugelmin accompanied him there, and Senna told him
that he believed a punctured tyre had caused the crash and he felt very lucky not to have been more seriously hurt.

  When Senna was released from hospital the following day he was scathing about the track’s safety standards. He said: “I was very, very lucky. I noticed about 500 metres before the first chicane that the left rear tyre had lost air. Then, shortly after, it just exploded. I remember my helmet pounding on the asphalt many times.” He said that the kerbs at that point of the track were too high and should be removed. He added that he would certainly race in the Grand Prix the following weekend.

  The German Grand Prix marked Senna’s first real disagreement that season with Alain Prost. Prost was not featuring in the championship and was heading for a major dust-up with his team, who by that stage disliked the imperious little Frenchman. Equally, Prost disliked the unpredictable Italian drama queens, as he called them.

  As Mansell ran away with the lead, Senna and Prost battled it out for second place until Prost hit a cone whilst attempting to outbrake the Brazilian and was forced to retire. The general opinion was that Senna had been hard but fair. But the drama was not over; Senna ran out of fuel on the last lap for the second race in a row. The championship lead was down to just eight points.

  As Senna raged at Ron Dennis and his team for their seeming incompetence for letting him run out of fuel in two consecutive races and endangering the championship, Prost raged at Senna. The Frenchman complained: “He did everything to stop me passing him. He weaved, braked early and then drove across me. If other drivers can be fined for minor things, then he should be fined too. Now that my championship chances are over, I shall do my best to help Nigel and Williams Renault win the title. What he did is unfair. And I shall have no problems in Hungary in driving against him. If he does it again, I shall push him off the track. I will show that I can be aggressive too. If he gets in my way again like that at Hungary I shall just have to push him off.”

  Senna was dismissive: “He is always complaining. Patrese got by me easily after two laps and he was faster than me. Prost just could not get by. We could have touched then at 300kph and if we had there would have been a big impact. He could have caused it. It was a desperate move by him.”

  The events of Hockenheim had clearly left Senna in a very bad mood and he was no longer as willing to be generous to his rivals. As Mansell recalls: “After that round Ayrton came to me and said: ‘This is the last that you will win this year. We have a new engine and we will have 50bhp extra from the next race’. Of course I didn’t take him seriously, but lo and behold next time around the team had this new engine developed by the Honda guys at Wako in Japan. There was a little bit of gamesmanship going on there.”

  What no one knew was that Senna already had the new engine: that was what had caused him to run out of fuel twice, as it was consuming more than its predecessor. Senna said later: “The engine management system had some wrong calibrations. As a result the expectation of fuel consumption at a given race was wrong. The read out was wrong and so we ran out of fuel – totally unexpectedly, and a big mistake. It was not a small difference, it was a big difference that caught us out, because we always have a margin to play with. But it was so big, the inaccuracy, that it caught us up. And it cost us six points in two races. Can you imagine? Six points in two races.”

  On Monday 5th August Soichiro Honda, Senna’s patriarch and a legend in Japan, died. Senna was deeply upset and immediately donned a black armband – a tradition in Japan in deference to a fallen leader.

  The Prost scuffle ran over into the next round at the Hungaroring. Prost’s remarks had created a lot of attention in the press and FISA was angry at his accusations. Both drivers had been given formal warnings after Hockenheim and Prost had received a suspended one-race ban for his anti-FISA comments. The pair were called together for a meeting in the neutral territory of the Williams motorhome and emerged after 90 minutes to publicly shake hands.

  FISA had clearly made big threats to Prost. He said: “I think we fixed all the problems. First I thought he wanted to push me off the track – it really looked like that to me – but when I saw the video I realised it was purely my mistake. It was a stupid situation that was exaggerated by a certain element of the press. When I admit my mistakes it’s not because of FISA’s reaction. For the sport it’s much better if the two of us can sort out our relationship. When you have the kind of relationship we have, you must be objective and honest. I made some mistakes in the past. In fact, I made them quite often. If I am totally honest I can’t call him a friend yet. But you never know. Anything can happen.”

  Senna was well behaved. He said: “It’s not peace yet, it’s just a beginning. We have had too many personal problems in the past. We have tried to overcome them, to improve the situation. Above all, it’s important to enjoy this job instead of having negative, destructive emotions.”

  Senna won the Hungarian round and took pole position that weekend. Mansell was second, although by the narrowest of margins. The new Honda engine was doing its job well. Senna dedicated his victory to Soichiro Honda.

  Reflecting on Honda, Senna said he still felt the advantage of 1988 had disappeared and he had his own reasons for this, as he explained to journalists after the race. “I believe that Honda has established such a domination in Formula One over the past few years that it has been difficult for the team to motivate its own people to continue working at the same level. That is a normal thing to happen, with some of the people involved losing a little bit of motivation. And as a consequence, we have the difficulties we have right now. But it was recognised some time ago, and a huge effort has been made to change the situation. Honda brought up a new specification of engine, which is completely new as far as all internal parts are concerned – something you can [normally] only have from one season to another. And it did it within 30 days. We still don’t have [exactly the specification of engine that] we need, but the Honda engineers have shown that they are trying very hard.”

  In mid-August, Bertrand Gachot, Jordan’s young rent-a-driver, was charged with assaulting a London taxi driver with CS gas and went to prison. Jordan hired a young unknown called Michael Schumacher for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, who immediately impressed and then signed for Benetton the race after. It was an insignificant sideshow at the time, hardly noticed by Senna. But a future rival had arrived. For Senna, armed with the new Honda engine, the Belgian Grand Prix was an easy run after Mansell’s engine failed. The gap was then 22 points. But Mansell won in Italy, where a late pitstop relegated Senna to second and reduced the deficit to 18 points again.

  There was a surprise at Estoril in Portugal when Dennis and Senna announced they would race together again in 1992. They had signed a new one-year contract and Senna had received a $3 million rise to re-sign, taking his pay up to $18 million. He knew he had nowhere else to go and took advantage of Dennis’s propensity to have his drivers signed well in advance. He and Gerhard Berger would be teamed together for a third year. McLaren boss Ron Dennis explained: “The negotiations went very smoothly. I am delighted with the outcome.”

  But before that, Senna received the most audacious offer of his career when Eddie Jordan also got in on the act. He had entered his own team in 1991 for the first time and achieved moderate success – he had certainly not disgraced himself. Halfway through 1991 he could see the McLaren-Honda relationship was faltering, and that Senna would have liked out of it if there was a good exit. He approached him with a bizarre idea – and probably the most audacious offer ever made in motor racing. The Irishman looked Senna square in the eyes and said: “I want you to drive for me. But I’ll pay you nothing.”

  Senna listened because the Irishman had given him his first test drive in a Formula Three car in 1982 and provided stern competition that year after he had signed for another team. Senna had helped him when he entered Formula One and smoothed his path with Bernie Ecclestone. The relationship remained cordial. Jordan couldn’t hope to match Senna’s $15 million retainer wi
th McLaren – more than his whole budget. But Senna could sell his own advertising space on his car and overalls, which was potentially worth millions, and would also get equity in the team, maybe as much as 50 per cent. It would become his own team. Jordan says: “I thought the idea would appeal to him. Ayrton would have been seen as the one who turned the team, his team, into a winner. You can only fantasise about what might have happened, but together we could have won races.”

  Senna, his career at a crossroads, apparently gave the offer serious thought. But he was well aware of what had happened to the career of fellow Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi in 1976 when he had gone off to join his brother’s Copersucar Fittipaldi team on a similar deal. It had been a disaster – it had ruined Fittipaldi’s career and probably prevented him winning two more world championships to add to the two he already had. Having thought about it he told Jordan: “Don’t wait for me.”

  Sealing his deal with McLaren was the impetus he needed, because at Estoril the championship swung decisively back in Senna’s favour. Mansell lost a wheel straight after his pitstop and was black-flagged because his mechanics consequently fitted new rubber while his car was stranded in mid-pitlane. Senna could manage only second behind Patrese, but it was enough to give him a 24-point lead in the championship and leave him needing just seven points from the last three races to take the crown.

  Senna was hoping to have the title wrapped up at the following round, the first to be held at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya. Mansell had injured his ankle in a football friendly against the press on Friday evening, and spent much of the weekend with ice packs pressed onto his leg. It could have given Senna a major advantage, but it did not turn out that way. A blown engine meant Senna qualified just third, but he rushed past Mansell at the start of the race, with Berger taking the lead. Mansell hunted Senna down. The pair had had a row in the drivers’ briefing, refereed by FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre, when Senna accused Mansell of aggressive tactics at the start in Estoril, so pride as well as the championship was at stake. On lap five, Mansell pulled alongside Senna on the long straight and the pair rushed to turn one wheel to wheel. It was Senna who gave in, and Mansell famously surged into second place.