“Benetton is damaging Ford by doing this and taking away some better results for McLaren. Ford now has two Grand Prix victories and is leading the championship after three races with a car that is still well underdeveloped, with an engine that is well recognised as being at least half a second down on the other specification Ford engine. It is an absurd situation. I feel really frustrated about it and I just hope that someone at Ford picks this thing up and puts it right, straight away.”
Senna flew straight home to São Paulo from Heathrow after the race and missed the eulogies to him in the Monday morning newspapers in Europe. Back in Brazil, someone brought him a selection from Britain and Italy. He was delighted: it was virtually his first good press for years in Europe. He said: “I didn’t read what was in the papers in Europe after Donington because I flew straight back to Brazil but there it was very nice.”
Unfortunately the honeymoon period didn’t last long. Senna threatened not to race at Imola if the situation with Ford was not resolved, and at first it seemed as if Ford had taken notice, actually supplying the team with some of the latest spec engines. As Ford’s contracted factory team, however, Benetton had other ideas. Flavio Briatore refused to let McLaren use the latest development engine and told it to keep the Series V. McLaren fitted the Series VII pneumatic valve engine for the San Marino Grand Prix just in case Ford persuaded Flavio Briatore to change his mind, but Benetton stood its ground and on the Thursday evening before the race, it was removed. “If Senna doesn’t want to drive then he should stop,” said Briatore. “Who needs him now anyway?” Senna had to wait until Silverstone in July to get his hands on a series VII with pneumatic valves. And by then Benetton had a series IX.
Senna was still in São Paulo on Thursday evening and taking up Briatore’s suggestion was a real option for him. After each of the year’s early races, he had returned home to Brazil to spend time with his new girlfriend Adriane. He had fallen deeply in love and wanted to spend as much time as possible with her. As Mika Häkkinen got ready to drive his first race for McLaren, Senna left his own decision until the Thursday before the race. He was on the phone constantly to the Ford people in Brazil and the top brass in Detroit, urging them to give him the engine to do the job. The lure of racing proved too strong. He decided to race. Adriane drove him to São Paulo for the flight to Rome. The 13-hour overnight flight landed just two hours before practice was due to begin. Imola was almost 200 miles away. But Captain O’Mahoney was ready on the tarmac with Senna’s HS125 to fly him to Bologna, where a helicopter then dropped him at the track. He arrived in the garage just three minutes before the first practice session began. He promptly spun into the barriers at Tosa on his first run, although the team blamed problems with the active suspension. Asked why he had decided to race, he explained: “In the end I’d only be doing a favour to Benetton by not driving. By digging its heels in it would have achieved what it wanted – it would have eliminated me as an opponent.”
It rained for the race, but a hydraulic failure put paid to Senna’s chances and Prost won to close the title race to two points. Ron Dennis even offered Benetton technical assistance to secure the engines, but to no avail. He commented: “I have a strong view. My competition is not Benetton. Benetton’s competition is not McLaren. It is Williams. Therefore if we can be stronger together then to me it is logical to be together. I am willing to explore anything that can improve either of our performances and close the gap on Williams. I don’t know about Benetton, but I am here to win and that is who we’ve got to beat.” It was not the most complimentary offer he could have made the other Ford team, even if it was true.
Straight after the race Senna headed off to meet Adriane at his beach resort in Angra. He then flew on to Spain for the Barcelona race: Prost won, with Senna in second, and the Frenchman took the lead in the championship.
Meanwhile, unpleasant pressure was building between Senna and Dennis, who was aware that negotiations were progressing between Senna and Frank Williams for 1994. Marlboro’s John Hogan also got wind of it, and of Williams’ sponsorship by the rival Rothmans brand for the following year. The pressure from there rescinded. On the Saturday afternoon at Barcelona, Senna left the circuit just after 4pm instead of staying on to work with his engineers until 7pm as he usually did.
Amazingly, between Barcelona and the German Grand Prix, Dennis continued to pay Senna $1 million a race, but there was uncertainty about whether he would continue to do so. He said: “I can only see what develops.”
Come Monaco, Senna had more or less decided he would race for McLaren for the rest of the year. He opened up his house in Portugal and brought Adriane to a race for the first time. It was an entirely appropriate location to publicly announce their romance. Adriane was so sure he was going to win she had even bought a ballgown to attend the victory ball.
Senna didn’t let her down – he retook the championship lead in Monaco, when almost inevitably he clocked his record sixth victory in the principality. Despite being in pain after a brush with the barriers on the Thursday before the race, it was a powerful victory, aided by a 10-second penalty imposed on Prost for jumping the start, who then compounded it by stalling his Williams in the pits. Afterwards he celebrated with the other members of the team to thank them for his win. He said: “When I win a race and when I am on pole and establish a quick lap, I try to pass on to the rest of the team the feelings that I am going through so that they can feel part of it. The hours that the mechanics and engineers put into preparing a racing machine – going through the night, no holidays for 12 months of the year – can only be justified if they experience some of the thrill that I get. And the only way to do that is to share my feelings with them.”
It seemed unthinkable, but after Monaco it was three wins apiece and Senna was leading the championship by 42 points to Prost’s 37.
It didn’t last, but Senna had never believed it would, no matter how much others were tipping him for a fourth title. He was disconsolate in Montreal when he qualified back in eighth and the Williams Renaults looked ever more dominant. It was his lowest qualifying spot since August 1986. He raced to fifth after a lap and a half, and second by lap 30, but an alternator failure ruled him out with just eight laps to go.
Before the French Grand Prix, everything was on a knife-edge. Senna had been applying his own pressure everywhere. He told Marlboro he would commit for the season if the money was right. But Ron Dennis wouldn’t budge and threatened that Mika Häkkinen would drive at Magny-Cours if Senna didn’t sign the contract on his terms. By then Dennis had sussed that Senna desperately wanted to race and believed he had the advantage.
Senna responded by not entering the Magny-Cours circuit as he usually did on the Thursday before a race.
He told his friend, journalist Karin Sturm: “If I get into the car tomorrow morning then it is for the rest of the season, otherwise no more for this year.”
It was all down to money, and in the end it seemed that Marlboro may have broken the deadlock and paid the difference between Dennis’s $5 million and the $15 million Senna wanted. On Friday morning, one hour before the start of practice, Dennis and Senna finally agreed a deal. The contract was signed a week later at Silverstone, and after that he agreed to start testing again for the team, something he had not done all year.
But by then Alain Prost was virtually untouchable. Victories at Magny-Cours, Silverstone and Hockenheim followed for the Frenchman, while Senna was only fourth in Magny-Cours; had to settle for fifth after he ran out of fuel on the last lap at Silverstone; and at Hockenheim, a track that favoured powerful engines, he was fourth. Senna was floundering 27 points behind in the championship.
He knew that his contract antics had accelerated the team’s summer crisis. As he said: “The fact that half of the year, when I had no contract, I never did any testing certainly didn’t help. But that’s how things were. And anyway, we could never really have posed a threat to Williams.”
The summer was also a rocky ride p
olitically. As well as his ongoing contract negotiations with Frank Williams, there were a number of disagreements over the rules. An unspecified majority of cars were found to have had illegal fuel at the Canadian, French and British Grand Prix races, and were threatened with expulsion. That was not all. Plans by FISA to outlaw expensive active-suspension and traction-control systems mid-season almost amounted to the withdrawal of Williams and McLaren, whose cars were not designed to race without them. The ban was brought in, but McLaren, Williams and Footwork successfully appealed after risking disqualification by racing with the banned technology. On the safety front, Derek Warwick crashed his Footwork in wet practice at Hockenheim; and, in rare agreement, Senna and Prost campaigned for increased safety at Hockenheim in the wet. Prost won the race, despite being hit by a 10-second penalty when he cut a chicane to avoid Martin Brundle’s Ligier Renault, which was blocking the track.
Prost seemed content with his points cushion and did not push the car as hard as he would have done in closer circumstances. As a result his team-mate Damon Hill took a hat-trick of wins in the next three races at the Hungaroring, Spa and Monza. Senna suffered throttle failure at the Hungaroring, got fourth at Spa and collided first with Hill and then with Brundle at Monza, while Prost took a third place and two mechanical failures. Senna was nearly involved in a major accident at Spa, when Alex Zanardi crashed his Lotus heavily at Eau Rouge and Senna spun through the debris, missing the stranded Italian by mere feet. Williams wrapped up the constructors’ championship at the same race and its number-two driver, Damon Hill, overtook Senna as Prost’s principal challenger.
There was another strange event in early September when a Brazilian model Marcella Praddo, with whom Senna had had a romance in 1985 and then another brief dalliance at the end of December 1992, gave birth to a daughter who she named Victoria and whose father, she said, was Ayrton Senna. This only became public after Senna’s death. Senna knew he couldn’t be the father as the dates did not match. It took a DNA test after his death to prove he was telling the truth.
With a 23-point lead from Hill and 28 points from Senna, Prost could clinch the title in Estoril. Senna and Ron Dennis were spotted having a blazing row in the McLaren motorhome, but no one outside the team knew the exact subject.
Dennis was feeling the strain. Earlier in the weekend he had said: “I want to win each and every race. I know it sounds trite, but I really do. I don’t feel discomfort in saying that I want to win them all. In fact, I want to finish first and second. When we’re not, I’m bad news to live with. And that’s at 46. I handle it better than I did when I was 36, and I’ve had the experience of success. But the pain of failure is such an incentive to succeed that you don’t need anyone barbing you or motivating you. I am just a terrible loser. When I say that, I don’t mean in a sporting sense. I may be able to go and have a drink and feel relaxed, but the pain is there all the time. It’s the eyes opening on Monday morning when the first thing that comes into your brain is ‘was there a Grand Prix the day before?’ and the second thing is ‘where did we finish?’ If it is anywhere other than first, the next thing is more pain.” Senna felt much the same way.
There had been changes at McLaren since Monza. Despite scoring his first podium of the year at the track, Michael Andretti was out, to be replaced by the team’s test driver, Mika Häkkinen. The son of Italian-American 1978 world champion Mario had struggled in his first season of Formula One and scored just seven points – including the four from his third place at Monza – and had reached a mutual agreement with McLaren to allow him to return to racing in America. There had been questions over his commitment, as he had still been living permanently in Miami and flew out to races and test sessions when required. To give him his due, the MP4/8 was not the best car in which to begin a Formula One career and he had the worst possible team-mate. Also, the man he was replaced by was himself a future double world champion, so Andretti was up against the very best. Even so, seven points was a far-from-impressive tally and several drivers in weaker cars had scored better.
Senna got a wake-up call during Saturday practice in Estoril when new boy Häkkinen outqualified him by 0.048 seconds, taking third to Senna’s fourth. Senna had only been outqualified by his team-mate on 17 occasions in his Formula One career – the last by Gerhard Berger at the Mexican Grand Prix in March 1992 – and to have been beaten out of the blue by a young upstart at such a critical point in the season put him in a foul mood. He was dismissive of Häkkinen’s ability, which the Finn thought was funny as he had just outqualified him. As Häkkinen recalls: “I went quicker than Ayrton and he didn’t like things like that. He could not understand how it could happen and he couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t understand that there were a couple of corners where this Häkkinen had been quicker. In the end, we joked about it, but that was later.”
The race was won by another young star, Michael Schumacher, which handed Prost the title through his second place. Senna’s engine had failed after 19 laps while he was running in second. It was easier to bear than the occasion of Prost’s controversial last world championship in 1989, not just because this time there was no collision and Prost’s victory had been inevitable, but because in the eyes of the world Prost had had by far the best car and had not even had to try, while Senna had proved himself by far the best driver on the track in inferior equipment.
Prost immediately announced his retirement from racing. Everyone knew what that meant, and within days it was announced that Senna would be heading to Williams Renault in 1994. Prost could never have accepted another season as Senna’s team-mate, especially considering the Brazilian’s form.
With the championship already decided, the Formula One circus arrived at Suzuka for the penultimate round of the 1993 championship in relaxed mood. Senna was no stranger to Suzuka – he also had his Williams deal signed and sealed for 1994 and knew he was at last free of Prost. The race was memorable not because Senna won but because of a remarkable fight with new rookie driver, Irishman Eddie Irvine.
At Suzuka Senna got a tremendous reception from the fans. His reputation had been growing in Japan and he was arguably the country’s favourite international sportsman. But the attention in Suzuka was close to getting out of hand and he was continually jostled by fans even within the confines of the paddock. It seemed every single Japanese wanted a piece of him. It bothered him: “Sometimes you just want to be yourself, be on your own to concentrate on something, but you have people following you the entire time – and sometimes they even bump into you, which feels like a real invasion. You cannot move along and you cannot turn around because you are surrounded and that is not so good sometimes. Success brings that, and if you are not successful then you don’t have that – it is part of it and you just have to learn how to cope with it.”
In qualifying Senna finally got the place on the grid he had always coveted – second, which he regarded as pole. He beat Häkkinen in qualifying by 0.042 seconds, second place to third. It was an uncomfortably close margin at a track considered to be one of Senna’s best, but it was a relief all the same. Eddie Irvine qualified eighth in his Jordan.
Senna won the race ahead of Prost with Häkkinen in third, but there was trouble for Senna with another young driver – Eddie Irvine. Senna, Suzuka and controversy seemed to go hand-in-hand.
Senna had been holding off Prost for the lead on a damp track when they came up to lap the battle for fifth between Hill and recently-acquired Jordan Hart driver Eddie Irvine. Senna picked off Irvine with some difficulty, but was not so quick to catch the Williams of Prost, and Irvine decided to unlap himself. Senna eventually won the race but was furious and had not calmed down by the time of the post-race press conference. Once the interviews were over he met up with Gerhard Berger, who encouraged him to drink a few glasses of schnapps. Several drinks later he set off to the Jordan hospitality area to give Irvine a piece of his mind. Realising his frame of mind and sensing trouble, McLaren’s PR chief Norman Howell and Senna’s race e
ngineer, Giorgio Ascanelli, followed him.
Irvine was sitting alone. Jordan’s Ian Phillips, number-one driver Rubens Barrichello and some other team members were also hanging around. As it happened, Irvine and the rest of the team were re-running the incident on a monitor when Senna walked in.
Senna couldn’t remember what Irvine looked like so asked for him by name. Irvine raised his hand and Senna walked over to the table, where a heated exchange ensued. Unfortunately for Senna, a journalist sitting nearby switched his tape recorder on and recorded everything. A transcript of the row was plastered all over the British and Italian newspapers the following morning.
“I overtook you!” Senna raged. “And you went three times off the road in front of me, at the same place, like a fucking idiot, where there was oil. And you were throwing stones and all things in front of me for three laps. When I took you, you realised I was ahead of you. And when I came up behind Hill, because he was on slicks and in difficulties, you should have stayed behind me. You took a very big risk to put me out of the race.”
“Did I touch you? Did I touch you once?” Irvine asked nonchalantly.
Senna replied: “No, but you were that much from touching me, and I happened to be the fucking leader. I happened to be the fucking leader!”
Irvine shrugged. “A miss is as good as a mile.”
The argument continued, with Senna venting his fury and Irvine refusing to be drawn. At one point he even agreed with everything Senna said, winding the Brazilian up further. “You’re not racing!” Senna spat. “You’re driving like a fucking idiot. You’re not a racing driver, you’re a fucking idiot!”
The Life of Senna Page 36
