I’m going to try something a little bit different on The Eternal Sunshine today. Since there isn’t a great deal to discuss in the world of sport apart from Rangers’ impending doom (don’t worry, they’ll be fine. Pompey on the other hand…) and the return of Carlos Tevez from his Buenos Aires city break (he’s still a massive prima donna) I thought I’d introduce a new segment profiling some of the greatest sportsmen and women ever to grace this planet. So what better place to begin than with in my opinion the greatest sportsman of all time, Ayrton Senna da Silva or Ayrton Senna to you and me.
Ayrton Senna - Perfection behind a steering wheel
To understand Ayrton Senna you have to understand the context of Formula 1 in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The record books say that Schumacher, Fangio and Prost were all more statistically successful than the Brazilian and in a hundred or so years people studying the history of motor sport may well be led to believe that is the case. The majority of people still regard Senna as the greatest driver of all time but why is that when Schumacher dominated the noughties with such ease and Fangio could do things in the fifties that no other driver dreamed of?
The first point of note is that Senna was for most of his career driving inferior cars to the rest of the field. He started in a torrid Toleman in 1984 where he finished second to Prost (in a far superior McLaren) in horrendously wet conditions – more of which I’ll come onto later. He moved to Lotus (who were the third best team at the time) in ’85 where he won his first race in Estoril in rain that was almost biblical; Senna already had a knack for keeping a car in a straight line on a race track that resembled a river. He was an outside challenger for the title in 1986 and was marked out as a future World Champion while he was becoming renowned for his qualifying pace. 1987 saw Lotus fail to make an impression on the dominant Williams outfit and Senna signed up to join McLaren for 1988.
McLaren is who most people remember Senna driving for; the red and white Marlboro sponsored car and the fluorescent yellow crash helmet became synonymous with success in the late 80s and early 90s. McLaren gave Senna three title winning cars and two more that took him to the runners-up spot. The MP4/4 which the team ran in 1988 is the greatest Formula 1 car of all time, winning all but one race in which it competed in. That would not be enough on its own to secure Senna the title as on the other side of the garage was Alain Prost, by now a double World Champion and just entering his prime. Both were fiercely competitive and both would do anything to be World Champion but by different means. Senna went all-out for the win at every race, pushing car and body to the limit while Prost was known as The Professor; he would settle for fifth or fourth if it meant that it built up his points tally. By scoring good points at every race he knew he could be World Champion. These contrasting styles and competitiveness led to the most famous and bitter rivalry in Formula 1 history.
1988 was a dominant year for McLaren but there was no sign of tension between Prost and Senna. Prost was surprised that Senna had settled into the team so quickly and a little put out that he was able to beat him but both were winning races and the title went down to the penultimate race where Senna recovered from a bad start to come through the field and out muscle Prost down the main straight. The gauntlet was set. ’89 was another dominant year for McLaren as the battle between Prost and Senna became psychological. It made the pair of them raise their game in a similar but more extreme way as Hamilton and Alonso in 2007. Senna won most of the early races before his aggressive style had an effect on the reliability of his car and the momentum swung to Prost. Senna had to win in Suzuka, Japan in order to keep his title hopes alive. What followed was a piece of intense sporting drama. Prost led and had kept Senna behind him for most of the race when it began to spit with rain. Prost, who had a staunch dislike to wet conditions, slowed and Senna closed in over a period of laps until he lunged up the inside into the final chicane on lap 46 and collided with Prost. Prost retired while Senna managed to get going again, pitted and retook the lead from Alessandro Nannini on the penultimate lap to win the Grand Prix… or so he thought.
Jean-Marie Balestre, the French head of the FIA, had other ideas. He ruled that Senna had cut the chicane while returning to the track and disqualified Senna from the race handing Prost, his fellow Frenchman, the title. Relations between Prost and McLaren had broken down and he joined Ferrari for the 1990 season. That season was another Prost vs Senna showdown but with Senna now firmly established as the lead driver at McLaren he could relax within his team. The season reached its climax for the third year running at Suzuka and once again it boiled down to Senna vs Prost. Ayrton had already had a run-in with the FIA regarding the strange position of pole on the ‘dirty’ side of the grid. When the stewards refused to move pole position to the other side of the grid, Senna sensed another French-led conspiracy to stop him winning the title. He knew that if Prost failed to finish then he would win his second World Championship; there was only one outcome as the video below, from Senna illustrates beautifully.
1991 saw a rejuvenated Senna in inspired and dominant form, winning the first four races of the season on the way to his third crown. By far his most impressive performance was his first victory on home soil, where his McLaren was stuck in sixth gear for the last ten laps and Senna was forced to wrestle the car home while wringing every single ounce of physical energy to complete a single lap. The video below highlights what an extraordinary effort it was to keep that 800bhp beast on the track, just listen out for the drive of his car coming out of the corners compared to the chasing Patrese’s and you’ll hear just how hard it was to keep it going.
Williams’ upturn in form during the middle of the 1991 season gave an indication into how dominant they would become in the following years. 1992 was by far their most impressive season though as the car featured a whole stack of electronic gizmos designed to give the Grove outfit the advantage over the rest of the field. Semi-automatic gearboxes, an advanced active suspension and traction control all contributed to the most dominant season by a single driver that the sport had witnessed. Nigel Mansell won the title with ridiculous ease but Senna still took two victories in 1992, in Monaco where he brilliantly held off Mansell while on old tyres compared to the fresh rubber on the Williams and at the Hungaroring.
It was the 1993 season that I class as Senna’s best. He was placed in a weak McLaren car after Williams chose Prost over him for their 1993 seat. Honda had also departed from their partnership with McLaren and so the team were left with a customer Ford engine which was woefully short of power compared to the Renault and Ferrari engines. Senna even threatened to quit the team but was convinced to stay on a race-by-race basis. He had a new inexperienced teammate in the form of Michael Andretti who replaced Senna’s friend Gerhard Berger. None of this seemed to bother Senna as he put in a series of remarkable drives throughout 1993. Everyone has heard of his spectacular drive at the European Grand Prix at Donnington but there were many others too. In Brazil, he recovered from a stop-go penalty to win with ease and in Germany he came through the field after spinning at the start to finish a brilliant fourth. He claimed five wins in a car that had no right to be anywhere near the top of the podium and in the hands of his teammate it looked like a complete mess. Just a look at where the wins came show how good Senna was: Brazil, a wet Donnington, Monaco, Japan and Adelaide. These are all tracks where the driver can make the difference and Senna’s victories here in an under performing car highlights his talents. His runner-up slot in the 1993 Championship is perhaps more impressive than his three World titles.
Everyone knows what happened to Ayrton Senna in 1994. Imola will always be tainted with the tragedies of Roland Ratzenberger and Senna and the sport will have to live with the fact that no-one like Senna will ever grace a racetrack again. On paper, Senna’s move to Williams should have yielded a fourth World Championship for the Brazilian as they had been the dominant outfit for the last few years. The fact of the matter is that rule changes ruined Senna’s chances before the season had started; there was to be no more active suspension, no traction control and no other electronic aids. In a car that Senna already felt cramped in, the absence of electronic aids had a noticeably detrimental effect on performance. The car was twitchy and enormous concentration was required to put a fast lap together. This was because the car, the FW16, was designed around the electronic aids and the principle of them being declared legal by the FIA and when the ruling went against them, the whole philosophy of the car was wrong. Senna was never comfortable in the environment either as he had been unable to bring a large number of his McLaren team with him. He failed to score in Brazil having spun out from 2nd and was tagged at the start of the Pacific Grand Prix by Mika Hakkinen before the tragic events of Imola left him with 0 points in his final season. I’m not going to discuss the events of Imola, partly because I don’t feel that I could do it justice but also because I can’t begin to put into words the sense of loss for his family, for the sport and for the nation of Brazil.
So why was Senna the greatest, in my opinion? The first and most important point is the fact that he could win in cars that were half a second or 7 tenths slower than the fastest car and this was particularly true in 1993 when the Williams was dominant but Senna guided his McLaren to five victories. He seemed to relish the challenge of shining up a rough diamond of a car – something that modern Formula 1 drivers shy away from and demand to be competing on a level playing field. No-one had Senna’s ability to outperform the car as all seven of Schumacher’s World Championships came in a dominant Ferrari and only his triumph at the 1996 Spanish Grand Prix ranks as a dominant performance in an inferior car.
Another factor is the level of competition that was around in F1 during the late 80s and early 90s. Senna faced Alain Prost at his peak, who would have dominated the era had Senna not come along, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher – all of whom were or went on to become World Champions. Senna’s ability outshone them all and stopped people such as Mansell achieving their full potential. If you look at the drivers that Schumacher had to face throughout his career then you begin to realise that the standard of F1 at the turn of the century was a lot lower than during Senna’s time.
Perhaps the most clear demonstration of Senna’s talents was in qualifying. His raw pace, his concentration, his ability to wring everything out of the car and push himself to the limits. He went on to score 65 pole positions, a total that had he been afforded the luxury of a strong car throughout his career would have been increased. People point to his performance at Monaco in 1988 when he outqualified Prost by 1.5 seconds but my personal favourite qualifying lap is of Jerez 1990. To set the scene: Lotus’s Martin Donnelly was severely injured in a horrifying accident during Friday practice that ended his career and left him fighting for his life, Senna goes out on Saturday still personally affected by what happened to Donnelly and produced this lap. It’s the closest thing to perfection I’ve ever seen anyone produce in a Formula 1 car: every single apex is hit, the way he avoids the two cars on the racing line – a modern driver would abandon the lap and go to the stewards and the only mistake he makes is when he gets a slap of oversteer out of the final corner. Just incredible.
Senna’s character and personality made him perhaps the most fearsome competitor in Formula 1 history. He was hugely competitive and ruthless when defending his position. He would engage in psychological warfare with anyone brave enough to try and overtake him. As we saw at Suzuka in 1990, he would be willing to endanger his and other driver’s (in this case Prost’s) lives but Senna was a passionate Christian and those beliefs stretched into his racing. He was visibly moved when Ratzenberger died and famously went to the aid of Eric Comas after he crashed at the Belgian Grand Prix. God also was a vital companion in his journey to success. He thanked God at every opportunity for blessing him with the talent to reach F1 and even claimed to have visualised God when he won in Suzuka in 1988. The best way to describe Senna though is passionate; passionate about everything he ever did and the results of that passion speak for themselves.
All great drivers have a raised level of skill in the wet. Car control becomes much more reliant on instinct and even the smallest miscalculation can have you off and into the wall. Senna is arguably (alongside Schumacher in my opinion) the best wet weather driver ever. He was dominant almost everytime it rained and was never short of grip when others would be sliding off the road. Donnington was his finest performance in those conditions but he also dominated in Estoril in torrential rain and performed miracles through the streets of Monaco in ’84 with his Toleman in what was essentially a river.
Perhaps what extends Senna’s appeal outside of motor sport and what sets him apart from other sportsmen and women is his charity work. He was a deeply passionate Brazilian at a time when Brazil was rife with poverty and looting and riots were commonplace. Senna would often donate vast sums of money to various good causes and individuals and was inundated with letters of appeal from all across Brazil. Of course many other sportspeople have their own charities or foundations but none are as involved as Senna was. He wanted to improve the lives of children in particular and designed the Senninha cartoon to entertain kids and raise money through worldwide sales of merchandise. Before his death he was planning to launch a range of products from Europe into Brazil with the profits going to charity. Everything from Audis to watches were going to be introduced with the aim simply to improve living standards in Brazil. The Intistuto Ayrton Senna was founded after his death to consolidate all his charity efforts under one umbrella and it is still going today, having raised millions for underprivileged children in Brazil. You get the impression that once he had retired from racing that his charity would have been his new career and that is about as genuine a person as you can get.
So there we have it, Ayrton Senna the racing driver and humanitarian. Apologies if this was just a fawning love letter to him but he is an inspirational figure to me and he still astonishes me whenever I see any footage of him behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car. Anyone who hasn’t seen the sensational documentary, Senna, I urge you to go and buy the DVD as it does a far better job of explaining Ayrton Senna to the wider world than I ever could. All I know is this, my biggest regret when it comes to sport is that I never saw Senna race – I was three when he died – his life was cut too short and all we are left to talk about is half of what he could and would have achieved. Perhaps that is the greatest testament of all, that half of Ayrton Senna’s probable achievements are enough to rank him in the very upper echelons of the sport.
P.s Let me know what you thought of this, if you think it worked then I’ll do some more and if you didn’t like it I won’t.
The Eternal Sunshine of the Sporting Mind 