Was Ayrton Senna the greatest? #292
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It's been a little while, Andrew,
since we dedicated an entire episode
to one historical figure.
Yeah, we don't do it that often, do we?
Not very often, no.
So they've got to really deserve it.
Yes, and I think in this instance,
I would say Ayrton Senna qualifies.
Yes.
So this is an entire episode about Ayrton Senna.
And I mean, you can have the goat debate,
the greatest of all time debate
until you're blue in the face,
but he is certainly one of F1's most charismatic
and enigmatic figures.
Yeah, and that's the-
As a personality, you know,
he really was quite something.
That's the thing.
It's interesting in researching this episode.
I've done a bit of number crunching.
And in terms of all time lists,
he's kind of there, but he's not,
you know, in terms of all time
Grand Prix wins, for instance,
he's number six on the list.
41.
41.
And there are people above him
who are, I would say, massively less revered than him.
So it's not just about success in the car.
And I hope what we are able to reflect upon
during the course of this podcast
is what it is about the man,
because it clearly goes beyond
the talent that he had behind the wheel.
So I'm really interested.
I'm really interested to hear what you have to think
and to try to put into words
how I feel about the bloke.
Because I think he was, to me,
I think the word hero is really so overrated,
I'm not overrated, overused.
But if I had a hero,
certainly in the world of motorsport,
I don't think there are heroes in motorsport.
But if there were,
certainly the people that I saw race, he would be it.
Because I never saw Sterling race.
No apartment in history, but never in period.
When you say there are no heroes in motorsport,
you mean it's just racing cars?
It's just racing cars.
It's not, it's not...
There's no great sacrifice.
Exactly.
It's not walking back into a burning building
to rescue someone you don't know.
That's heroic.
That's heroism.
That's heroism, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I agree.
So Senna was born 21st of March, 1960,
in Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Born to silver,
but he took his maternal surname, Senna.
After a bet.
Yeah.
He first started racing as Aten de Silva.
As I understand it,
de Silva is one of the most common Brazilian surnames,
so he chose Senna to be a bit more distinctive.
Exactly.
And it is just extraordinary to me.
We mentioned this between us the other day.
He was only 34 when he died.
Yeah.
34 years old.
I'm 38.
He was four years...
He was my brother's age, my little brother's age
when he died.
And I think that at the time,
or just before that awful weekend,
there was this sense, wasn't there,
that he was coming towards the end of his career.
And I think it shows a little bit
about how Formula One has evolved
in the 31 years since emula.
That 34 is now kind of,
I think regarded as you're absolutely at your peak
at that sort of age.
And you've got, well,
two great drivers at the moment on the grid
who are in their 40s.
Nico Halkenberg can't be far behind.
No.
But at the time,
I can remember thinking,
well, it's great that he's gone to Williams
because in 1994,
because the McLaren with the Ford engine
wasn't going anywhere in 1993,
although he did manage to win some races in it.
Most notably at Donnington,
which I expect we'll be returning to.
But I thought that he had a real opportunity at Williams
to amass a level of victories and championships
to which I felt his talent deserved.
Because I always thought that 41 wins
was in no way a true reflection of his ability.
And he was so often,
if you look back through his career,
particularly at his time at Lotus,
those were the three seasons he did at Lotus,
he was so often let down by the machinery.
Just unreliability.
And that is why I think that statistically clearly,
his career being so tragically curtailed as it was.
But if you look at it in terms of starts to wins,
he won a quarter of every race he started, okay?
Which is about almost exactly the same as Prost.
In fact, Prost is slightly better.
Lewis is very slightly better at 27%.
Max is a bit better.
Max is almost at 30% now.
But if he'd not been let down,
and let's not forget that these days,
Formula One cars don't break down.
And they did back then,
it's the same for everyone back then obviously,
but the Lotus in particular broke down
a lot more than most other cars he could have been in.
I mean, if you remember,
he turned down a long-term McLaren contract in 1984
because McLaren before 1984, before the MP41
was a bit of a basket case.
They'd been in the doldrums for a long time.
Imagine if he'd gone to McLaren
instead of Alan Prost in 1984.
Yeah.
Team mates with Nicky Louder.
Well.
I mean, Formula One is if backwards,
isn't it?
We said that before.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it could have been dramatically different.
Yeah, actually, the reason we ponder
these counterfactuals, we discuss the ifs,
is because the statistics do not tell the full story.
No, never.
So it is worth just for a moment,
just saying if this had happened,
his statistics could have been very different.
If we know that Damon Hill,
who was in the Williams in 1994,
won a lot of races that year
and very nearly won the championship,
probably should have won the championship.
Deserved to win the championship.
And so, goodness me, if Ayrton Senna
hadn't died that day at Imola
on the 1st of May, 1994,
he surely would have won more races that season,
perhaps than other championship.
I will never know, but I would,
I mean, let's not forget
he had a very poor start to the season.
It's called no points on the first two races.
That's true, but he did take pole
for each of those three Grand Prix.
So, you know, the speed was still there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely, well, there's no doubt in my mind
that he was certainly at his peak.
You know, look at the driver, Donnington, 93.
He was absolutely supreme that day.
So he hadn't started to go downhill,
as we know some drivers do.
I have no reason at all
to think that he wouldn't have been the 1994 world champion
because you'd think at that stage
in their relative careers,
you would have had to have bet on Senna
against Damon with the best world in the world.
And my guess is that Damon would agree with that.
But it didn't happen,
and we can sort of sit here,
Steve, it's staring into the middle distance
for as long as you like,
but it is what it is, isn't it?
It is.
I just want to go back to that point
about him dying so, so young.
And there's a parallel here,
isn't there to, in music,
there's something called the 27 Club.
Yes.
Great artists who...
Is there a 34 Club as well?
Well, I don't think there is.
I think it's just Senna.
But in music, the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain,
and perhaps more recently, Amy Winehouse,
they were all just 27.
Janice Joplin.
Yeah.
And it is extraordinary that these people
are able to leave such an impression on this world
and on culture and society
within such a short space of time.
And of course, it's because they have this platform,
which is music, or which is motor racing.
But I just sit and reflect on how incredible it is
that they can rise to such prominence
and leave such an impression.
But if you look at those musicians that we just named,
they're not famous
because they played the guitar particularly well
or wrote nice songs.
They were famous because they were incredible characters.
Yeah.
They were famous far more for who they were
as human beings than whatever talent they happened to have.
And I think that's exactly the parallel
that we need to draw with Senna.
It wasn't just that he was really quick in a racing car.
Because look at Alan Prost, one more races,
one more championships.
There will be some.
There will be any number of Prost fans who will point out,
Prost had a better start to win ratio than Senna.
Not much, but I'm not wrong about this.
No, I'm not.
No, it's 25.6% to 25.4%, but nevertheless.
Wow.
And yet, I don't, I mean, there will be some,
but I would imagine that globally,
the vast, vast, vast majority of people
would tell you that Ayrton Senna
was a far greater driver than Alan Prost ever was.
Yeah, yeah.
But the facts don't back it up.
No, no.
So what is that?
I think during the course of this episode,
we're gonna try and get to the heart of the man,
aren't we?
Try and understand the man that he was
as much as we can without ever having
known him.
Or using the word mercurial.
Okay.
Swear at you, Alan.
But we will come back to that.
So let's just trot through his career stats.
You've mentioned a few of them.
Three Formula One World Championships,
41 wins, 65 polls.
And he took his first Grand Prix win 40 years ago.
Can I just do something on the polls thing?
Go on.
I'm really intrigued.
I'm gonna throw this at you.
Yeah.
And you're going to explain it because I can't.
Go on.
65 polls.
Yeah.
41 wins.
Max was snappin' so far.
Yeah.
68 polls.
No, 68 wins.
29 polls.
So Max has won more than twice the number of races
than the number he started on poll.
Whereas Senna is half as good again
for scoring pole positions than Grand Prix victories.
Why's that?
That is fascinating.
I think it's reliability.
I can't think of any other reason.
Carl's broke down on Ayrton during the race.
I think that's right.
In a way they just don't these days.
And that's only just come to me.
Because I can't explain how Max has so few polls
relative to wins and Ayrton has so many polls
relative to wins.
That's fascinating.
So I think reliability probably is it.
Typically you would expect a driver
to have more polls than wins.
Wouldn't you like Senna does?
Because it's actually you need fewer pieces
in place to get a poll.
Exactly.
You think that's fair enough?
Yes, I do.
So it's harder to score a win, isn't it?
Yes, definitely.
So actually-
Yeah, because a poll is a lap.
So that reveals something curious.
Oh, so Max has got 47 pole positions.
Has he?
Yeah.
Oh, that.
But still a significant difference
to the number of wins that he's got.
68 wins, yeah.
So Senna, I mean, he took his first poll
as I just said at the Portuguese Grand Prix 40 years ago.
His first win, he also took pole for that race.
That was in a Lotus.
And actually his Lotus years,
three seasons I think you said, yeah, three.
They were successful apart from reliability
particularly in the first two of those in 1985 and 1986.
He did win a good number of races
and he did finish third in the championship in 1987.
I mean, were you aware of him being
the next big superstar in Formula One
during his Lotus time?
Was that obvious?
Before then.
Before then.
Before then, because I mean, obviously,
there was the Tolman episode at Monaco in 84
where he would have won the race.
People say, oh no, Steph and Beloff would have done
because he was gaining on prost as approximately
the same rate that Senna was,
which I think was four seconds
and left towards the end of the race.
But actually, Beloff was in an illegal tittle.
So he'd have been slung out.
So there's no question that had the Tolman lasted
because I think they stopped the race on about lap 31.
So not even half distance.
Senna would have won that race.
But before then, because I would have been,
what would I have been, sort of 1780,
we were all completely transfixed
by the Senna-Brundle battle in Formula Three.
Yeah.
You know, both driving Toyota-powered Rolls,
Ayrton Racing for West Surrey Racing, Dick Bennett,
Martin Racing for Eddie Jordan.
Yeah.
Ayrton winning the first nine races
out of a 20-race season.
And then Martin coming back really, really strong
and Ayrton having some under the hood.
I think Martin won seven of the remaining races
and actually going into the last round
was leading the championship.
Was he?
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
That I did not know.
Yeah.
And then in the last race, Ayrton,
I think just drove away.
Yeah.
But they were, I mean, they were so far ahead
of anybody else.
It was, you know, and we were completely captivated by it.
Both by, you know, the skill and the speed of the drivers,
but also the relationship that they had between them.
And there's that, where was that,
where one of them ended on top of the other?
Yeah, Alton Park.
So it was, I do remember talking to Martin Brundle
about Senna and he said that he just knew
he was a bit special, a bit different,
even during those F3 days.
I mean, Martin didn't, and I sound like I'm making excuses,
but I'm really not.
I don't think that anybody would say
that Martin had the best equipment that season.
Okay.
I think that Senna had a better car with a better engine.
When I met my better car, I think he had a better engine.
But that's when I first sort of logged on to this,
extraordinary talent.
So Joe, let me just skip back to that collision
at Alton Park because it is fascinating
and it reveals something about the way Senna drove,
which I'm sure we will come back to.
There was a huge collision at Alton Park.
The two of them were streaking ahead.
Brundle was leading and Senna sent one up the inside,
a hell of a lunge, really.
And they come together and Senna's car comes to rest
on top of Brundle's roll bar.
Yes.
Thank goodness for that roll bar.
And it was, Brundle has explained this more recently.
It was one of those passes or attempted passes
from Senna.
Brundle knew that he just had to hold position
and accept they were going to crash.
He knew they had to do it.
He had to do it because if he leapt out of the way,
for the rest of time, Senna would know
he was the kind of guy who would leap out of the way.
Yes.
And he just couldn't have that.
And you get that in Formula One 2 this day.
I mean, people have said,
and I think actually the situation is changing a bit now,
but people said it's certainly the early part
of this season about Max and Lando.
That Lando would wheel to wheel
would always be the one who yielded.
Yeah.
And Martin just absolutely just found himself
in a position where he could not let that happen.
It's just the psychology,
the racing psychology is fascinating.
Senna said that estuaral race in the Lotus,
in the what was it, the 97T was it?
Yeah.
And I think he did say this about at least one other race
in his sense.
So maybe he changed his mind,
but he did certainly say that that was the greatest race
of his life in Formula One.
Did he?
Yeah.
He just won.
I mean, he lapped everybody, I think, up to P3.
I think he finished a minute ahead of anybody else.
In a thousand horsepower Lotus in the estuaral.
Oh, bloody hell.
And you had a thousand horsepower then,
it's not what a thousand horsepower was back now,
because it would have been a bit laggy.
Yeah.
A one and a half liter engine
producing a thousand horsepower in the wet
through some tires,
which had technology was 40 years older than it is now.
I mean, just unbelievable.
Actually, given that win,
right at the start of the second round of the 1985 season,
it's amazing that he continued to race for Lotus
for three full seasons
and none of the big teams snapped them up
with a big money off and just said,
you're coming here now.
Yeah.
It took until 1988 for McLaren to sign him.
I think he wanted to go somewhere in 87.
I might have dreamt this,
but somebody, I can't remember.
Maybe somebody said no.
But yes, he went to McLaren in 88.
Yeah.
And we know what happened then.
What should we do?
Should we do center-prost?
Yeah, one thing is, which is interesting.
And again, just go back to 86.
You know, this, I think was,
I think this was when the engines were the most powerful.
I think they had like, sort of 1,300 horsepower in qualify
and 900 in the race were there
and he got eight poles that season.
And this is, we'll come back to this, I think,
because he vetoed Derrick Warwick coming into the team.
And by the other end of that story
is that when Prost vetoed him coming to Williams in 93,
Senna publicly accused Prost of cowardice.
Which, you know, I mean, OK, maybe he would say,
I was a different person than the one I was in 1986.
But I think it just shows how single-minded the bloke was
and how, for him, his every action was justifiable
at the moment he did it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's unshakable self-belief, isn't it?
It's very Michael Schumacher.
Yeah, it is.
Because he's no wrong.
Yeah, Michael on reflection probably did think
that a lot of the things that he did,
you know, to Damon and Adelaide in 94
until Jacques Herethin, when was it?
97. 97.
Prost did look back and probably a bit sketchy.
But at the time, it's not that he was lying
or that Ayrton was, you know, being disingenuous.
They absolutely believed it at the time
because they were so driven, they were so focused,
so single-minded.
I just thought that was a really interesting insight
into, you know, in one case,
that's just him defending his corner
and the other case is just how it is.
Yeah, that is fascinating.
Double standards, really.
So Senna versus Prost.
F1's greatest ever driver rivalry, probably.
Within the same team.
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to think of another.
Yeah.
Okay, of course, Ayrton wasn't a world champion
when it started.
No.
But they were world champions together.
That's an interesting question.
World champions together in the same team.
Lewis and Button?
Yeah, good shout.
Blimey.
Can't think of another.
I'm sure somebody will.
Let's not get too late by that.
No, but you're quite right.
So that's right, Senna was not a champion in 1988.
His first season with McLaren in the MP4 for
that extraordinary McLaren, massively dominant car,
won all but one round of the championship
and that's an amazing talent.
Worth bearing in mind that Senna
brought the Honda engine with him.
Okay, which is a big part of the car success.
Massive past of the car success
and the ongoing success of McLaren
through the end of the turbo
and the start of the naturally aspirated era.
I mean, that engine started life in a Lotus
and Senna brought it with him.
So yeah, important to see it in that perspective
because you kind of wonder
how successful McLaren would have been without having
also, they clearly had the best car
but they unquestionably had the best track powertrain in it.
Yeah, yeah.
So that H8 season was quite remarkable.
The McLaren MP4 for one all but the Italian Grand Prix.
Senna did win the championship that year, his first
and he's a world champion.
So 1989, Senna and Prost again at McLaren.
It's the car to have once more
and they have an epic battle throughout the season down there
and it all comes to a head at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Yeah, I mean, essentially the story of the season
and this is resorting to generalizations
and very broad brush strokes
but Senna was essentially quicker than Prost
but Prost enjoyed better reliability.
Okay.
Which means that by the time we get to where you're
talking about, which was the penultimate race
of the season, Prost was ahead in the championship
and if neither of them finished the race
Prost was world champion.
Yeah.
I wonder what could possibly happen next.
Yeah.
So well, I mean, do we have to get into the ins and outs?
So this is, it became a huge flashpoint,
didn't it?
A huge controversy.
They collided at the chicane.
I mean, the history to this is that Prost
had for a long time rightly or wrongly
and this will be contended for,
this will be debated for decades,
thought that McLaren were favoring Senna.
And I don't know whether that is true or not.
My guess is that Honda would certainly wanted Senna
rather than Prost to be winning things
because that's where the history was,
that's where the relationship came from.
I also think that Senna's rather more charismatic
fighting spirit probably profiled rather better
with how Honda would like to see themselves
being represented than this rather cool,
calm, methodical, professorial approach
preferred by Prost.
But Prost quite clearly knew the consequences
of that coming together.
And I think at the very least,
was perfectly happy to let it happen.
At the very, whether he engineered it or not,
of course, everybody denies it at the time.
You know, Senna would say, he turned in on me
and Prost would say, well,
it was just a ridiculous lunch
and I was ahead of the apex, so you know.
Yeah.
So the point is they come together,
Prost, he gets out of his car,
presumably thinking the race is done,
it's damaged, he can't continue.
Senna is able to continue with a push from the marshals,
he gets going again.
Yes.
But he drives through the chicane
rather than what, turning around,
going backwards down the track and taking it properly.
Well, if they deemed him essentially
to have missed out the chicane
and therefore not being on the racetrack
for part of one of those laps.
Despite the fact it's something
that others had done
at other points during the race.
And it wasn't gaining an advantage
because he was stationary for however long.
Yes.
You know, I don't understand,
was that actually just a reason to disqualify him
because the steward's deemed that he caused the collision?
Well, it was, the way the story is told
is that it was Jean-Marie Ballest.
Yeah.
The main man, the sort of the puppet master.
I'm sure it's entirely coincidental
that he was a Frenchman
and the result of this decision
would be that a Frenchman became a world champion.
Decided to disqualify Senna.
Well, the steward say that Ballest
wasn't in the room when the decision was made.
Yes.
But who knows?
That's always been, you know,
you don't have to be in a room, do you?
You just need to be on there.
To exert an influence, I know.
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
I don't know the truth of it,
I don't know the ins and outs of it,
but certainly Senna always believed
that he'd had that title taken away from him.
I mean, if he'd won the race,
he wasn't world champion
because Prost was already ahead.
He would have to have gone
on the beaten Prost in the next race too,
which was the Australian.
But nevertheless, he would have gone into the final race
with it being his to lose.
And Senna always maintained
that that opportunity was taken away from him, unfairly.
And to say that it sort of wrangled a bit
is, I think, putting it quite mildly.
So, I mean, the relationship,
the Senna-Prost relationship was long gone by that point
to the extent where Prost left McLaren
for Ferrari for 1990.
And they have another epic duel throughout that season.
And again, the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka,
the penultimate race,
they come together again.
But this time Senna is ahead.
Well, he's on pole.
No, he's ahead of the championship.
Oh, see, right, yeah.
So, that's right.
So, the roles are reversed.
This time, if they both go out, Senna's well champion.
Yes, yeah.
So, Senna gets pole,
but he's annoyed because he thinks pole
is on the wrong side of the grid.
Remind me who was responsible for switching it.
Jean-Marie, our French friend.
And so, Senna's on pole,
but he gets a much slower start than Prost,
who takes the lead of the line.
And then into turn one,
Prost takes the racing line, Senna drives into him.
Yeah, at 170 miles an hour.
Of course, he denied it furiously at the time,
but he did admit it later on.
Did he?
Yeah, he absolutely admitted it.
About a year later, he said it was intentional,
and that had he had his time again,
he wouldn't have done it,
but he was where he was at the time
and was, I don't want to try and put words
into the mouth of someone who's in no position
to respond, but I think he felt so aggrieved.
I think in his own mind and in his own way,
he thought it was sort of revenge,
but I think the way he would have justified it
was just a leveling of the playing field.
Yeah, exactly.
It was, I lost mine through your actions last year,
so you're gonna lose yours through mine this year.
That's how he saw it, certainly.
And I think in his mind,
and I don't agree with it to make that clear,
but I do understand how in his mind at that time,
being such a ferociously competitive animal,
he thought that was, that there was a fairness in that.
Can you imagine if that happened today?
Yeah.
I mean, you'd be out of the champion,
you'd be out of here in a minute, wouldn't you?
Absolutely.
You wouldn't be back in the pit lane
before they slung you out of the championship.
There's no chance you'd be crowned
world champion after that, not a hope.
And so that incident does reveal something fundamental
about Senna's approach to racing, a ruthlessness.
And actually,
it is dangerous, it's a very dangerous thing to do,
to intentionally collide with another car at that speed.
Yeah, it is.
But of course, you know,
and the irony is obviously what went on to happen,
but by this stage,
we are deep into the era of carbon fiber cars,
circuit safety has been,
I mean, not massively improved, but transformed.
I'm trying to remember
when there was last, before,
who was the last driver to do it?
So, Elliot Angelis had died,
but that was a testing accident.
It was probably someone like Ricardo Paletti
in about 1983 who actually died during a race.
It had been such a long time,
when in the 60s and the 70s,
it was absolutely an annual event
or events, the drivers would die.
So, I think that there was a complacency
and I think that there was this sense
that you could do that sort of thing
and it would be expensive and it would be dignified.
But it was very unlikely,
even that anybody would get badly hurt,
let alone anything worse than that.
So, but you're absolutely right.
It was dangerous and it was wrong
and he shouldn't have done it
and there's no justification for it.
But I do understand it.
So, he also won the championship in 1991, his third.
And he was the youngest ever triple world champion.
Yeah, and the youngest back-to-back champion
as well, I think.
So, you know, we've revealed...
He'd scored by then 60 polls in 127 races.
I've got that in my notes.
He'd been in the most half of the races he'd started.
Wow.
So, that's the other thing, right?
That's another fundamental thing about his,
the way he drove, his driving ability, raw speed.
Despite the fact that that year,
Honda had just gone to the V12 engine for the V10
and the V12 was nothing like as good at the V10.
And there was Nigel Mansel
in quite an effective Williams.
Yeah, yeah.
Amazing achievement that year.
Very underrated season of his, I think.
So, this thing about raw speed,
he just as an example, a snapshot.
So, 1988, no, 1989.
So, at McLaren, still with Prost,
still with the fastest car on the grid.
Japanese Grand Prix,
Senna qualified 1.7 seconds ahead of Prost.
So, as far as raw speed goes, he absolutely,
his raw speed was up there
with absolutely anybody else's you care to mention.
And the other thing about his driving ability
that we should discuss is driving in the rain.
Donnington.
Yeah.
Esterel.
Yeah.
Monaco.
Yeah.
A master, a master in the rain,
which is, that's absolutely one of the sort of
common traits of the greats, isn't it?
The rain comes down and up they rise.
I mean, it's hard not to revert to cliches here,
but it is the great leveler, isn't it?
Because suddenly, if somebody's got much more power than you,
but they can't use it,
then effectively everybody has the same power
because everybody has more power than they can use.
And then other factors come into play.
So, one of the great variables is taken away.
And so, it is a leveler.
And we saw how extraordinarily good he was
in those conditions.
And stayed that way from his first win
in 1985 up to and through Donnington in 1993.
I was too young by the time he died that day at Imola
to be aware of him.
But in everything that I've seen more recently,
all the documentaries, all the footage,
we know that he was a religious guy, a very spiritual guy.
I was one of the cross big problems with him.
Oh, okay.
He thought-
I just said it's not a direct quote,
but it won't be far off.
One of the problems is he thinks
that God's in the car with him.
So, a sort of fatalistic attitude when my time comes,
it comes.
Yeah, but also, I think prostitutes would be fine.
If you want, I think that would be fine, but that's fine.
But you can't let that affect those around you
because it's not safe.
But it seems to me that racing, that fame,
that the pressure, the public attention
all weighed quite heavily on his shoulders.
He wasn't a joker, you know?
You don't often see him just rolling around in laughter.
And there's a quote from Gerhard Berger,
so close friend and a teammate.
He said, Berger said,
Senna taught me a lot about our sport.
I taught him to laugh.
It's a really, really good point
because he was once asked, wasn't he,
who was his greatest racing rival?
He didn't say Alan Prost.
He said, Terry Fullerton.
Yeah, correct.
When he raced against in carts.
Yeah.
In the late 1970s,
because he said there was no politics in it,
there was no money in it, it was just racing.
And that's all he wanted to do.
Later in his life, he became very interested
and passionate about his charitable foundation
and doing all that sort of thing, which was wonderful.
But everything that went with racing,
I'm sure he enjoyed the fortune.
I don't think he enjoyed the fame.
I don't think that he,
I think he thought that was just a complete distraction.
He was a racing driver.
In a way, we have seen very few since.
He was utterly, utterly driven.
And couldn't really understand a world away from racing.
And I think that lies at the heart of everything.
Yeah.
And explains, if not excuses,
everything that he did during the course
of his racing career.
He was born to do it, wasn't he?
He died a national hero in Brazil.
A million or more people attended his state funeral.
Three days in a national mourning.
Yeah.
Goodness me.
A hundred thousand feet people filed past.
Wow.
Gosh, talk about leaving.
There is a story.
I'm sure it's apocryphal.
It has to be apocryphal.
In fact, it is apocryphal.
But nevertheless, it has been said
there was no crime in Brazil,
in Brazil, the day of the funeral.
Really?
Yeah.
I don't believe that for a second.
But it may well have dropped, though.
Yeah, I mean, an extraordinary magnetic personality.
Yeah.
How do you think he would have got on
in the Formula One today?
Because he was not, if anybody has seen the Senna film,
he was not the sort of man to tow the party line.
No.
And to be on message or politically correct about stuff.
He called things as he saw it.
I don't know whether someone like that these days
would just be regarded as a dinosaur
or whether a modern Formula One team would think,
well, with a talent like that,
we just have to try to manage him.
I don't know.
I don't know how he'd get on.
Well, if he didn't like the fame
and he didn't much like the politics,
or like did as he was involved, wasn't he?
How he'd have gone on with Vegas.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And all the pomp and ceremony around that Grand Prix
and the way they made the drivers stand on podiums
and wave at the crowds,
I just, he would have hated it, wouldn't he?
I think to be fair,
I think most of the current guys hate it too.
That Vegas stuff, at least.
Yeah, but it's really interesting to think
how he would have reacted to it.
I think he would have reacted.
Maybe he would have been very professional about it
and just thought, well, if this is what's required,
if I have to sort of smile and turn up here and go there
and talk to those people,
but that's what allows me to go and do what I love doing.
Maybe I'll just maybe just go and do it.
I also wonder what you'd make a modern Formula One cars.
I mean, I, as I'm sure you do,
I've spent so many hours watching air and on board
with H-Pattern Formula One cars.
Usually at Monaco, actually.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the way he used to drive them.
And I tried to sort of put myself in the car.
I don't even want to think to myself,
you look at the buffeting
and just how the camera is shaking
and the driver's being knocked around all over the place
and the constant that, you know,
you can't really see it so much from the outside,
but you can see it on the inside.
The constant correction,
applying oversteer while trying to change gear,
one hand on the steering, all this sort of stuff.
I think to myself,
even if I could drive that, which I absolutely can't,
I'd be done in within a lap.
Yeah, yeah.
It's, that was raw, real driving, wasn't it?
It was, you're right, it's those pole laps at Monaco.
Often one-handed wrestling this machine.
There's one at Suzuka too, which is,
I mean, the commitment into which he goes into turn one
is just absolutely absurd.
And that's where you see it.
I mean, he did talk, didn't he?
There was one, was it Monaco in 88 where, again,
he was like a second and a half quicker than the past.
And he did talk about,
I'm not sure it was actually me being in the car there,
he kind of had a slightly out-of-body experience.
And if you watch his Monaco qualifying laps,
what you are seeing isn't just a human being
operating a machine.
So this will sound so absurd,
but if ever there were an example of man and machine
just operating at one, it was that.
It is that.
He was so totally in tune with it.
And you can see, you can almost physically see
that he was ahead of the car,
that he was thinking about,
his brain was thinking about one thing
while his body was doing another.
His body was in the here and now,
and his brain was 100 yards up the road.
Absolutely mesmerizing to watch.
And it must be the most remarkable sensation
for the driver to feel like it's unconscious,
it's happening around you, you're just there.
It must be extraordinary.
It must be, well, maybe not to a person like him,
but I think it would just be unsettling
because if I sort of looked down
and didn't really recognize what I was doing,
it was almost like it was,
as he said, somebody else doing it,
that would completely freak me out.
Yeah, it would sort of snap you out of your every,
wouldn't it?
It's not a problem that I've had
or you anticipate having, but it was, yeah.
Let's talk about the Honda NSX, right?
And there's a couple of things we need to say about this,
but first of all,
that car gave you the opportunity
to watch Senna at work from the passenger seat.
Yeah.
Which is a truly, truly remarkable thing
to have got to do in your life and career.
You sat alongside Senna in an NSX at Silverstone.
In the wet.
What year was this?
1991?
I think it was,
because I think they'd just gone to the V12 engine
and he wasn't really happy about it
and Silverstone had just had some mods
and he apologized to me
because he didn't feel he'd quite learnt the circuit.
I think that's when they put the,
there's all the Magga's Beckets complex in.
Well, I'll get to the driving bit in a minute,
but I mean, that whole day was utterly bizarre.
It was a tire test and all the teams were there
and I'd been told that I might get a lap with Senna
if I turned up in an NSX
and I sat outside the motorhome all day.
And eventually he came out of the motorhome,
face like thunder, pointed at me,
didn't even look at me, pointed me
and said to whichever lady was minding him,
is this him?
Hello.
And we wandered out the tent
and there were flash bulbs
and there were microphones
and he was scowling
and I was thinking, what am I doing?
And I get in this car
and as soon as the door shuts,
he just leans over to me, huge smile on his face
and goes, hi, I'm Ayrton.
Really?
And it was just like a different person's
gotten to this car.
Wow.
So we toddle down the pit lane
at which stage I realise
I have left my dictaphone and my notebook
back in the pit garage.
So and I've got no,
I can't record this once in a lifetime experience.
So I said to him, I'm terribly sorry.
But I've done this and he went, oh, no problem.
Reverses back up the pit lane.
I gotta get my stuff.
We're back in the car going back down the pit lane
at which stage there's a bloat
standing in front of the car.
Stops the car and Ayrton wind down the window
and goes, yeah, well,
and he goes, you need to go and see Sid.
This being Silverstone Sid,
the clerk of the course, track manager,
whatever, the eminence grease of Silverstone
for so many decades.
And whatever we did in the car later on,
probably the most surreal experience in my life
will always be being sat in a room
somewhere upstairs at Silverstone with Ayrton Senna
with both of us being given a bollocking
by Silverstone Sid for reversing up his pit lane.
I don't care if you're the world champion.
I don't care how many world championships you've got,
you never reverse up my pit lane is what he said.
Wow.
And Senna and I just sort of sat there
like naughty school boys go, all right, terribly sorry.
And once we're back in the car,
that was the Alex Wellinsch really broken
and he just thought the whole thing was utterly hilarious.
And then, yeah, I think we did,
we might have done three laps.
In my head, I like to think it's three laps.
It was probably two.
But I remember one where he was actually
just driving around quite slowly, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat.
And we're thinking, well, this is nice,
but I want to see Ayrton Senna drive.
And he was talking about the circuit changes
and he was talking about how cheese off
where he was with his V12 engine.
And then he said something like, right, now we drive.
And that was it.
I mean, I'll never forget it.
I've written about this so many times
so I don't want to bang on about it,
but the overwhelming memory was of the economy of his actions.
It was the opposite of histrionics, you know,
arms, all arms and elbows, opposite locking.
I mean, there was everything just happened
so gently and progressively and easily,
but at a speed I couldn't recognize.
There was, he was so, so far ahead of the car.
I mean, I don't imagine, I think he would have forgotten
about it within 30 seconds of having gotten out.
But there were times when we were going through,
I think we went through stow
at a pretty ridiculous angle.
And he just didn't bother putting on much opposite lock
because he knew what the car was doing.
He knew it was going.
He didn't want to unsettle it any more than it already was.
And he was just gently playing with the throttle
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it was, it was, I mean, it was obviously fascinating
and inspiring, but it was just curious
because I'd never seen a car being driven like that.
Oh, wow.
Because I got in cars and even by then,
I'd, I'd sat next to lots of, you know, very fast drivers
and what they're keen to do is put on a show.
Yeah.
Tell you what you can do.
You know, frankly, it's scared the bejesus out of you.
And I completely understand that.
And so it's all, you know, opposite lock and hijinks
and everything, and he wasn't like that at all.
He was just driving like the wind and it was magical.
And it came and it was over and we came down the pit lane
and there were big smiles and, you know,
we sort of shook hands and he got out of the car
and instantly the mask went down again
and he was scowling and it was the hat was on
and it was, you know, don't talk to me
back into the mode and I never saw it.
I did see him again, actually.
Uncle, yes.
I saw him in 1994, the year that he died.
It was a BMW 7 series launch
and I saw him in the foyer of the Kompinski Hotel in Munich
and he was talking to some business associates
and I was with some other motoring journalist
and they all go, look, there's your mate, there's your mate.
This is a bloke I've probably spent, I don't know,
less than an hour in this company.
I don't even think you would have remembered.
But there was a bit of me which wanted to go over
to him and just go, you won't remember me,
but, you know, two, three years ago,
we went and did this
and I just want to tell you how much it meant to me.
But I didn't do it, I bottled it
because I didn't want to disturb him
because he was a business associate
so I didn't want to embarrass him
and he wouldn't remember who I was
and I just thought, who am I doing this for?
I'm doing it for me, it's not the right thing to do.
So I didn't, and that was that.
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And then you never got the chance again.
I never got the chance again.
But I think like, so yes, you would have been,
what would you have been,
seven or eight when you died?
Seven, yeah.
I was a bit older than that.
And I think that all of us who,
I mean, it really was a JFK Diana moment.
Everybody, I think, who revered Ayrton Center.
Can't remember exactly what they were doing
when they heard that news.
I know exactly what I was doing.
I was driving a white C180 classic Mercedes Benz
from the Lake Vernimi Hotel in the Elam Valley
or near Lake, but yeah, in the Elam Valley
back to my parents' law place in Harrivershire.
And it just didn't seem real.
I had to get my then girlfriend, now wife,
to say it to me again and again and again.
And I can feel, I'm not gonna embarrass myself here,
but even now I can feel the emotion of that moment
because he was the only inverted commerce hero
that I ever had.
And it seemed extraordinary and impossible
that he could have gone.
Even after Roland Ratsenberger, even though it had happened,
and don't forget, the day before that,
we thought the Barrichello had been killed.
I mean, just the most appalling weekend.
And even then, even after all of that,
it simply didn't compute that this person
who had done all this stuff
and who was so young and so absolutely in the prime
and who had so much more to give
just wasn't there anymore.
It rocked the world, didn't it?
And it must be just difficult to accept
and to believe that it's true.
One of those moments, they don't come around often.
Thank goodness.
Thank goodness.
But I mean, the ripples.
You think how many, you know, a millionaire's funeral,
how many people around the world
actually felt that moment?
Billions.
One person, incredible.
I mean, there can't have been
a more famous global sporting person possibly ever
because obviously at the time of his death,
the television coverage of getting wider and wider,
there were more and more races every year.
It was a truly global sport.
Maybe there would have been, you know,
maybe Pele had been someone like that.
But in his time, I don't think that, you know,
he would, he was one of the most famous people
on the planet in the prime of his life
and then he was dead.
Gosh.
Just to finish on a slightly lighter note.
Oh, please.
Did he develop the Honda NSX?
No, next question.
What's your understanding of that?
My understanding of it is that he did a couple,
he might have done a couple of afternoons.
I think it was it at Suzuka or Tachigi
or Metegi or somewhere like that.
And there is that famous footage, isn't it, of,
of him driving the car with his tassel leifers on
and feeding back.
So he would have had an input into it.
But I think that everyone who says
Airt and Senna developed the NSX
actually does a massive disservice
to all those hundreds of incredibly passionate
and talented and skilled engineers
who did not 98 or 99% of the work
but 99.999% of the work
to turn that car into the landmark that it was.
And I think that Senna would be the last person
in the world who'd want to take the credit for that.
So yes, he was consulted.
He did drive the car before it was launched.
He definitely fed back.
I'm sure they took notice of what he said.
They probably acted on what he said.
But to leap from there on the basis of whatever it was,
one or two afternoons in a car
in the process of development
which probably took five years to say,
Airt and Senna developed the NSX.
It is not even simplistic.
It's simply not true.
Okay, good.
I'm glad we straightened that out.
I think what you often read and what you often hear
is that Senna told them that the chassis
by which I assume they mean the structure,
the car's structure should be stiffer.
And so maybe they did something to make it a bit stiffer.
But also that is a racing driver's perspective.
Of course it is.
And which racing driver is ever going to be happy
with the torsional rigidity of the car that he's driving?
Yeah.
So as you say, there were some sessions,
there was some feedback,
but no, he did not develop that car.
We need to wrap this one up.
Do you know what?
I can't believe how quickly the time has gone.
I wondered if we were going to be scratching around.
Well, I don't know why I wondered that,
but the time has gone very, very quickly.
And that's because there is just so much
to say about Airt and Senna.
Not just his driving ability, but his persona,
the impression that he left on Formula One fans
and even beyond.
You have to be a human being, don't you?
You have to be a prop.
You can't just be really good at what you do.
It's not enough.
Alan Prost was really good at what he did.
In most objective mathematical assessments,
he was better at his job than Airt and Senna.
But no one believes that.
I don't think anybody does.
Or hardly anybody does.
You have to be a magnetic character.
You have to be relatable.
And I think that through his flaws,
and I think so many people understood
that because of the passion,
the absolute drive and determination to be the best,
that that rarely comes at no cost at all.
And I think that people identified with it.
I think it made him more human.
And actually, in a slightly strange way,
a more lovable character as a result.
And I think that there are any number of people
who quite rightly really, really admire Alan Prost.
But there was an adoration for Senna, a love for Senna,
which I hardly any other,
I'm just trying to think of another driver who I think,
it's certainly who I saw race
for the human that was ever that level of adoration.
And I can't think of one.
Not Michael, not Lewis.
That's right.
It's being a great racing driver
made him famous in racing circles.
But there's something about his character,
his humanity that made him famous
and adored worldwide, far beyond racing.
Maybe that's the heart of it.
Maybe that gets right to the heart of it in Senna.
Let's wrap that one up.
That was really interesting.
That was good fun.
I hope you all enjoyed watching.
Hope you all enjoyed listening.
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About this episode
Ayrton Senna's legacy as one of Formula 1's most charismatic figures is explored in depth, examining his career, rivalries, and the impact he had on the sport. The hosts discuss his remarkable talent, including his prowess in wet conditions and his intense rivalry with Alain Prost. They reflect on Senna's tragic death at a young age and how it shaped his legacy, contrasting his raw speed and charisma with the statistics of his career. The episode delves into what made Senna a hero for many, beyond just his achievements on the track.
Original notes
Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel discuss the life and career of triple Formula 1 World Champion Ayrton Senna. The Brazilian is regarded by many to be the greatest F1 driver of all time. He was ferociously quick, fearless in wheel-to-wheel battle and a master in the rain, but also willing to resort to underhand or even dangerous tactics to win.
Senna died aged only 34, leaving his home country and the entire motorsport world bereft. He is one of only a handful of F1 drivers to truly transcend the sport and become a prominent figure in society as a whole.
Andrew remembers the time he rode with Senna at Silverstone in a Honda NSX, and how impressive he was behind the wheel.
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The Intercooler
Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel
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