Rivals Prost, Mansell, Piquet, Schumacher

At Estoril, on the weekend of the Portuguese Grand Prix in September 1986, Bernie Ecclestone sat the four men in contention for the title side by side on the pit wall and had them photographed: Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna. Every world championship from 1985 to 1993 would go to one of the four.

His Formula One career ran through three generations of rivals. First came the established stars he found on his arrival in 1984: the champions Niki Lauda, Piquet and Keke Rosberg, and Prost, who was not one yet. Then came the two men who fought him for titles, Prost and Mansell. Last came the young driver who was beating him in 1994, Michael Schumacher. In Adelaide in November 1993 he said that he had enjoyed racing Mansell and Prost in different ways: one was really aggressive and the other was not, and he had tried to see the good in them both, to make himself better.

Gerhard Berger

They met in Formula 3 in 1983. At Macau that November, where Berger finished 3rd behind him, Senna came over at the party that evening to tell him that the fastest lap Berger thought was his had in fact been Senna’s. That, Berger said, was when he understood how competitive Senna was, and how he wanted everything for himself.

Berger was his team-mate at McLaren for three seasons and 48 races, and, with Prost, the only team-mate to beat him more than a handful of times: when both finished, Senna was ahead 18 times to seven. Berger won three races in those years, the first at Suzuka in 1991, where Senna, champion again, slowed at the last corner and let him through. Berger did not like it, he said later, and did not appreciate it; but if he had known then what he knew now, he would have lifted too. Once at Imola, after pole had changed hands four or five times, Senna walked over to his car and asked whether they should stop, or go on into more dangerous things. Let’s go, said Berger.

Was it good for me to be teamed with Ayrton? Yes and no. Would I do it again? No. I always had the same equipment, same engine, but he was difficult to beat.

… the last thing I needed was not having a winning car and being with Ayrton.

After Berger’s fire at Tamburello in 1989 Senna telephoned him in hospital, and they agreed that the wall had to go. At a later test at Imola the two of them walked out in their overalls to look behind it, found a river and no room, and walked back. It was exactly the place, Berger said in 2019, where Senna died. In May 1994 he said: “Nothing could be done, … but we could change the circuit. We didn’t push enough.” For 1993 Berger went to Ferrari, with, as he tells the joke, one condition in the contract: Senna would not be his team-mate any more. Their friendship, and Berger’s practical jokes, belong with the people around him.

Fullerton and Brundle

His first great rival was his own team-mate. When Senna arrived at the DAP kart factory in Italy in 1978, the team’s number one was Terry Fullerton, 25, the world karting champion of 1973. They raced each other hard for three seasons, and their friendship did not survive the Champions Cup of 1980. Yet in Adelaide in November 1993, asked which opponent had given him the most satisfaction, Senna thought about it, then slowly named Fullerton: that had been pure racing, he said, with no politics and no money.

In British Formula 3 in 1983 it was Martin Brundle. Senna won the first nine rounds with Brundle 2nd in eight of them; then through the summer Brundle won again and again while Senna crashed or collided, until Senna settled the title in the last round, by 132 points to 123. In Formula One they started 117 Grands Prix together, and when both finished Brundle was ahead only four times; his best day against Senna was 2nd behind him at Monza in 1992. In July 1993 Brundle called him a genius, a word, he said, that he did not use lightly.

Jean-Marie Balestre

His longest quarrel off the track was with the governing body. Jean-Marie Balestre was president of FISA from 1979 to 1991, and of the FIA from the mid-1980s until 1993. At Suzuka in 1989 he joined the stewards who disqualified Senna, and showed the press the collision on video. That winter he held back Senna’s licence for 1990 until Senna withdrew the charge that the title had been manipulated, and suggested that he might race in Formula 3000 instead. At the drivers’ briefing at Hockenheim in 1991, on film, he cut short Senna’s complaints about safety: the best decision, he said, was his decision.

At Suzuka later that year, with Balestre beaten by Max Mosley for the presidency of FISA, Senna said publicly that it had been Balestre who refused to move pole in 1990, and spoke of wrong decisions and partiality. In 1996, as he retired from the French federation, Balestre was reported to have admitted that he had helped Prost in 1989. Yet two days after Imola he told Folha that he was devastated, and that for three years Senna had sent him a letter at Christmas, written in his own hand. He kept a steering wheel Senna had given him in 1991, the year of the third title, and one of his helmets. Balestre died in 2008, aged 86.

The others

For 1986 Senna told Lotus that it could not run two competitive cars, and vetoed any experienced team-mate, which in practice meant Derek Warwick. The British press turned on him, and Johnny Dumfries got the seat. Warwick called it a hiccup in his career, and blamed the team and its sponsors for messing him about more than he blamed Senna. In 1994 he was at the funeral.

Elio de Angelis, his first team-mate at Lotus, led the championship in 1985 after Imola and Monaco, but Senna out-qualified him 13 times to three, and at the end of the year he left for Brabham. He died after a testing accident at Paul Ricard in May 1986.

At Brands Hatch in 1985 Keke Rosberg, the 1982 champion, rejoined after a stop just ahead of the leaders and held Senna up, so that his Williams team-mate Mansell could get away to his first win. At Phoenix in 1990 Jean Alesi’s Tyrrell led the first 34 laps; when Senna finally passed, Alesi took the place straight back at the next corner, and Senna had to do it again.

At Suzuka in 1993 Eddie Irvine, on his debut in a Jordan, unlapped himself from the leader, and that evening Senna went to the Jordan office and hit him; the story, and the suspended ban that followed, are told in 1993.

Mika Häkkinen out-qualified him on his first weekend as his team-mate at McLaren, at Estoril in 1993, and at Aida in 1994 hit him at the first corner. Senna’s reply to his apology, Häkkinen said, was not positive. Damon Hill, his team-mate at Williams in 1994, had said when they were paired that Senna was by far the fastest and most complete driver of the day, but that he himself was not easily crushed. Senna started all three of their races from pole, and Hill was among the drivers who escorted his coffin.