1985 The first win

In November 1984, in England, a paralysis took hold of most of the right side of his face. It eased, then came back, and on 6 December, in São Paulo, he announced that he would miss Lotus’s test at Paul Ricard; the doctors would give no guarantee that he would be fit for the first race. Peter Warr, who ran the team, asked Professor Sid Watkins whether a driver who could not close one eye was safe. Watkins, sure that he would recover, is said to have joked that it was better for racing drivers to keep both eyes open. He recovered over the winter, and in February drove the new car for the first time, in the rain, in England.

He had left Toleman after his first season, 1984, for John Player Special Team Lotus, which Warr ran for Colin Chapman’s widow, Hazel, from Ketteringham Hall near Norwich. The Lotus 97T-⁠Renault was black and gold, with a Renault V6 turbo, carbon brakes, and small vanes between the front wheels and the tub that rivals copied within weeks. Gérard Ducarouge was the technical director and Steve Hallam was Senna’s race engineer. He drove number 12. The rules allowed each car 220 litres of fuel for a race, with no refuelling, and Lotus had no read-out of consumption in the cockpit until Renault supplied meters in August.

His team-mate was Elio de Angelis, a Lotus driver since 1980 and its established leader; Nigel Mansell had gone to Williams. At Jacarepaguá, where giant JPS banners in Rio celebrated the new man, de Angelis out-qualified him, 3rd to 4th. It was one of only three times all year. Senna ran 3rd for much of the race, until an electrical failure stopped him after 48 laps.

Rain in Portugal

Friday’s qualifying at Estoril was disrupted by rain, and he was fastest in both sessions. On Saturday, in the dry, he took the first pole position of his career with 1:21.007, 0.413 seconds faster than Alain Prost and more than a second faster than de Angelis. Race morning was briefly blue and the warm-up was dry, but the rain came shortly before the start. Nigel Roebuck had it raining by noon and torrential by half past one. The start was not delayed, and everyone went out on treaded tyres.

So, clearly, Estoril was the breakthrough we were all waiting for from Senna on a day when the race would have been abandoned if it had been like that these days… or more likely it would never have been started.

… Ayrton simply walked on water that day in Portugal.

He made a clean getaway, and the two Lotuses went through the first corner 1–⁠2; Keke Rosberg had stalled on the grid, and Mansell, now at Williams, started from the pit lane after spinning on his way to the grid. After 10 laps he was 12.8 seconds ahead of de Angelis, who was holding off Prost; after 20, about half a minute. On lap 15 he set the fastest lap of the race. He was running a gear higher than usual to cut the wheelspin, and, Hallam says, looking for grip off the dry line and following the wheel tracks. Around lap 30, with more than 30 seconds in hand, Ducarouge wanted him asked to ease off; Hallam hesitated, and Senna explained later that being slowed down broke his rhythm.

On lap 31 Prost aquaplaned in the standing water on the main straight, at about 290 km/⁠h (180 mph) by his own estimate, and hit the wall. On lap 37 Senna had his biggest moment, all four wheels on the grass behind the paddock; the car came back on to the road by itself. In Alan Henry’s report for Motor Sport he was honest about it: “It was just luck that it came back on the road!” From the middle of the race he gestured at the officials to stop it. The clerk of the course, Amédée Pavesi, refused.

At the two-hour limit, after 67 laps, the flag came out. Before the first corner of his slowing-down lap he had thrown off his belts and was half out of the cockpit with both arms up, and the Lotus mechanics spilled over the pit wall. Pole, victory, fastest lap and every lap led: it was a grand chelem, the first of four in his career. Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari finished 1:02.978 behind him, the only car on the same lap. It was the first win for Team Lotus since Chapman’s death in 1982, and it ended a run of eight McLaren wins. He was 25.

Inclusive, a minha primeira vitória, que foi em Portugal, foi sob uma chuva tremenda. A televisão não pegou, mas eu dei duas escapadas que eu passei ralando no guard rail. Eu não bati porque me “seguraram” [juntando as mãos e apontando para cima] e ganhei a corrida.

My first win, in Portugal, was in tremendous rain. The television didn’t catch it, but I went off twice and scraped along the guardrail. I didn’t crash because I was ‘held’ [putting his hands together and pointing upwards], and I won the race.

The team flew home that night, soaked. On the Monday, on the flight to London, he found himself sitting next to Denis Jenkinson, who had watched the race at the first corner and had given up talking to racing drivers. They talked the whole way.

At home it was Tiradentes Day, a public holiday, and Brazil had spent 39 days following the illness of its president-elect, Tancredo Neves. The country watched Senna win on the Sunday morning. That night, at 10.23 p.m., Neves died in São Paulo.

Seven races without a point

At Imola he took pole by 0.027 seconds from Rosberg, the narrowest margin of all his 65 poles, and led for 56 laps. Denis Jenkinson watched him refuse Prost an inch and use the backmarkers to leave the McLaren nowhere to go; Prost complained afterwards that Senna had used Formula 3 tactics. But Prost had a fuel computer and the Lotus did not. Near the end of lap 57, three laps from home, the Renault coughed and died. Stefan Johansson’s Ferrari swept by into the lead, the crowd went wild, and then Johansson ran dry too. Prost took the flag and was then disqualified, his car 4 kg under the weight limit, so de Angelis, who had not led a lap, was given the win and the lead of the championship. Senna was classified 7th. In the weeks after Estoril and Imola, Hallam remembers, the team began to fear that they would be the ones who let him down.

At Monaco he took his third pole in a row, and Lauda and Alboreto accused him of baulking them in qualifying. That night, by the official site’s account, he walked the circuit alone. On the grid the electric warmers on his front tyres smoked and blistered them, and he started on cold new ones; the engine failed after 13 laps. The Belgian Grand Prix was abandoned on the Saturday when Spa’s new surface broke up, although on the Friday, on his first sight of the circuit, he was 3rd. In Montreal a loose clip let a turbo pipe work free; he lost five laps in the pits, then drove flat out and broke the lap record, and finished 16th.

In Detroit his pole was 1.198 seconds clear, the largest margin of his year. He started on the harder tyres, stopped after seven laps, and with no radio link was sent out again on the same compound by mistake. After a second stop he charged, with a row of lap records, the fastest on lap 51. His brake pads were so worn by then that he had to pump the pedal before every corner. Closing on Alboreto for 3rd, he forgot to pump it once, arrived at turn 3 far too fast and hit the barrier that had already caught Prost and Mansell. He made no bones about it afterwards: the mistake was his.

At Paul Ricard his engine blew in the fast Signes curve and the Lotus spun into the barriers on its own oil; he was unhurt. At Silverstone he made a blinding start from 4th and held Prost off on an economy run for 50 laps, until his engine began to cough and he stopped, dry, with five laps to go. At the Nürburgring he led until a driveshaft joint broke. By then he had scored nothing in seven races and had fallen from joint 2nd to 9th in the championship, while de Angelis, steadily finishing, had led it after Imola and Monaco.

Spa

At the Österreichring, where Lauda announced his retirement on the Saturday morning, Lotus had done no testing and Senna qualified only 14th. He finished 2nd, in a car that vibrated and overheated; it remained the lowest grid position from which he ever reached the podium, though Jenkinson thought it an uninspiring drive. At Zandvoort his turbo caught fire in Friday practice and he drove through an access road into the paddock to have it put out, and was fined US$5,000 for leaving the circuit at an unauthorised point. On the Sunday he beat Alboreto to 3rd by about a third of a second, after a wheel-to-wheel last few laps.

At Monza, the first time he had driven the circuit in any car, he took pole with two wheels on the grass at the first Lesmo, and finished 3rd. Afterwards de Angelis complained that he did not have the same engine as Senna; Warr replied that Senna used less boost for the same speed.

The Belgian Grand Prix, moved from June to 15 September, was his second win. After a shambles of a Friday he was 18th, but on Saturday he waited in the shade of the garage for a last run and did 1:55.403, 0.097 seconds slower than Prost, with blisters rising on his rear tyres. Heavy rain in the morning left the track wet at the start, and everyone set off on grooved tyres. He beat Prost and Nelson Piquet to La Source and led. A dry line appeared within a couple of laps, and at the end of lap 9 he stopped for slicks. Lotus had pre-heated, scrubbed tyres ready; on the way down to Eau Rouge he passed Mansell’s Williams on the wet outside line, and on the climb beyond it de Angelis, still on wets. A shower slowed everyone by 10 or 15 seconds a lap. The Renault was cutting out on the straights, and he drove the last laps, Motor Sport said, with his fingers crossed. He won by 28.422 seconds from Mansell. No Lotus had won at Spa-Francorchamps since Jim Clark in 1965.

After the race he shared a large cream cake with Ducarouge, whose 20th wedding anniversary it was. He was now 3rd in the championship.

Brands Hatch and Adelaide

At Brands Hatch, where he had won for the first time in a car, four years before, he set a provisional pole on the Friday on his second lap and sat on the pit wall for about half an hour until Rosberg beat it; then he went out and took it back within two laps. On Saturday he took pole at an average of 225.5 km/⁠h (140.1 mph), with Piquet beside him: the first all-Brazilian front row in the history of the championship. On the seventh lap Rosberg tried the inside at Surtees, Senna came back across, and the Williams was nudged into a spin. Rosberg rejoined just ahead of the leaders, held Senna up and let Mansell through to win his first Grand Prix. Senna was 2nd, and 4th place made Prost champion. On the podium Rosberg accused him of obstruction, and the two had to be kept apart.

The South African Grand Prix at Kyalami was run amid a campaign for a boycott over apartheid; Renault and Ligier stayed away, and Senna was reported as saying he was personally against the regime but had a commitment to his team. His engine failed after eight laps.

At Adelaide, in the first Australian Grand Prix on the street circuit, he was the only man to lap under 1:20 in qualifying. The race was a mess. On the first lap he forced his way down the inside of Mansell, who stopped for good on his second lap; Senna said Mansell had tried to stay with him round the outside where there was not enough room. He bounced over kerbs, ran on to the grass, knocked his front wings off, one against Rosberg’s Williams as it slowed for the pits and the other on the grass the next lap, and led three times before the engine failed after 62 laps. Alan Henry wrote that for much of the afternoon he had not looked like the man now accepted as the most impressive driver in Formula One. De Angelis, in his last race for Lotus, was black-flagged for regaining his grid position after stalling on the parade lap.

Senna finished 4th in the championship, with 38 points, two behind Rosberg. He had taken seven poles, more than anyone, and led more laps than any other driver, but only Estoril had turned a pole into a win. Hallam remembered him knowing the whole factory and every one of its 68 people, forever asking questions; without meaning to, Hallam said, he took up Elio’s space, simply because he was always there. De Angelis left for Brabham, and Senna’s objection to Derek Warwick as the new team-mate began a row that would last the winter into 1986.

Denis Jenkinson, looking back on the year, could remember no relatively new driver so dominant in a first season with a leading team since Bernd Rosemeyer drove for Auto Union in 1935.