1988 The first title

The last half-million dollars was settled with a coin. By Ron Dennis’s account, the talks at Senna’s house at Esher had stalled with the two sides US$500,000 a year apart, and Dennis suggested they toss for it. Senna did not know what that meant. Dennis had to explain heads and tails, and draw pictures on a piece of paper, before they flicked the coin. Dennis won, and since the contract was for three years, Motor Sport reckoned, it had been a coin toss worth US$1.5 million.

The deal, signed during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, was announced at Monza in September 1987. For 1988 he joined Alain Prost at Honda Marlboro McLaren. By Prost’s own account, when McLaren and Honda asked him whether they should take Senna or Nelson Piquet, he recommended Senna. Before the season Dennis gathered both drivers with Honda’s head of Formula One and promised them equality, and race engines were shared out by the toss of a coin before witnesses.

The McLaren MP4/4-⁠Honda was designed by a McLaren team led by Steve Nichols, who was Senna’s race engineer, under the technical director Gordon Murray; who deserves the credit for it is still argued over. It was the last year of the turbos. Boost was cut to 2.5 bar and fuel to 150 litres a race, and Honda’s low-slung engine let McLaren build a very low car. The car ran for the first time only days before the season, at Imola, and Prost drove it first. His verdict on sharing it with Senna is in Senna and Prost.

At Jacarepaguá, just renamed after Piquet, he took pole on his McLaren debut. At the end of the formation lap his gear selector broke. He waved his arms, the start was aborted, and he ran to the spare car and started from the pit lane. He was 21st after the first lap and 2nd by lap 20, and on lap 31 a marshal showed him the black flag. He was disqualified: the rules forbade a change of car once the start procedure had begun. At Imola he took pole by 0.771 seconds from Prost, with Piquet, fastest of the rest, more than three seconds slower on the same Honda engine. He led every lap for his first win with McLaren, and the two McLarens lapped the field.

The pole lap

Monaco qualified on the Thursday and the Saturday. On the Thursday, on a track that was wet and drying, he was 1.911 seconds faster than Prost. Saturday was grey and cool. Neil Oatley, who ran Prost’s car, remembers the sequence: Prost down to 1:26.9, Senna 1:24.4; Prost 1:25.4; then Senna again. By the account of Jo Ramírez, McLaren’s team coordinator, Senna came in and wanted one more run. Dennis asked him what the point was; Senna said he could do better, and after some pleading Dennis let him go. The time was 1:23.998, 1.427 seconds faster than Prost, with Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari 3rd, 2.687 seconds behind. Oatley remembers a ghostly look coming over Prost’s face.

He drove slowly back to the pits, and did not go out again that day. He described the lap afterwards more than once, in words that differ from one telling to the next; they are set side by side in Mind and faith.

Portier

Rain on the Sunday morning spoiled the warm-up, but the race was dry. Senna led into Sainte-Dévote, and Prost missed second gear and dropped behind Berger, where he stayed for 53 laps. Denis Jenkinson, reporting for Motor Sport, watched Senna pass the backmarkers through gaps his rivals looked at in disbelief. His lead grew to about 50 seconds. Prost finally got past Berger on lap 54 and set a new fastest lap on lap 57; on lap 59 Senna answered with 1:26.321, which stood as the best of the race. Once Prost was 2nd, the order went out to Senna to ease off, and by Jenkinson’s watch his laps fell from about 1:26 to 1:29.

For 66 laps he had aimed his right front wheel at the apex of Portier, the nose fin skimming the wall. On lap 67 the fin struck the barrier, and the car was thrown across the road into the Armco on the outside. He climbed out, took off his helmet and balaclava, and walked home: his flat was in the Houston Palace, barely 180 metres (200 yards) away. He did not go back to the pits. Jo Ramírez kept telephoning, and the woman who looked after the flat kept saying he was not there. At about nine in the evening he came to the phone. He was still crying, Ramírez said. Ron Dennis had never seen him angrier with himself. His mechanics flew home that night not knowing whether something had broken; only on the Tuesday did they learn that he had simply touched the barrier. Prost won Monaco for the fourth time.

In July, at his flat, he told the journalist Mike Doodson that he had crashed because he had slowed down and lost his concentration; Doodson found that it did not square with what the team told him. In 1990 Senna told the writer Gerald Donaldson that Monaco had been the peak of a crisis that turned him back towards God.

I just came so close to perfection that weekend, that I relax. I open windows for mistakes, and I learned that there. And since then my progressive comeback, because I lost some confidence at that moment. And progressively, I fight back, and I got much stronger after that incident. Somehow I got closer to God and that has been very important for me as a man.

Four in a row

At the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez his pop-off valve opened as he changed into second at the start, and Prost led every lap. In Montreal Prost led away, until Senna went inside him at the hairpin on lap 19 and won with pole and the fastest lap; afterwards the two McLarens stopped just past the line, too short of fuel for a lap of honour. In Detroit, in Formula One’s last race there, he won for the third year running, on a track breaking up in the heat, slowing so much at the end that lapped cars unlapped themselves. Asked whether McLaren’s dominance was harming the sport, he answered, “I don’t care.” At Paul Ricard Prost took his first pole for two years and, with Senna’s gearbox failing, passed him and a backmarker on lap 61. Senna was 15 points behind.

At Silverstone, for the only time that year, there was no McLaren on the front row. The race was run in heavy rain and mist. On the way to the grid Jabby Crombac, editor of Sport-Auto, told Jenkinson that the day would be won by a great driver or a lucky one. On lap 14 the two leaders, Berger and Senna, came up to lap Prost, who had made two poor starts and was down in the field. At Club Berger was held up by the cautious Prost, and Senna dived inside the Ferrari and took the lead. Prost withdrew after 24 laps, officially because of the car’s handling. Senna won by 23 seconds from Nigel Mansell, and it was the only British Grand Prix he ever won.

At Hockenheim a storm stopped five minutes before the start and the forest never dried. He led every lap on a car set up for the dry, and Jenkinson wrote that if there was a better driver in Formula One he would like to see him. At the Hungaroring Prost, from 7th on the grid, came up to him on lap 49 as they lapped two slower cars and dived inside, his right-hand wheels all but scraping the pit wall. Senna gave him just enough room; Prost ran wide, and Senna came back past on the exit. He won by 0.529 seconds, and they were level on points, Senna ahead on wins.

At Spa he passed Prost on the Kemmel straight on the first lap and led every lap after it. It was his fourth win in a row and his seventh of the year; McLaren had the constructors’ championship with five races left, and Senna led the drivers’ table for the first time that year. Prost said publicly that there was no doubt who would be champion, and that Senna deserved it.

Monza, Estoril, Jerez

Enzo Ferrari had died on 14 August. At Monza Senna took his 10th pole of the year, a new record, and led from the first lap. Prost’s engine failed on lap 35. Honda’s engineers, fearing the same for Senna, told him to cut his boost and richen the mixture, and as his fuel consumption went awry the two Ferraris closed from 25 seconds to under five. With two laps to go, lapping the Williams of Jean-Louis Schlesser, a debutant one day short of his 40th birthday, he went down the inside into the first chicane. Schlesser locked up, ran wide on to the dirt and came back across as Senna turned in, and the Williams hit the McLaren’s right rear. Senna was left beached on the kerb. Berger and Michele Alboreto finished 1–⁠2 for Ferrari before 80,000 tifosi, and it was the only race McLaren lost all year. The BBC’s commentators blamed Schlesser at the time; later accounts lean towards Senna’s impatience.

At Estoril, after Prost had edged him towards the grass at the start, Senna led the first lap. At the start of the second Prost pulled out of his slipstream on the pit straight, and Senna swerved at him and squeezed him so close to the pit wall that the March team manager, Ian Phillips, had to snatch back his pit board. Prost kept his foot down, the McLaren squirmed over a bump, and he led into the first corner and won. If that was how Senna wanted to win the championship, Prost said, he was not interested, and they would have words. The stewards gave Senna a warning. His own race fell apart, and he finished 6th.

At Jerez, from pole, his fuel read-out warned him from the start, and he finished 4th, stopping just past the line with the tank dry. Afterwards, by one account, he let it be known that he had his own theory about the difference in fuel consumption and would rather not say it; Honda promised both drivers an equal chance in the last two races, and Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of FISA, wrote to Honda’s president asking for fairness. McLaren, Honda and Senna scoffed at the letter. The arithmetic was simple: only the best 11 results counted, and ties were broken on wins, so if Senna won at Suzuka he would be champion.

Champion

He was fastest on the Friday at Suzuka and took pole on the Saturday, his 12th of the year, 0.324 seconds faster than Prost. A few spots of rain fell a quarter of an hour before the start, and everyone started on slicks. When the lights went green his McLaren barely moved. He raised his arms; Berger and Piquet swerved round him. The grid slopes downhill, and as the car rolled forward the engine caught, faltered and caught again, and he was away, about 14th into the first corner. By the end of the lap he had passed six cars and was 8th. He was 4th by lap 4 and 3rd by lap 11, when he passed Berger.

Prost had been 13 seconds ahead at one stage, and Ivan Capelli’s March-Judd caught him and, on lap 16, led him briefly across the line, the first time a March had led a Grand Prix since 1976. From about lap 13 a drizzle slowed everyone, and Senna least. He said afterwards, “I told myself that it was over, but I began to find my rhythm and was going quicker and quicker. Then some drizzle came, and that helped me because everyone slowed down and I caught up a lot.” The drizzle stopped at about lap 23. On lap 28 Prost was held up at the chicane by two backmarkers fighting over 12th place; Senna took his slipstream out of the last corner, went inside at the line, and the three cars went into the first corner almost abreast. He caught a slide under braking and was in front.

The rain came back in the closing laps, and he gestured to race control to stop the race. He won by 13.363 seconds, with the fastest lap. It was his eighth win of the year, a record, and it made him champion at 28, the third Brazilian after Emerson Fittipaldi and Piquet. On the slowing-down lap he clenched his fist in the cockpit, wept, and drove slowly round to compose himself. Ramírez had never seen him so happy.

On the last lap, he said later, he had seen the image of Jesus; the vision is told in Mind and faith.

Soichiro Honda, who had watched on a small screen at the circuit, congratulated him in a tent behind the podium. That night the new champion arrived late at his own party for the team, having watched the race again on video, and even after a drink or two, Ramírez remembered, he asked him whether it was really true. David Tremayne of Motor Sport thought that Senna still had things to learn from Prost, but that the hungrier man had won.

The last turbo race

On holiday in Bali after the title, keeping goal in a football match between drivers and McLaren mechanics, he dislocated his right hand. At Adelaide it was still sore, and he took pole anyway, in the last minutes of qualifying: his 13th of the year, a new record. Berger passed him in the opening laps, his gearbox gave trouble, and he finished 2nd to Prost in the last race of the turbo era.

McLaren had won 15 of the 16 races. Senna had won eight of them and started from pole at 13. Prost had scored 105 points to his 94; but counting only the best 11 results, Senna had 90 and Prost 87. At Christmas, on a Brazilian television programme, he was asked what present he would like.

A Christmas present? What I really want, I can’t say here. … Censored, but I just want happiness.

In 1989 he would carry the number 1.