1991 The third title

He came back from the Brazilian summer with a tan, a heavy cold and a warning. At Estoril, a week or two before the first race, he had driven the new McLaren MP4/6-⁠Honda for the first time, and he told the world that its V12 felt little stronger than the V10 it replaced. Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport suspected gamesmanship, and joked that Senna must have taken a correspondence course in it and graduated with honours. At Phoenix he took pole by 1.121 seconds and, on 10 March, led all 81 laps, until the race was stopped at its two-hour limit, one lap short of its distance. In a blind bend he narrowly missed Riccardo Patrese’s Williams, stranded on the racing line. It was his 27th win, equal with Jackie Stewart.

The MP4/6, designed under Neil Oatley, was McLaren’s first car with Honda’s new 3.5-litre V12. It kept a conventional low nose when most of its rivals had raised theirs, and a six-speed manual gearbox, where Williams and Ferrari raced semi-automatics. Senna carried the number 1, and Gerhard Berger stayed beside him, with 2, for a second year. Oatley lost a bet on the car’s first race and shaved off his moustache. From this season a win was worth 10 points, and every result counted.

Sixth gear

He had started seven Brazilian Grands Prix and won none. That week he attended a ceremony to give his name to the kart track at Interlagos, where he had begun, and on the Thursday he turned 31 at the circuit. His hotel room was burgled while he was out, and an envelope of 70 tickets meant for friends was stolen. On the Saturday, under pressure from the Williams, he took pole with 1:16.392, from Patrese and Nigel Mansell.

Mansell beat Patrese into the first corner and hounded Senna for 25 laps, closing to under a second; the McLaren was quicker on the straights, the Williams through the corners. Mansell stopped first and fumbled first gear, and Senna stopped a lap later and kept the lead. Mansell came back at him, and was 2.97 seconds behind on lap 42 when he had to stop again with a cut tyre; on lap 60 his semi-automatic gearbox failed coming out of the S do Senna, the downhill S after the pit straight. Senna now led Patrese by about 40 seconds, and his own gearbox was breaking. Fourth gear went about 20 laps from the end. Third and fifth followed with seven or eight laps left, and he drove the last laps in sixth.

With no lower gears there was no engine braking, and he had to do all his slowing on the brakes. His laps went out to 1:28 while Patrese lapped in the 1:21s. Only McLaren, and an onboard camera that showed him not changing gear, knew what was wrong. Patrese, missing gears on his own downshifts, chose not to risk his 6 points. A light rain began in the last laps, and Senna crossed the line 2.991 seconds ahead.

Brazilian television had picked up his team radio, and viewers heard him screaming, with joy and with pain. He stopped on the slowing-down lap, stalled, could not take the flag a marshal held out to him, and sat with his helmet off, white-faced, the harness having cut into him, until the feeling came back into his limbs. On the podium, with Patrese, Berger and Ron Dennis ready to catch him, he waved a Brazilian flag, could barely lift the trophy, and poured champagne over his own head.

In the closing laps I just had to leave the car in top gear… The rain didn’t help me, and I was really hoping they’d stop the race. In the slow corners I was pulling only 2000 rpm and the engine was nearly stalling. In the fast corners the car always wanted to push straight on. I saw Patrese coming and didn’t think I would make it, but I felt it was my duty to win here. I pushed the car regardless of the rain, but I was getting cramps and muscle spasms in my upper body. Partly that was because the safety harness was so tight, but also because of emotion! By the finish I had nothing left. God gave me this race.

It was the hardest Grand Prix he had driven, he said, since he nursed a damaged Toleman to 6th at Kyalami in 1984. When the gearbox was taken apart it had broken synchro rings and missing teeth, and Patrese said years later that had he known two laps sooner, he would have won. That night, by Jo Ramírez’s account, Pelé and his friends carried Senna shoulder-high round a São Paulo nightclub.

Four from four

At Imola a storm flooded the track 10 minutes before the start, and Alain Prost spun his Ferrari off on the formation lap. Patrese led the first nine laps. Senna took over when Patrese’s engine faltered, nursed a flickering oil-pressure warning, lost his radio and was baulked for laps by a backmarker, and only the two McLarens ran the full distance, Senna first and Berger 2nd. At Monaco he took his seventh pole in a row and led all 78 laps; on the ninth, a marshal ran across the track in front of him at Sainte-Dévote.

No driver had won the first four rounds of a season before. He had 40 points from 40, and he was still telling Honda that the V12 lacked power. Ron Dennis defended the habit: no driver criticised his team to damage it, he said, and the complaints were meant to raise the pressure on it to perform.

The Williams

By June the Williams FW14-⁠Renault, designed by Adrian Newey and Patrick Head, was the fastest car in the field. In Montreal, beaten on pace by the Williams for the first time, Senna ran a lonely 3rd until the alternator failed after 25 laps: his only retirement of the year. Mansell stopped on the last lap, and Nelson Piquet won. Williams won four of the next five races.

In early June, at Angra dos Reis, he fell from his jet-ski and a friend’s machine struck him on the head; the wound took 10 stitches. He arrived in Mexico City with a dressing on his head and said, “If I leave here with as many points as stitches, I’ll be happy.” On the Friday he tried to take the banked Peraltada, the last corner, flat in sixth, changed down in the middle of it, lost the car, hit the tyre wall and was flipped upside down. He climbed out unaided and walked to the medical car. On the Sunday he was 3rd, behind two Williams, and at Magny-Cours he was 3rd again.

At Silverstone Mansell was fastest in every session. Senna beat him off the line but was passed before the first lap was over, and ran 2nd without a tyre stop, hoping Mansell would have to make one. On the last lap, near Club, the McLaren ran out of fuel, though the read-out still showed fuel to spare, and he was classified 4th. On his slowing-down lap Mansell stopped beside the stranded McLaren, and Senna climbed on to the sidepod of the Williams and rode back to the pits as the crowd poured over the fences.

Five days later, testing at Hockenheim, a rear tyre failed at very high speed; the car took off, hit the tyre barrier and rolled several times. He never lost consciousness, blamed a defective tyre, and spent the night in hospital in Mannheim. At the German Grand Prix, nine days later, Prost harried him for 20 laps and then went straight on at the first chicane trying to pass. Prost said that next time he would push him off. Senna answered that “everyone knows Prost by now”: always complaining, always blaming someone else. On the last lap the McLaren ran dry again, and he was classified 7th, without a point. His lead over Mansell was down to 8 points, 51 to 43, and Williams led the constructors’ table.

Hungary

Soichiro Honda, the founder of the company, died on 5 August, aged 84. At the Hungaroring the Honda, McLaren and Tyrrell people wore black armbands. On the Friday FISA’s officials saw Senna and Prost about Hockenheim, and gave Prost a one-race ban, suspended, for criticising FISA; afterwards the two men talked privately, and made their peace in public. McLaren had brought lighter cars, Honda a lighter engine with new cylinder heads and Shell a new fuel, and Senna took pole by 1.232 seconds, his first since Monaco. He ran Goodyear’s harder tyres on the left and softer ones on the right, reasoning that most of the corners turn right, and planned not to stop. At the start Patrese was almost alongside as they reached the first right-hander; Senna locked his brakes for a moment and dived across to claim the corner. Patrese complained pointedly afterwards.

We were very close together… We were on the limit. But you either go for it or you don’t at this stage of the championship. After four races where we were off the pace, it was possible for me to win. I had to go for it. … I’m sure you would have done the same to me.

He led all 77 laps with Patrese, Mansell and, until his engine failed, Prost in a train behind him. From lap 45 Mansell was right behind, but the McLaren was just too quick on the straight for him. Senna won by 4.599 seconds and dedicated the win to Soichiro Honda. He was 12 points ahead again, and McLaren led the constructors’ table.

Spa to Barcelona

At Spa he was lucky. Mansell’s Williams failed while leading, then Jean Alesi’s Ferrari; in between, on lap 27, his own gearbox slipped from a high gear to second at the bottom of the hill. He left it alone until the top of the climb, then felt for the higher gears, and for the rest of the race he avoided the lower ones and took La Source in a higher gear than usual. He won, with Berger 2nd: his fifth Belgian Grand Prix, and his fourth in a row. Michael Schumacher made his debut that weekend.

At Monza, for half the race, his mirrors were full of Williams. Under Mansell’s pressure he locked a front brake and flat-spotted his tyres, lost the lead and stopped for new ones, then came back to 2nd with the fastest lap. At Estoril Mansell swerved left and right across his bows at the start, then lost a wheel leaving his pit and was disqualified. Senna, 2nd behind Patrese, said he had been prepared to give way this time: “Next time I won’t be”. Motor Sport’s David Tremayne dismissed it, given how Senna himself had won the title the year before.

The Spanish Grand Prix went to the new Circuit de Catalunya, near Barcelona. At the drivers’ briefing that morning Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of FISA, warned against dangerous starts, Mansell said he should look at Senna’s starts too, and Senna answered him in foul terms; Mansell walked out. On lap 5, both still on wet tyres, the Williams and the McLaren ran side by side down the long pit straight at close to 300 km/⁠h (185 mph), sparks spraying from beneath both cars, neither yielding. Mansell, slightly ahead and on the inside, took the corner. Senna changed to slicks on lap 10, taking harder tyres on the left against Goodyear’s advice, spun at the end of lap 13 in a fresh shower, and finished 5th. It was, Tremayne thought, the nearest he had come to a lacklustre race.

Suzuka, 20 October

He came to Suzuka 16 points ahead with 20 to play for; Mansell had to win and hope. On 9 October Max Mosley had beaten Balestre for the presidency of FISA, and pole at Suzuka had been moved to the clean side of the grid, the change Senna had been refused in 1990. Berger took pole, with Senna 2nd and Mansell 3rd. Before the race Dennis, Senna and Berger agreed that whichever of them led would be allowed to win, and that the other would help him get away.

Berger went off at a furious pace and pulled nearly 10 seconds clear. Senna held 2nd, doing just enough to keep Mansell in his turbulence. On lap 10 Mansell, closer than ever, ran wide at the first corner and slid across the gravel to a halt. Senna was World Champion for the third time, and at 31 the youngest yet to win three titles.

He did not ease off. He caught Berger, took the lead on lap 18 and set the fastest lap of the race. As soon as Mansell was out, Dennis had come on the radio to remind him of the constructors’ championship. In the last 10 laps Senna asked more than once whether the plan still stood, and in the end he heard the word reverse. Out of the last chicane he slowed and waved Berger past at the final corner, and Berger won by 0.344 seconds, his first win for McLaren. It hurt, Senna said, touching his heart, but the pain was nothing beside what he felt for the third title. Berger felt that the way it was done made his win something of a joke, and he wrote later that it was the one time that season Senna had hurt him. Mansell, who had watched the finish with the officials, came to shake Senna’s hand.

In the press conference, with Berger and Patrese squirming beside him, he went back over 1989 and 1990, and let go at Balestre:

Balestre gave an order not to change. It was hard but I know the inside system. And this is really shit. I tell myself okay you try and work clean, then you get [expletive] by stupid people. So I said to myself, ‘Alright, tomorrow I’ll tell you the [expletive] truth, 100 per cent truth.’ If Sunday at the start, because I’m in the wrong position, Prost gets the jump and beats me off the line, at the first corner I’ll go for it. And he had better not turn in, because he’s not gonna make it. And it just happened, I guess.

It had not been his responsibility, he insisted, though he had contributed to it. Motor Sport called the outburst an abusive tirade unworthy of a World Champion, and two days later McLaren and Honda put out statements with apologies directed at Balestre.

Adelaide

In Adelaide he took his 60th pole. A storm flooded the circuit in the early afternoon, and the race was started anyway. He led every lap in blinding spray. On the Brabham Straight the drivers ran a gear or two down to avoid aquaplaning, and at times, he said, he was cruising in second, while the wrecks of earlier accidents, and a recovery truck, stayed on the straight as the race went on. On lap 16 Mansell aquaplaned into the wall, and Senna, completing the lap, was gesturing for the race to be stopped. The red flag came out, and after about an hour of argument the result was taken at the end of lap 14, with half points: at 24 minutes and 35 seconds, the shortest World Championship race held until then. It had been, he said, “a mistake for all of us to start”. McLaren were constructors’ champions for the fourth year running.

On 6 December, at the FIA’s prize-giving in Paris, he gave Balestre one of his yellow helmets and, by StatsF1’s later account, told him that he wanted to put their quarrels behind them.