1993 Donington, and the last year at McLaren

He spent four months of the winter in Brazil, and for most of it he would not say whether he would race at all. Honda had gone, and McLaren would have customer Ford V8s, a specification behind the engines Ford gave Benetton. He talked of IndyCars, or of a year off. In London in January Ron Dennis said that he would eat his hat if Senna raced IndyCars that year. Then, in the first week of March, on a grey day at Silverstone, Senna drove the new McLaren MP4/8-⁠Ford for the first time, and set the fastest times of the winter there. On 8 March he announced that he would drive in South Africa, and no further for now.

It was difficult for me because I had been in Brazil, in a hot climate, for four months and it drains you to go at these speeds. It is very stressful. It is very difficult to tune your mind with your body. You have to go by instinct because you go through corners and past landmarks before you can really think about it. But only when you experience this, driving a car at these speeds, can you really understand what draws us to Formula One. Even now, after all that I have experienced and achieved, I am not sure I know how to understand it. But I could see, more and more, that it would be difficult for me not to drive the car.

So began an arrangement that lasted until July: a separate agreement for South Africa, another for Brazil, then an understanding from race to race, until on the eve of the French Grand Prix he confirmed that he had signed for the rest of the season. The fee most often reported was a million US dollars a race. The MP4/8, designed by a team under Neil Oatley, carried the electronics of TAG, a McLaren company: active suspension, traction control and a semi-automatic gearbox. It was agile but short of power; Dennis spoke of a deficit of 100 bhp to the Renault engine in the Williams. The team was entered as Marlboro McLaren now, with the Honda gone from its name, and Senna carried the number 8. His team-mate was Michael Andretti; Mika Häkkinen was the test driver.

At Kyalami he started 2nd, 0.088 seconds behind Alain Prost, back from a year away and now in a Williams, and he led the first 23 laps, until a fault in the software of the active suspension made one corner of the car uncontrollable. Prost went by, and Senna finished 2nd.

Interlagos

He agreed to race in Brazil only on 24 March, four days before the race, and the uncertainty hurt ticket sales; the crowd at Interlagos was small. He qualified 3rd, 1.8 seconds slower than Prost. Damon Hill passed him for 2nd on lap 11, and shortly before a storm broke he was given a 10-second stop-go penalty for overtaking under yellow flags while lapping Érik Comas; the other driver, he said, had lifted to let him through. Then the rain came, and the pit straight turned into a river. Prost, confused by a broken radio message, stayed out a lap too long, aquaplaned at the first corner and slid into Christian Fittipaldi’s stranded Minardi, and for the first time since the rule was brought in, the safety car was sent out. Hill led. When the track began to dry Senna came in for slicks a lap before Hill, and on lap 42, with Hill still leading on colder tyres, he went left, then right, and dived past him.

Hill closed to 0.199 seconds on lap 47, then lost three seconds on a wet patch, and Senna won by 16.625 seconds. It was his second win at home, and McLaren’s 100th. The fans poured on to the track, he rode back on the safety car, and on the podium Juan Manuel Fangio handed him the trophy and the two of them embraced. That night, Jo Ramírez remembers, Pelé joined the celebration. Senna led the championship by 16 points to 10.

The opening lap

The European Grand Prix at Donington Park, on Easter Sunday, 11 April, was the only World Championship race ever held there, given to the circuit’s owner, Tom Wheatcroft, at short notice when a planned Asian Grand Prix fell through. The crowd was thin. The place meant something to Senna: he had first driven a Formula One car there, a Williams, in July 1983. Friday was wet, and only he broke 1:24. Saturday was dry, and he qualified 4th, 1.65 seconds slower than Prost, behind Hill and Michael Schumacher’s new Benetton. The day before the race he warned that there was no long straight at Donington, that passing would be difficult, and that there might be controversy about it.

Rain fell shortly before the two o’clock start. Schumacher squeezed him towards the kerb on the left, and Karl Wendlinger’s Sauber dived inside them both, so Senna was 5th into Redgate, the first corner. Before the Craner Curves were done he was past Schumacher. He went round the outside of Wendlinger on the way down to the Old Hairpin, inside Hill at McLeans, and inside Prost, who was struggling to select his gears, at the Melbourne Hairpin. By the end of the lap he led.

Andretti, who had started with him, took Wendlinger out at Coppice. Senna was four seconds clear after two laps, and then the weather began its games. The track dried, and the leaders came in for slicks. It rained again, and Prost and Hill went back to wets while Senna stayed out on slicks. He changed to wets, and back to slicks, a stop in which a cross-threaded wheel nut cost him about 20 seconds and let Prost lead for four laps. It rained once more; Senna stayed on slicks, Prost came in for wets, and from then on Senna led. Prost stalled at one of his stops and was lapped. On lap 57 Senna came in for wets, but his crew had not heard his call on the radio and were not ready, so he drove straight through the pit lane, which at Donington was shorter than the track. It was the fastest lap of the race, and the last fastest lap of his career. He came in for wets again on lap 66, his fourth change of tyres.

He won by 1 minute 23.199 seconds from Hill, the only other driver on the lead lap. Prost, who had stopped seven times, was 3rd, a lap down. In the press conference Prost listed his car’s troubles, the gearbox, the clutch, the tyre pressures and the balance, and Senna cut in: “Perhaps you should change cars with me…” David Tremayne of Motor Sport thought it quite possibly the best drive of Senna’s career. Senna used the occasion to attack Ford: McLaren were Ford’s best chance, he said, and it was absurd that they did not have its best engine. He led the championship by 26 points to 14. Talking about the race to Nigel Roebuck, he would not have it compared with his first win, at Estoril in 1985.

No way! I had traction control! OK, I didn’t make any mistakes, but the car was much easier to drive. It was a good win, but, compared with Estoril ’85, it was nothing, really…

Six at Monaco

He had threatened not to come to Imola. He flew in overnight from São Paulo and reached the paddock minutes before first practice, still fighting for the engine Benetton had, and learned that Ford, bound by its contract with Benetton, would not let McLaren run it. In the race he was 2nd when the car shut down going into Tosa. Afterwards he called Hill in and told him never to weave in front of him again; Hill replied that he had done nothing Senna had not done himself. At the Circuit de Catalunya, in the first dry race of the year, he was a distant 2nd to Prost.

At Monaco, six laps into the first session on the Thursday, as the first rain fell, the McLaren was unsettled by a bump on the way into Sainte-Dévote, hit the barrier on the left and was thrown across the road into the guardrail. His left thumb was hurt. He told Motor Sport: “For sure I was afraid I was gonna lose my legs, that I was gonna be very badly hurt.” He drove that afternoon with a bandaged hand, and on the Saturday he qualified 3rd, behind Prost and Schumacher.

Prost moved before the start light went green and was given a 10-second stop-go penalty, and he stalled twice in the pits. Schumacher led until, on lap 33, a hydraulic leak set his Benetton on fire at the Loews hairpin, and Senna, who had been looking after his tyres and then closing, was in front. He won by 52 seconds from Hill. It was his sixth win at Monaco, a record, one more than Graham Hill, and his fifth in a row, and the man in 2nd place was Graham Hill’s son. If his father had still been alive, Damon said, he would have been the first to congratulate Senna. The win put Senna back in the lead of the championship, for the last time.

Monte Carlo is special, and always has been for me, from my very first race here with Toleman and throughout my career. And it continues to be special.

… After my accident on Thursday I knew I had lost the edge, because the difference between going flat out here and going 99 per cent is big. And in that shunt I lost the 100 per cent possibility.

Williams and Prost

The summer belonged to Williams and Prost. In Montreal Senna started 8th, his lowest place on a grid since 1986, was 3rd within two laps and 2nd after the stops, and was holding it when the alternator failed six laps from the end. Prost took the lead of the championship, and kept it. At Magny-Cours, at his 150th Grand Prix start, Senna was 4th.

At Silverstone McLaren had Ford’s newer engine at last. Against the advice of his engineer, Giorgio Ascanelli, he ran a light fuel load, jumped from 4th to 2nd at the start, and held Prost off for six laps, chopping across him at Stowe, Abbey and Bridge, until Prost got by on lap 7. Prost said afterwards that there had been some dangerous moments. On the last lap Senna ran out of fuel, and he was classified 5th.

At Hockenheim, where McLaren now had the same engine as Benetton, he and Prost went into the first chicane side by side, and both, he admitted, braked far too late. Senna spun, waited for the whole field to go by, and came back to finish 4th. At the Hungaroring his throttle failed while he was 2nd; at Spa, where he chopped across Schumacher at the exit of the pit lane, he was 4th. At Monza he rode over Hill’s wheel at the first chicane, and then ran into the back of Martin Brundle’s Ligier. Andretti finished 3rd there and left Formula One, and Häkkinen took his seat. At Estoril, on his McLaren debut, Häkkinen out-qualified Senna by 0.048 seconds. Senna was 2nd when his engine broke, and Prost clinched his fourth title. He had already announced that it would be his last season.

Signing for Williams

After the Hungarian Grand Prix Jo Ramírez flew with him to Monaco in his jet, under orders from Ron Dennis to talk him out of going to Williams. Senna gave him his answer.

Look, I want to win races not just with McLaren.

… I want to win races and championships with other teams. I want to have a more complete career.

… Fangio won five world championships with four different cars. I want to be like him.

Before Estoril, remarks Dennis had made about Senna’s demands at an off-the-record lunch were published in Brazil, and for a while Senna would not speak to him. With Prost retiring, the Williams seat was open. On 11 October Williams announced Senna and Hill for 1994, Senna on a two-year contract. He spoke to the launch by telephone from Brazil: they had come close to a deal before, he said, and this year they had finally made it. Prost said the next day that he could have used his contract to keep Senna out again, and had made his decision not as a racing driver but as a human being.

Suzuka

At Suzuka, from 2nd on the grid, he made a clean start from the inside line and led: after six years of starting there, he said, he had finally got it right. Prost led for a while after Senna’s stop for slicks, but when the rain began Senna, on newer tyres, closed on him and passed him on lap 21, and in the rain he pulled out about 30 seconds. Coming up to lap Hill and the debutant Eddie Irvine, who were fighting over a place, he was held up, and Irvine, a lap down, passed him back; his lead fell to about 15 seconds before he got clear. He won by 11.435 seconds. It was his 40th win and McLaren’s 103rd, level with Ferrari. On the podium he ignored Prost.

Irvine, in his first Grand Prix, had also knocked Derek Warwick off at the chicane, and in the press conference Senna said he had driven like a lunatic. Later, with Ascanelli, Ramírez, McLaren’s Norman Howell and his press officer, Betise Assumpção, he went to the Jordan office. He did not know Irvine by sight, and spoke first to Adam Cooper of Autosport; Irvine, sitting on a table, raised his hand. For five minutes Senna told him what he thought of him, wagging a finger. When, after a threat about Adelaide, Irvine said in effect that he would see him out there, Senna hit him, pushing him and then punching him at least once, and knocked him off balance over the table before Ascanelli held him back. Cooper had taped it all. Irvine, rubbing his temple, joked about an insurance claim. In Adelaide Senna said he had lost his temper and deeply regretted it. On 9 December the FIA gave him a two-race ban, suspended for six months; Max Mosley cited his very positive attitude and a big element of provocation.

Adelaide, 7 November

In Adelaide someone from the team left a pair of boxing gloves in his cockpit, and he was not amused. He took pole, the only one of the year that did not go to a Williams and his first since Canada the year before, and it ended a run of 24 Williams poles in a row. It was Prost’s last Grand Prix, and Senna’s last for McLaren. Before the final start, Ramírez says, there were tears in his eyes. He led from the start, gave up the lead to Prost only while he made his first stop, and won by 9.259 seconds.

It was his 41st win, and it would be his last. It was also McLaren’s 104th, one more than Ferrari. On the podium he pulled Prost up on to the top step beside him; how it came about is told in Senna and Prost.

Our attitude on the podium speaks for itself. There is not much point in words. The action means more. It reflects my feeling and, I believe, his too.

That night, as he began to celebrate, Tina Turner was singing The Best at an open-air concert near the circuit; by two later accounts she brought him up on to the stage. In December, at the Palais Omnisports in Paris-Bercy, he raced karts indoors at a charity meeting, in plain white overalls with only his personal sponsors on them, because his contract with McLaren ran to the end of the year. Prost raced there too. In the second race Senna was fighting him for 2nd place, behind Andrea de Cesaris, and getting ready to go for the lead, when his kart broke down.