1994 Three races, three poles

At Estoril in January, on a cold, bright day, the yellow helmet appeared for the first time in a blue and white car. Williams had brought a car from the year before, stripped of the electronics the new rules had banned and painted in the colours of Rothmans, its new title sponsor, to present the team to hundreds of journalists. After a couple of gentle laps Senna began to pile on the revs, and when his engineer reminded him that this was only a demonstration, he said that he had thought they were racing. On the working days that followed he was fastest every day, and ran 175 laps. The driving position was wrong from the start: the seat and the steering wheel were adjusted, and a piece of the chassis was cut away so that his hand would not hit the side of the cockpit. The team told him, he said, that Williams had never done that for anyone.

He had wanted the seat for years. When Alain Prost retired, Williams announced Senna and Damon Hill for 1994, and Senna signed for two years. He brought with him a two-race ban, suspended for six months, for hitting Eddie Irvine at Suzuka in 1993; at Estoril he said he had forgotten about it until the journalists mentioned it. Over the winter the FIA had banned the electronic aids on which Williams had built its dominance, active suspension and traction control among them, and brought back refuelling for the first time since 1983. Williams had most to lose. Without active suspension, Senna told Folha de S.Paulo, the car jumped more and was completely unstable; its aerodynamics had been designed for active suspension, and with passive suspension it became an animal. There would be more spins and accidents that year, he said, above all in qualifying.

His race engineer was David Brown, and his physiotherapist, Josef Leberer, followed him from McLaren. Hill, in his second season with the team, was his team-mate, and Senna carried the number 2. On 27 January, in São Paulo, he launched Senninha, a comic-book character for children, which he called a way of talking to them. He shared his life now with Adriane Galisteu, a model he had met the year before.

The FW16

The Williams FW16-⁠Renault, designed by Adrian Newey under Patrick Head, first ran at Silverstone on 24 February, a day late, in near-freezing weather with ice on the track. While he waited, Senna did doughnuts in his road car in the snow of the car park. At Imola in March he broke the unofficial lap record, and the next day Michael Schumacher’s Benetton went quicker.

It was fast, but nervous. Its aerodynamics had been developed around active suspension, which had held the car at a constant height; on springs and dampers it worked only in a narrow window, and over bumps it bottomed, bounced and lost grip at the rear. Head admitted later that it had been pretty difficult to drive. The cockpit was tight as well, and at Senna’s request the steering column was modified to give him more room; when that was done is disputed.

Interlagos, 27 March

On his 34th birthday, 21 March, he flew his own helicopter into Interlagos, was driven round the circuit by the mayor, and asked for a gravel trap to be made longer; the request was turned down. Asked what he wanted for his birthday, he said he wanted “to see a happy crowd at Interlagos on Sunday”. Two days later, at a crowded press conference, he said:

Se eu dissesse que não estou um pouco ansioso, não estaria dizendo a verdade. Isso é normal.

If I said I wasn’t a bit anxious, I wouldn’t be telling the truth. That’s normal.

He took pole on the Saturday, 0.328 seconds faster than Schumacher. It was his 63rd, and his sixth at a Brazilian Grand Prix. When a downpour ended the session he went back out on the flooded track, so as not to be caught out if it rained in the race. It did not rain. Schumacher had arrived in São Paulo with flu.

Senna led from the start. Schumacher came through to 2nd on lap 2, set the fastest lap of the race on lap 7, and kept the gap at around three seconds, at times less than one. At the end of lap 21 the two of them came in together for fuel and tyres; the Benetton crew were quicker, and Schumacher went out in front. He pulled away through the traffic, and between them they lapped the whole field, Hill included. After the second stops Senna was eight or nine seconds behind. He used the traffic and closed to about five. On lap 56, at the exit of Junção, the tight left-hander on to the climb to the pits, he accelerated a fraction too early, the rear stepped out, and the car spun on to the grass. He could not find the right gear, and the engine stalled.

Some of the crowd left in tears. Back at the Williams pit he stood in front of the team and apologised: he had messed up. An hour and a half after the race he explained it to the Brazilian press.

Meu erro foi induzido pelo ritmo que estava impondo. Meu carro, para andar naquele ritmo, exigia muito dos pneus e também fisicamente. A razão foi essa: andar no limite o tempo todo. Eu corri aqui para vencer. O segundo quase não interessava. Foi um risco que assumi, consciente, sabendo das limitações do meu carro.

My mistake was brought on by the pace I was setting. To run at that pace, my car demanded a lot of the tyres and physically too. That was the reason: driving at the limit the whole time. I raced here to win. Second hardly mattered. It was a risk I took consciously, knowing my car’s limitations.

Schumacher won, a lap clear of Hill. Two nights later, on stage at the launch of the Audi cars his company was now importing into Brazil, Senna called the defeat “a cold shower”.

Aida, 17 April

The Pacific Grand Prix was held at TI Circuit Aida, a circuit new to Formula One, in the hills of Okayama prefecture, far from Tokyo, built by a businessman beside his country club. Benetton had sent a crew to film it two months before; Senna learned it from an old tape of a local race. When he arrived he explained what was wrong with his car. After two years of active suspension, he said, Williams had lost the habit of studying what happens when the ride height changes, and the car jumped and moved about, its front lifting without the rear doing the same. On the Friday, after changes he had demanded overnight, he bullied it round to pole, twitching over the kerb at the last corner on his fastest lap. On the Saturday it was hotter, hardly anyone improved, and he and Hill both spun at the same corner.

He learned only on the Saturday night, by accident, that for the first time the formation lap would be run behind a pace car, and he objected. It went so slowly, he said, that the tyres and the brakes went cold. At the start his wheels spun and Schumacher took the lead. Into the first corner Senna looked for room on the inside, found none and backed off, and Mika Häkkinen’s McLaren touched the back of the Williams and tipped it into a spin; moments later Nicola Larini’s Ferrari, unsighted, hit it hard. His race had lasted a few seconds.

O que está ocorrendo na F-1 é que tem muitos pilotos jovens e inexperientes querendo mostrar seu talento. Eles expõem todos os demais a acidentes e isso vai continuar se não fizerem alguma coisa.

… Estava seguro quando ele bateu. Me assustei porque achei que alguém ia passar por cima de mim.

What’s happening in F1 is that there are lots of young, inexperienced drivers wanting to show their talent. They expose everyone else to accidents, and it will go on unless something is done.

… I was safe when he hit me. I got a fright because I thought someone was going to drive over me.

When Häkkinen came to apologise, Senna refused his hand and swore at him. Then, instead of walking back to the pits, he stayed by the first corner for about a quarter of an hour, watching and listening to Schumacher’s Benetton go by, and he came away convinced that it was using a banned electronic aid. In public he said little. Schumacher won, and Rubens Barrichello, 3rd, was on the podium for the first time; seeing the young Brazilians do well, Senna said, was the only thing worth anything that day. After two races Schumacher had 20 points and Senna none.

Nothing was ever proved. After Imola the FIA’s checks found a hidden launch-control routine in Benetton’s software, but no proof that it had been used, and Benetton’s engineers have always denied it.

Towards Imola

On the flight home from Japan he went up to Häkkinen and gave him a friendly slap. On the Tuesday he went, unasked, to the Williams debrief; the staff said that neither Nigel Mansell nor Prost had ever done that. He telephoned Prost, retired now, twice a week, Prost remembered, and told him everything: about the car, about the team, about his life. On 20 April, in Paris, he met Renault’s engineers, and in the evening he took the kick-off at the Parc des Princes, where Brazil were playing a friendly on their way to the World Cup. By his sister Viviane’s account, it was that spring that he asked her to help him set up an organisation for Brazil’s poor children.

On Thursday 28 April, in Padua, he launched a carbon-fibre mountain bike that carried his name. Asked privately about the rumours of illegal traction control, he said only that it was difficult to talk about things one could not prove. In the afternoon a helicopter took him to Imola, where the car was waiting for him, changed: its front wheels and front wing had been moved back, and the wing raised.

The weekend that followed is told in the next chapter, Imola, 1 May 1994.