The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  Senna did not test for Jordan again and never discussed a race drive with Eddie Jordan, despite the team principal’s continual attempts to reach him by telephone. He had already made up his mind that Dick Bennetts’ West Surrey Racing was the pedigree team in Formula Three and he wanted to be with the best. Eddie Jordan admits today it always niggled him that Senna did not think him good enough to race for. Or even to have negotiations with.

  In fact several Formula Three teams were on the look-out for him. Dick Bennetts had first come across the Brazilian in 1981, when he was racing in Formula Ford 1600 with Van Diemen, but it was not until Senna moved on to the more powerful Formula Ford 2000 cars in 1982 that he really began to take notice.

  As Bennetts recalls: “I was first introduced to him in 1981 in Formula Ford, but the first time we spoke about 1983 was in mid-1982 when we were running the young Argentine ‘Quiqui’ Mansilla. We were brought together through Dennis Rushen. We’d followed Ayrton, so he was given a test with that in mind. Eddie Jordan was chasing him as well, but once he had tested our car he said ‘That’s it, I’ll do the race with you’.”

  Unlike Jordan, West Surrey Racing was a team with a pedigree. Bennetts came to England from New Zealand in 1972, and soon gained experience engineering in Formula Atlantic and Formula 5000. In the mid-1970s he worked for March Engineering’s Formula Two team. In 1978, Bennetts moved on to Ron Dennis’s Project 4 Racing operation, working at its factory, as the team entered cars in various championships. In 1980 he joined Project 4’s Formula Three team, and Stefan Johansson won the championship that year under Bennetts’ guidance.

  Bennetts joined forces with Mike Cox of West Surrey Engineering in 1981, to run Jonathan Palmer in British Formula Three – and he won the championship. As Mike Cox struggled for cash, West Surrey Racing was born as a separate organisation, and in 1982 Bennetts entered Enrique Mansilla in the British Formula Three championship. He won five races and lost the championship to Tommy Byrne by just three points. But what impressed Senna was the team’s reliability record. Bennetts had not had a single car failure in 1982.

  Senna had raced against Mansilla in Formula Ford 1600, and reasoned that if any team could get Mansilla that close to the title then that was the team to be with. Bennetts says: “One of the key reasons he chose us or wanted to be with us was that he didn’t rate Mansilla. They had raced together in 1981 in Formula Ford and they’d had lots of dust-ups. He said ‘If you’ve finished second in the championship with that guy, you must have a good car’. That was his way of looking at it. We had to really work on Mansilla as a driver and the first third of the year was a disaster. But once we got him to understand and give feedback, we just turned him around and then we won five races. He had the raw speed, but he just didn’t understand our car. And his technical feedback wasn’t very good.”

  Bennetts wanted to make sure of Senna so he suggested he entered an end-of-season non-championship Formula Three race at Thruxton. The event, on 13th November 1982, was to be televised, and was the perfect opportunity for Senna to prove himself on a bigger stage.

  But it disrupted his plans. He had already bought a plane ticket: he planned to return home after he had won the Formula Ford 2000 championship at the end of September, and skip the last two races. He would then spend a full five months in Brazil. But he badly wanted the West Surrey drive, and by 28th October he was back in cold Britain, to test for West Surrey Racing at Thruxton in preparation for the big event.

  On the morning of the 28th, on his 14th lap, he set a time of 1m 13.33secs. It was less than two-10ths of a second off the best Formula Three lap ever recorded at Thruxton, and he was on old tyres. Although he came close later that day, he failed to better the time, and on the following day the weather was damp and the opportunity was lost. It was as if he had got the business of proving his speed out of the way and had decided to concentrate on setting up the car. Another test followed at the Snetterton circuit in Norfolk on 9th November.

  Bennetts recalls: “At the very first test he was confident. You get a lot of young blokes who are quite nervous, but he was confident and his feedback was very good. He wasn’t fazed by it at all. People said that with our good car and his ability we should definitely win at Thruxton. It’s not that easy though.” Bennetts was taken aback by the confidence in his new driver. He knew just how difficult winning was in the competitive world of Formula Three.

  But it was that easy for Senna. After taking pole with a time of 1m 13.34secs, he clocked the fastest lap of 1m 13.94secs and won by 14.57 seconds over 15 laps from the Swede Bengt Tragardh, Calvin Fish and rally ace Henri Toivonen. Senna had not looked vulnerable at any stage of the weekend. In Dick Bennetts’ own words he ‘just walked away with it’.

  That evening he reached a verbal agreement with Bennetts that he would drive for the team in 1983. Bennetts explains: “At the end of the race he said ‘Yeah, I’m happy’ and headed off back to Brazil. We didn’t see him again until the end of February. We didn’t have a contract down but he was very happy with the way the car performed and very happy with us as a team. The contract wasn’t signed until two weeks before race one of 1983. We had agreed it with a handshake – it was just a matter of sorting out the sponsorship and all that stuff.”

  Back in Brazil, Senna’s confidence about sponsorship was not misplaced. He needed over £110,000 for a season of Formula Three – serious money after the chicken-feed days of Formula Ford, which had cost his father a total of £40,000 for two seasons.

  He negotiated new deals with Brazilian bank Banerj and the Brazilian Pool clothing company, which had given him limited support through Formula Ford 2000. With his father chipping in another £10,000, Senna had about £70,000. It wasn’t enough, but Bennetts found the balance from the Valvoline oil company, anxious to be on the championship-winning car.

  Later that year, as Senna realised he would be a Formula One driver in 1984 and probably earning at least $1 million, he would decide he needed professional help. Up to then he and his father had handled everything. But his father had his own business to run and no time to tend to his son’s business affairs. As his manager he chose an old family associate called Armando Botelho Texheriro. He didn’t need any help with negotiations, just with his contracts and back-office affairs. Armando Botelho would remain with him until he died in 1989.

  Senna arrived back in England so late before the beginning of the season that there was scarcely a chance to test. He delayed his return as long as possible, savouring the Brazilian sunshine before what he knew would be another season trudging around chilly England.

  Luckily for him, the 1983 Ralt Toyota was an evolution of the 1982 car, rather than a completely new chassis, so the lack of testing was not a hindrance. In any case, Senna considered too much testing counterproductive as he said it dulled his driving edge.

  He also made another momentous decision. He dropped the ‘da Silva’ bit of his name and resorted to just using his mother’s maiden name, Senna. Da Silva was not distinctive and a common name in Brazil. It was the equivalent of ‘Smith’ in Britain.

  The 1983 British Formula Three season began on 6th March at Silverstone. After his Thruxton win at the end of 1982 Senna was outright favourite, even though some of his competitors, notably Jordan’s Martin Brundle, already had a season in the series behind them. But when Senna spun his car in the first qualifying session and could only manage second on the grid, some doubts began to surface.

  Senna was fuming. He believed he had been cheated of pole by Magnum’s David Leslie. He suspected the team of cheating and said so. He complained to journalists: “It was not fair. For sure they were not within the rules. Where there are so many limitations, there is no way that you can suddenly find a second of time. And when it came to the race they were one second away again. I don’t like being made to look stupid.”

  But Senna still won the race at Silverstone. Then he won the next round at Thruxton on 13th March, then Silverstone again on 20th March, then Don
ington Park on 27th March, Thruxton on 4th April, Silverstone on 24th April, Thruxton on 2nd May, Brands Hatch on 8th May and Silverstone for the fourth time on 30th May. In those first nine races, he also took eight pole positions – missing out just that once to Leslie – and seven fastest laps. He had won all nine races. It was unprecedented, and no one had ever seen anything remotely like it before. Nelson Piquet held the record for seven wins in a row in 1978, and he was currently on his way to his second world title. Senna had taken nine in a row so far in 1983, and if the 1982 victory at Thruxton was taken into account that made it 10. It was simply phenomenal.

  Senna’s admirers were torn between whether the April Thruxton victory, when he suffered from ‘flu, or his win at Brands Hatch in the wet in May was the greater achievement. Senna admitted at the time that he thought Brands Hatch the best drive, but Thruxton had given him the most pleasure. He said: “I dropped down to third, but I worked my way through. That was my most enjoyable race because it was good to come in from behind. It also meant that I had to understand how my car was working in relation to those around me.” Senna above all relished a challenge, although they were not thick on the ground.

  He explained: “No race is easy. There are just too many limiting factors and the cars are evenly matched. Also, I am fighting against experienced and good drivers, especially Martin – he is very good – and Davy Jones. If I make the slightest mistake they will be there.”

  But Senna had not made the slightest mistake. Away from the track things were also going well. He was still happily living with the Gugelmins at their old bungalow in the Norfolk village of Eaton. And in 1983 he made short trips back home to Brazil during the longer intervals between the races.

  Bennetts remembers: “He was very professional for his age. These days we all have data-logging and computers, but Ayrton was so precise with his information you almost didn’t need it. He was very dedicated, a very focused person. He pretty much kept himself to himself. He didn’t mix too well with many of the other drivers. He chose not to make a lot of noise in a big crowd. There was a different side of him that no one else really saw.”

  Although he was dominating the Formula Three championship he had a big problem looming. Twenty-three-year-old Martin Brundle was clearly the best of the rest, and for every first place Senna was getting Brundle was taking second in Eddie Jordan’s car. Coming up to the halfway mark of the season, Senna had 88 points to Brundle’s 54. Brundle had finished second in eight of the races and third in the other. He was clearly Senna’s only opposition, if he could have been said to have any opposition. The points system was nine, six, four, three, two, one for the top six, with a point for fastest lap and the best 17 out of 20 results to count – a different system might have put Senna even further ahead, but as it was he had a comfortable lead.

  The team was predictably delighted with its driver, but at the same time people were getting edgy with the knowledge that the winning streak must one day come to an end. Bennetts recalls: “I just thought one day the bubble was gonna burst. We’d won the first four in 1981 with Jonathan Palmer and that was pretty good. But when I got nine I thought we had to do 10.”

  The 10th round on 11th June was the biggest race of the year to date. Silverstone was hosting a combined round of the European and British Formula Three championships, and top-class continental opposition would be present.

  The two series raced side by side, and drivers could choose – by the end of qualifying – which championship they wanted their finishing position to count towards. The only real difference between the European and British series was the tyres – the European cars ran on highly-developed Yokohama rubber and the British cars on the slower Avons. Consequently the European runners would be a great deal faster than their British counterparts, although because points were awarded independently for both championships, the full nine points would still go to the highest-placed British runner, regardless of where he finished in the overall order.

  Senna and Bennetts deliberated, but in the end the Brazilian typically opted for the European event. He was far ahead of Brundle in the British and didn’t need the points – for him it was the chance to prove himself on the international stage. Brundle took the conservative option of competing in the British series, looking towards the possibility of reducing the gap from 32 to 22 points while Senna was otherwise occupied.

  The first qualifying session was wet, but the track had dried out in time for the second and Senna had soon set the fastest time. Brundle was languishing in 12th, although he was still by far the fastest of the British runners. It was not, however, where he wanted to be. He wanted to win.

  In the closing minutes of qualifying, Brundle took what must have seemed a strange decision at the time. He sacrificed the chance of British points for an opportunity to run with the frontrunners and changed over to Yokohamas. He put the car on pole, less than a 10th of a second ahead of Senna.

  Bennetts recalls: “We had such a points lead over Martin that we thought we’d go for an outright win. So quite late on we switched to Yokohamas, but even later than us Eddie Jordan and Martin switched to Yokohamas as well. They caught us out because they had already raced in Europe with the tyres in 1982. They had a good relationship with Yokohama and knew how the tyres worked better than us, so Martin was quicker. We didn’t get the best out of the Yokohamas or weren’t given the best or both, I don’t know. But we were P2 on the grid and Martin was P1.”

  At the start, Brundle had the best getaway and Senna struggled to catch him. Against the advice of the Yokohama engineers, he had chosen to run three different compounds of tyre all at once, and now he was paying the price, facing massive understeer. He soon found that he was struggling to hold off regular European runner Johnny Dumfries for second. Senna was determined to catch Brundle and put Dumfries onto the grass rather than let him past. But on the seventh lap, he pushed too far.

  Bennetts explains: “He was trying to go quick and he crashed at the Woodcote chicane. He reckoned he got a puncture when he came off Club Corner that lap, and the left rear dropped off the edge of the kerb. When he got to the chicane, he turned in and the car just lost its grip. Whether it was a puncture or him, I don’t know. I suppose we’re all disappointed when we’ve won nine out of nine and we start to think 10 out of 10 or 11 out of 11 is possible. None of us like losing, whether it’s the driver, the team manager or the engineers. That’s our job – we’re there to win. It was a bit of a worry, but we still had quite a lead in the championship.”

  Brundle won the race, but because he had been entered for the European championship, the gap to Senna in the British championship remained unchanged. It could easily have been all over right then – Brundle could have had his moment of glory and that would have been that. But Senna had been defeated, and it meant that next time he would have to push himself a little bit harder to make sure there was no recurrence.

  The next race was at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire, near the seaside town of Cleethorpes. Qualifying took place at 9.30am on race day. In the closing stages of the session, Senna found he was just 0.01 seconds ahead of Brundle, so he went out to set a faster lap.

  Bennetts says: “He was on pole, that was the frustrating thing, but there was five minutes left. He said there was just a little bit too much understeer, so we put a bit of front wing on and out he went. Someone timing halfway round the lap said he was another three or four 10ths quicker and would have had pole by a mile, but unfortunately he didn’t finish the lap. He came very quickly through the left-hander going up the hill, where the cars become airborne and jump, and he dropped the right rear wheel off the edge of the track. That makes the left front light, so when he changed from left to right there was no weight on the left front and the car couldn’t turn so it just went straight into the marshals’ post. We couldn’t start the race because the car was written off. Martin was second, and third on the grid was miles away from the both of them. By 2.15 in the afternoon I was sitting in our local pub
in Shepperton.”

  Brundle won and set fastest lap. The gap was down to 24 points.

  Two weeks later at Snetterton, Senna qualified in fourth. He and Bennetts could not figure out what the problem was with the car. Dumfries wrote off his car in qualifying, so that moved Senna up a place to third on the grid. At the start, he pushed into second and began to chase after Brundle for the lead, setting the fastest lap. On the penultimate lap, he was almost close enough to make a move, so he tried one. Brundle moved across and Senna ran up over Brundle’s right rear and spun in front of Davy Jones before crashing backwards into the tyre wall. Brundle won.

  Suddenly Senna’s unshakeable lead was beginning to wobble. The gap to Brundle was now just 16 points, 89 to 73.

  Bennetts remembers: “He got a bit frustrated. I had to sit him down and tell him it’s better to finish second and get six points for second and one for fastest lap than to throw it all away and get one point for fastest lap. It was a bit frustrating when he wouldn’t accept second place, when he could have won the championship comfortably instead of putting pressure on himself and us.”

  The next race was at Silverstone and another big one. The British Grand Prix supporting race on 16th July was the showpiece of the season. All the Formula One team bosses would be there on the look-out for new talent. Senna could not afford another silly mistake. And he did not make one. He notched up victory, pole position and fastest lap and increased his lead to 20 points.