The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  For his part, Senna was determined to face off Balestre and not pay the fine. Balestre stated firmly that if it was not paid Senna would not be issued with a FISA superlicence to compete. Neither side looked like giving way.

  On 10th January, with Senna away from Europe in São Paulo, Balestre upped the stakes at a news conference in Paris and dropped a bombshell. On top of the six-month suspended ban and the fine he had already received, Balestre declared that if Senna did not publicly apologise for suggesting FISA had favoured Prost to win the title, he would be refused a superlicence. Balestre said that, at a FISA meeting in December, it had been proved beyond doubt to Senna and his lawyer that he had not intervened. For Senna, already hit with a disqualification, a suspended ban, a fine and a lost world championship – as a result of a small collision that had turned out nicely for Prost – it was another bitter pill to swallow and only went to confirm his fears of a French conspiracy. Balestre accused Senna of arrogance and pointed out that he had yet to pay the $100,000 fine. Senna believed that Balestre was totally in Prost’s pocket and that the governing body had been morally corrupted. Both men were resolute and would not be moved.

  But caught in the middle were the McLaren team and Honda, who had a heavy investment riding on Senna appearing in 1990. The simple answer for them was to pay the fine and accept the punishment and go racing. The apology, however, threw that plan into disarray. Ron Dennis was sure he could simply pay the fine and the problem would go away.

  Balestre gave Senna a deadline of 15th February – when the final entry list was drawn up – to apologise and pay the fine. Over the following month debate raged on in newspapers around the world. When Balestre appeared at the Monte Carlo Rally in January, he expressed his view that he now suspected a conspiracy against him. In reality Balestre held all the cards. But just as in the FISA/FOCA battle of 1980, he miscalculated his own position and believed his hand was weak. He appeared to believe that certain elements within Formula One were out to get him and that Senna was merely the instrument. As a defence, he extended the hand of contrition towards Senna. He said: “Senna has been used as an instrument. He has been sent into the front line by others. I appreciate Senna’s present attitude. Discretion is more effective than explosion. I think several of you had no mercy for a Formula One driver in snatching statements from him which do not always reflect his deeper thoughts.”

  Balestre started a process of back-tracking, believing his own personal position at FISA was under threat. He claimed that FISA had been misinterpreted by the press and that there had been no demand for an apology. Balestre’s exact words had been: “The World Council will not give a superlicence to Ayrton Senna in 1990 until he makes a public statement taking back statements which are both false and detrimental to FISA.” Technically it wasn’t a demand for an apology, rather for a retraction of Senna’s earlier remarks, but no one who had heard Balestre was in any doubt as to the words’ meaning.

  Few shared Balestre’s views and believed the battle to be Senna against Prost again, but this time with the Frenchman hiding behind Balestre, who was fighting the battle for him.

  It didn’t look as if Senna would to give in, so at the end of January Balestre turned up the heat and rejected the McLaren’s team application to enter the 1990 world championship ‘until a solution has been found to the Senna case.’ Balestre explained: “He has been sanctioned by race commissioners, then he has accused and insulted sports authorities, saying the world championship had been manipulated, that Alain Prost was a false world champion. Senna is not alone. He has a team manager, Ron Dennis. And we think he is under the bad influence of McLaren’s team manager.”

  Dennis was furious and aghast that he could be considered Senna’s puppet. But Dennis had bigger responsibilities: he relented and paid the Brazilian’s fine. McLaren Honda would be in the championship in 1990, but with only two weeks to go until the deadline, the outcome was still in doubt. Rumours spread. People were saying that Senna had not even bothered to apply for a licence. Others were saying that McLaren planned to announce another driver in his place, then withdraw him at the beginning of the season to let Senna take his place as the replacement driver. The Brazilian president’s 13-year-old son even asked the French prime minister to intercede.

  When the 15th February deadline came, Ron Dennis announced Gerhard Berger and Jonathan Palmer would be the team’s provisional drivers. A FISA statement read: “Ayrton Senna had until 15th February at midnight to put himself right with FISA, in order for FISA to accept his application for a superlicence. After long talks with Senna and Ron Dennis these last days and hours, FISA, despite its patience and understanding, regrets to conclude that Ayrton Senna is in an irregular situation. FISA is obliged to refuse his application for a superlicence.”

  Ten minutes later Balestre received a phone call from Dennis and within hours a new statement was issued, granting Senna entry and attaching a statement from Senna: “During the meeting of the FISA world council which took place on 7th December 1989, I listened to statements and testimonies from various people, and from these statements one must conclude that they provide proof that no pressure group or the president of the FISA influenced the decisions regarding the results of the 1989 Formula One world championship.” It was a bland statement without an apology, but it proved enough for Balestre.

  On paper Balestre had won the stand-off, but it was a hollow victory tinged with bitterness that had damaged both sides, particularly Senna. The whole saga had left him thoroughly depressed, and his motivation sapped. He felt his status within Formula One had been damaged, and for the first time in his life he was not looking forward to the start of a season. He thought the process would affect his driving, and revealed that he left the final decision of what to do to the team. As he explained at the time: “I asked myself about continuing to race. I was perfectly calm and I discussed the matter with Honda and McLaren. I said to them that I was only a driver and that McLaren and Honda would continue after me. I said I did not want to compromise their efforts and those of the people who work to run the cars. I asked Nobuhiko Kawamoto and Ron Dennis to decide in my place. I said I would completely respect their wishes, that I was ready to retire or fight on as they thought fit.”

  It was not over. Balestre held a press conference to put his side of the settlement. He almost suggested that the dispute was really a war between Brazil and France, in which peace had not totally broken out. He said: “There is no turning back on FISA’s decision to grant Senna a superlicence. As with all other drivers on the start list, he is sure to start, in principle. But there is a legal safety device in case a driver is tempted to breach the FISA rules in the meantime.” That confirmed Senna’s entry, but then he went on to warn the team that it would be given no leeway during the season: “I have no trust left in my counterparts after realising they were not keeping their promises. If there is the slightest problem, it won’t be approved. I don’t mind if it causes a revolution in Brazil. In every conflict we have been through, my only desire has been for rules to be respected. People like Ron Dennis have been misled in thinking that FISA would back down because we needed them. If people in São Paulo think that the Senna controversy will make FISA more lenient about their circuit’s inclusion, they’re wrong.”

  Balestre actually held back Senna’s superlicence until the eve of the year’s first race, scheduled to be the United States Grand Prix in Phoenix, Arizona. McLaren was so concerned about the situation that it cancelled the public launch of the MP4/5B and held a sponsors-only event.

  Finally, as the teams reached Phoenix, the politics were forgotten and people started thinking about the racing again. The1990 season was set to be even harder than 1989 for Senna. He faced a stronger Williams Renault team and a very strong Ferrari team, with Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost in tandem.

  Sensing that 1990 would be his toughest challenge yet, Senna had embarked on a physical fitness regime in Angra over the winter. His personal trainer Nuno Cobra, who
had helped ever since he entered Formula One in 1984, was engaged full time. Together they significantly upped his capacity for the start of 1990, as Cobra remembers: “In 1984, we had a skinny, highly motivated young guy, and it was right here that everything began. At first he had a tough time doing 10 laps, but he gradually became an athletic performer who could run 40 or 50 laps with incredible endurance, but he was not an athlete. He transformed himself drastically.”

  By the time the season started, Senna could easily manage 50 laps of a 400-metre track. Senna was in no doubt that his vastly improved fitness levels would help him: “It is not simply stronger muscles but it is really the power and strength you get physically and mentally. I have tried to learn about myself, learning how to get better overall.”

  Cobra recalls with amazement how he could 30 or 40 laps and each would be within a second or two of the others. He said: “I witnessed all that and I couldn’t believe my eyes, because his rhythm was fabulous. Every single day he had to win in one way or another. Life was throbbing within him and either he bettered his record by one-10th of a second, or his heart rate dropped or, again, he improved his post-effort recovery time. Never once did he exceed his limit, although he did constantly push them back in this solitary exercising along this track, on which, he told me, he had worn out the soles of dozens of tennis shoes.” Senna confirmed he had been running up to 20 kilometres a day during the winter.

  The fitness programme was all part of Senna’s seemingly maniacal bid to find his own limits. He knew that even at 30 he had not peaked physically or in the car, as he said at the start of the season: “On a given day with a given circumstance you think you have a limit and you then go for this and then you touch this limit. As soon as you touch this limit something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, determination, instincts and experience you can fly very high.”

  To reinforce his fitness regime Senna also acquired a proper home in Europe, on the Algarve in Portugal, close to Faro airport. It was impossible to train properly on the streets of Monaco, and Portugal, with its temperate climate, was perfect. He sold his lavish apartment in the Houston block in Monte Carlo, buying a smaller one there for tax reasons to maintain a residence and for the Monaco race.

  But on arriving in America from São Paulo, it was a subdued 30-year-old Ayrton Senna who turned up in the pitlane ready to practise. He told journalists close to him that his motivation had gone and that he was thoroughly disillusioned with Prost, Balestre and FISA.

  Alain Prost, feeling that he had won the war and humbled Senna, offered to shake hands, but Senna refused, saying that he didn’t believe the Frenchman was sincere. He told people 1989 had been a nightmare, the worst year of his life. And he didn’t consider it past either. There were still scores to settle and issues unresolved. Ron Dennis did not share Senna’s opinion and was surprisingly sanguine about the end of the Prost era in his team, which had lasted six years. He told journalists: “The period in which Ayrton and Alain drove together was a challenge that I gladly accepted because the benefits of having them both together in the same team vastly outweighed the disadvantages.”

  One issue that had been resolved was team-mates. No longer was Prost in the same garage or the same motorhome. His new team-mate was Gerhard Berger, who had become free when Prost signed for Ferrari and was snapped up by Ron Dennis. Berger was the same age as Senna and they were alike in their outlook on life. Although they were always regarded as firm friends, their competitive drivers’ nature kept them from being really close. But it was the start of a period that became known as the ‘James Bond years’, as Senna and Berger bonded.

  Berger joined McLaren and went into 1990 believing he could match Senna on the track. But he was soon disabused of that notion. In qualifying Berger would be much closer to Senna than Prost had been, but he soon recognised that the man deserved his reputation. Berger found Senna brought a level of focus to the job he had never experienced with other team-mates. In fact Berger was stunned by his commitment. Berger said: “A lot of the drivers don’t know how hard he works.” Ron Dennis confirmed it: “Because he is hard on himself it’s easy to accept that he is hard on the team, but we are not there to have fun, this is a very difficult and demanding occupation.”

  Berger also had his own problems to overcome. He was the tallest driver on the grid and the McLaren monocoque was built around Senna’s smaller frame. For 1990, Berger was continually struggling with a cockpit that was too small despite the efforts of BBC commentator James Hunt, the retired world champion, to bring the problem to Ron Dennis’s attention. During 1990 Hunt watched Berger struggle, knowing what it meant from his own experience with McLaren in the mid-1970s. Hunt was also lanky and he had inherited a McLaren car built around the considerably smaller Emerson Fittipaldi in 1976.

  Ron Dennis seemed unconcerned, and in the confines of a modern carbon-fibre monocoque there was little he could do about it until the following season.

  The opening race of the season, the USA Grand Prix in Phoenix, would not pass without drama. It started with a strange qualifying session which saw Gerhard Berger get pole and Senna a lowly fifth. It was a wake-up call for Senna that his team-mate was fast and that Ferrari had got its semi-automatic transmission sorted. The Williams Renault was also very close and bristling with innovative electronics his McLaren Honda didn’t have.

  McLaren was working on its own versions of these innovations, but they were still two years away from being introduced. With the success of the Honda car, McLaren had missed a trick technologically. Luckily, in 1990 it didn’t matter – even to the extent that Neil Oatley, the McLaren designer, saw no reason to pen a brand new car and simply modified the previous year’s chassis, which became the MP4/5B.

  The first Grand Prix of the year turned into a surprising qualifying session, as a number of factors intervened. A rain storm had put paid to most of Saturday’s qualifying session, so it was Friday’s times that counted. And as Friday had been the first day of the new season, it was a mixed result. The Tyrrell team was enjoying a renaissance with new French star Alesi in the driving seat. Tyrrell had an unexpected advantage of Pirelli tyres, which were working well on the rough street circuit. Pirelli was also a major factor as the Minardi and Dallara teams did well.

  As a result, Senna was also outqualified by Pierluigi Martini’s Minardi and Andrea de Cesaris’s Dallara, as well as pole-sitter Berger and Alesi’s Tyrrell. Alesi swept into the lead at the start and it took 35 laps for Senna to get past. But the 25-year-old French-Sicilian retook the lead at the very next corner. Senna overtook Alesi a lap later, but it had been a spectacular battle. Alesi said: “For me it was a dream come true to race with Ayrton. Two years ago he was my hero when I was in Formula Three, so for me it was incredible to fight with him.” Alesi’s comments were a clear sign that Senna had completed the transition from next big thing to established star.

  The Ferrari challenge stuttered to a halt: Prost had suffered an oil leak on lap 21 and Mansell’s engine blew up on lap 49. The Ferraris had been well off the pace and people were beginning to say that the biggest challenge to Senna’s title hopes was Berger, or even Balestre.

  The FISA president had not gone quietly away. Before the next race in Brazil, FISA held a summit meeting to discuss Balestre’s arguments with Senna and with the organisers of the Le Mans 24 Hours, which had seen the famous race temporarily struck off the international calendar. The outcome was a whitewash and a FISA statement declared ‘total confidence’ in its president. This did nothing for his image in Brazil, however, and when the feisty Balestre, perhaps unwisely, turned up unexpectedly at the race he was surrounded by bodyguards following death threats. Spectators at the Interlagos track, which he had threatened to remove from the calendar due to ‘substandard’ facilities, shouted abuse, threw coins at him and made a variety of interesting uncomplimentary hand signals.

  Once again victory on home ground eluded Senna. He took pole and led for over h
alf the race but a collision with Satoru Nakajima’s Tyrrell, as he was lapping the Japanese driver, sent him in for a new nosecone. Prost was handed his 40th career victory and first win for Ferrari in only his second outing with the Prancing Horse. The writing was already on the wall.

  Prost was so overcome with emotion at winning his first race for Ferrari that he cried openly on the podium. Before the next race at Imola, rumours spread that Senna had signed for Ferrari for the following year. Both Senna and Ferrari team manager Cesare Fiorio denied that there had been any contact, but there were suggestions it was Fiorio who had approached the Brazilian. Whatever, it certainly would have done no harm in Senna’s ongoing negotiations with McLaren – his three-year contract came to an end at the close of that season – and in the Machiavellian boiling pot at Maranello it probably scared Prost and Mansell, who were fighting desperately with each other for supremacy in the team. Senna felt sorry for Mansell.

  Senna was forced to spend quite some time denying the Ferrari rumours, but not his eventual desire to drive for the Italian team: “Any driver who has been in F1 for some time has always a dream to drive for Ferrari, because it is the team with the greatest prestige in F1. I could have moved to Ferrari now, or two years ago. For sure it’s going to happen in the future. When? That’s only a question of time.”

  At a press conference he was challenged on his denials, but he was adamant he had never said the words the journalists were quoting back to him: “At no moment did I ever say I would ‘love to drive for Ferrari next year’. Then I saw things written in the press that I was trying to open a door in Ferrari and so on. I can categorically say that I have not done that and I am not doing it. And if I was to do that, I would not do it in public. I was close to doing a deal with them many years ago but a deal never came together.”