The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  When Senna decided to move to Williams, he kept his earlier promise and asked physio, Josef Leberer to go as well. He didn’t actually have to ask. Although Leberer had loyalty to the team, it was clear now that his chief loyalty was to Senna. Senna said to him: “You want to change with me, now change your colours?” Leberer says: “It was clear that I was going for him, even though there was such a close relationship with the team. I could not leave him alone. That is how it was.”

  When Frank Williams informed Alain Prost that Senna would be his team-mate for 1994, Prost was incensed. The ‘no-Senna’ clause had apparently only extended to 1993. Prost was effectively pushed into retirement by Senna’s arrival at the team. The Frenchman decided to depart midway through his own two-year contract, with the prospect of a car good enough to enable him to equal Juan Manuel Fangio’s record five world titles on the cards in 1994. It seemed an uneasy separation. He announced his retirement two weeks later at the Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril. A few days after that Senna revealed to journalists that he would be leaving McLaren without saying where he was going, as if the whole world did not already know.

  Prost equally made clear that his retirement was final and inferred how hurt he was by Williams when he said: “The sport has given me a lot, but I decided that the game wasn’t worth it any more. I have taken too many blows. I will not drive for Williams or anyone else. That goes for Formula One and all the other formulas. There will be no comeback.”

  Astonishingly, rumours began that Senna was disappointed with Prost’s decision and wanted him back, because Prost had always been the mark against which he measured himself, and without him the challenge was no longer of the same level.

  It was all made official when a two-year contract was announced on Monday 11th October 1993 at the team’s factory in Didcot, before the final two races of the season in Japan and Australia. Senna was by this time back in Brazil with his new girlfriend Adriane Galisteu, preparing for the last two races of the year. He appeared at the press conference on a special satellite link from São Paulo. Senna was clearly delighted to have at last got his hands on the equipment thought to be the class of the field, and said: “I am really looking forward to driving a Williams Renault in what I consider the beginning of a new era in motor racing for me. It is like a dream come true. I have been close to completing a deal with Frank many times now and am delighted it has finally happened. I’ve been waiting impatiently for this. I need it for motivation.”

  An equally satisfied Frank Williams said somewhat disingenuously: “In 1994 we need a team to defend the championships we have won this year. Alain Prost’s retirement left us in a dilemma. He is a driver of immense talent who contributed so much to the team both in and out of the car this year. Therefore his most appropriate replacement could only be Ayrton Senna. I have always admired him and his record speaks for itself.”

  After the announcement Prost was depressed and Senna enthused. It showed in the results – Senna won the last two races of the season in Japan and Australia.

  Senna and his girlfriend Adriane spent a few days in Sydney before returning to Brazil. He had never been happier. By the beginning of December he was back in Europe, in Paris for the Bercy kart race, a charity event organised by paraplegic former Formula One driver Philippe Streiff.

  The Bercy event was fraught with problems between sponsor Elf and the Shell oil company. Senna was contracted to appear in his McLaren overalls until 31st December. Elf, which would sponsor him in 1994, did not like it; and Shell did not appreciate him carrying an Elf decal on his kart. Senna took a lot of trouble personally to smooth out the differences between the sponsors so that he could compete at Bercy. Finally the two oil giants agreed that he could drive in a neutral white kart.

  During these two days in Paris, he was relaxed in a way that had rarely been seen in public. With Adriane always at his side, he laughed that he had one of the special karts they would be driving sent to Brazil so that he could practice. “But unfortunately it arrived so late that I hardly had any time.”

  In the grand finale, he was dogged by bad luck: he was lying second and gunning for the lead when his kart developed a mechanical fault. He was out of the race. But he was able to joke about it: “Better here than next year in the Williams,” he said.

  On 8th December he was back in Paris to face the music at an FIA hearing following his fracas with Eddie Irvine at the Japanese Grand Prix. After a three-hour hearing, he was given a two-race ban, suspended for six months. It could have been a lot worse. FISA president Max Mosley commented: “Senna recognised and admitted that he had hit [Irvine]. He was honest and fair, responsible and reasonable and we all felt a great sympathy for him. But what happened cannot be allowed in the sport and there had to be a penalty. Irvine’s attitude was extremely provocative and difficult. But Senna also opened discussions in a very heated way.” Senna refused to comment on the incident but sources reported that he was ‘very upset’ by the penalty.

  He then flew to London’s Heathrow airport in his plane and helicoptered down to the Williams factory for a seat fitting for 1994. It was his first visit to the factory and Frank Williams held a little party in his office for him and Adriane. However, the visit was kept secret. Williams wanted to hold back all publicity for the official launch of the car in January.

  Only the barest skeleton of the carbon fibre chassis was ready and Senna offered his opinions on the size and comfort of the cockpit, so any necessary changes could be made over the next six weeks; Adriane sat huddled on a tyre in the corner, shivering.

  In mid-December, Senna returned to Brazil where he would spend Christmas and New Year before he returned to Europe on Monday 17th January to prepare for the first of the pre-season tests. As the new car was not yet ready he would be testing the FW15D, a transitional version of the previous year’s chassis.

  The following evening Senna attended a reception at the Palacio Hotel in Estoril, organised to present the team’s 1994 challenge to the press. The mood was buoyant. Frank Williams again expressed his delight at Senna driving for the team. He said: “I have been an admirer of Ayrton for a long time. This gives me very great personal satisfaction. But I am fearful he will think too highly of Williams, so I hope he will not be too disappointed.” Senna was not expecting to be disappointed, as he explained: “It’s all going to be a bit of a guessing game this year but I suppose I have to say that if I can be as happy at the end of the season as I have felt in the past few weeks it will have been a great year for me.”

  Everyone present felt that 1994 was going to be his year. A fourth world championship was within his grasp. The combination of Senna and Williams was the best driver in the best car, so what could go wrong? Although firmly convinced that this would be his great year, Senna knew there could be problems ahead even before he had driven the new Williams, shorn of electronic aids, as he said: “With the new rules, the ban on electronic aids, the cards are certain to be reshuffled. Williams will certainly be more affected than others; everything will be much closer between the leaders. I don’t see myself as the only favourite this year.”

  On the Wednesday, Renault revealed its new RS6 engine and the four-day Estoril test began. Senna had a near trouble-free four days, marred only by a couple of spins, and was very pleased with the old car and the new engine. When the teams packed up on Sunday he was fastest with a time of 1m 22.253secs. His nearest rival was his new team-mate, Damon Hill, with a time of 1m 22.662secs; the nearest non-Williams runner was the Ferrari of Gerhard Berger, almost a second behind Hill with a time of 1m 23.631secs. Michael Schumacher and the Benetton team were not present.

  The launch of the new car was another month away, because there were more changes to incorporate than in the past few years. Formula One was entering a new era. Driver aids, such as traction control and active suspension, had been banned at the end of 1993, after the top teams had spent massive amounts of money perfecting their systems. The ruling was supposed to cut costs and close t
he performance gap, but in fact it raised questions about how the new rule could be policed. Refuelling was to return to the sport, raising concerns about safety.

  Out went the Kyalami and Donington Park races, and in came Aida, an unpopular Japanese track but one with great paddock facilities. Alain Prost, Riccardo Patrese and Derek Warwick had recently retired, and Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Olivier Panis and Jos Verstappen were about to make their debuts. Also on the grid were Michael Schumacher, Jean Alesi, Rubens Barrichello, Johnny Herbert, Eddie Irvine and Mika Häkkinen. The 1990s had well and truly arrived.

  So where did this leave Senna? Unlike Piquet, Prost and Mansell, he would be making the transition to the new era. Approaching his 34th birthday at a time when drivers often raced on into their early 40s, it seemed that he still had time on his side and some people believed that his best was yet to come. He approved of the ban on driver aids, and he didn’t think Aida was all that bad when he first visited the track, although he disliked the concept of refuelling. One thing was clear: with the sudden departure of Prost, Piquet and Mansell, he was now the dominant driver. In fact someone pointed out to him that in 1994 he would be the only world champion racing. Consequently he was the only real star in Formula One, and there was a lot of pressure. Although he had had run-ins with Schumacher and Irvine, he had a good rapport with Barrichello, Alesi and Frentzen. He could certainly bridge the gap.

  Another characteristic of the new era was the increase in commercialism. There had been a rise in corporate interest in the sport ever since the late 1960s, but in the early- to mid-1990s it moved into overdrive. A driver was no longer just a driver, but also a marketing tool. A computer game called Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco Grand Prix had sold 800,000 copies. There were Senna sweatshirts, Senna mountain bikes, Senna watches, Senna pens, Senna magazines and Senna motorcycles. He had designed his own Senna logo in the shape of a double ‘S’. And he was not the only one. The Michael Schumacher Collection had just been launched, and in following years would provide the German’s fans with everything from caps and tee-shirts to teddy bears, aftershave and toilet seats.

  He had also created his own cartoon character based on himself. The character of Senninha (little Senna) was created by Brazilians Rogério & Ridaut. Rogério had previously worked with commercial designs, while Ridaut was a comic-book creator. They both liked Formula One, and both loved Ayrton Senna. So they decided to create a comic, which would be a copy of Senna, a little Senna: Senninha was born. They didn’t have the money to publish it, so they decided to go to the only man who could help them. They went to his office in Brazil in 1992 and arranged a meeting to talk about the project. When they met, Senna realised the two were very talented and loved their ideas. He always wanted to do something for children, but didn’t really know what. It had to be educational, it had to be fun – children needed to love it so it had to be exciting. Senninha was the best way to express Senna’s feelings towards children. They would learn ethical values in life through Senninha, and have fun reading it. Brazil immediately loved it – it was something of Senna, their hero. He decided to give the first edition of Senninha free to every schoolchild, and it took off in early 1994. He said, as if needing to justify it: “Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.”

  Senna was fully engaged in commercialism of his own in late 1993 and early 1994. He was casting around for a career after motor racing and started to set up business in Brazil.

  The first few months of 1994 were spent pursuing those interests and getting the deal together. In between he spent time with Adriane at his Angra beach house and they had a whole month together from late January to the third week of February. In between he was finalising commercial arrangements, with car-maker Audi and the Mont Blanc luxury goods brand, to officially handle their products in Brazil.

  In the last week of February, Senna flew to Europe primarily to test the new Williams car and attend a series of business meetings, setting up more commercial deals for him to import European products into Brazil. It was the start of a business empire that would sustain him after retirement, a milestone he figured was now probably only four years away. As he told friends, he had no intention of playing second fiddle to Michael Schumacher, who was clearly emerging as his chief rival. He reckoned on two years with Williams and his last two or three years with Ferrari.

  It was not until 24th February that the new FW16 was finally ready, long after some of the other cars, notably the Benetton Ford B194, had been launched. With the new chassis launched just four weeks before the first race in Brazil, Senna was faced with a hectic test schedule. It was a cold and misty Thursday at Silverstone, and after the covers came off Senna took the car for a 15-lap shakedown test. In public he praised the team’s efforts, but he privately admitted to his girlfriend Adriane: “I feel I have arrived here two years too late. The car drives funny.” He continued: “I went through a lot to finally be able to sit in that car. But I feel it’s going to be hard. Either I haven’t adapted myself to the car yet or it’s the car that doesn’t suit me.”

  Senna had perhaps naively expected to sit down in the Williams Renault and find the perfect car, as he had done in 1988 with McLaren Honda, and to romp away with the championship. But what he found was a car stripped of all its electronic aids. Without the aids he thought the car potentially dangerous: “It’s a stupidity to change the rules. Formula One will regress.” Senna told people that he thought the sophisticated electronics system were a big aid to safety. He was also unhappy with the regulations that forced cars to refuel during a race. He thought unnecessarily dangerous and destabilising.

  He also wanted to adapt the Williams team to be more like McLaren he had got used to working with his Italian engineer, Giorgio Ascanelli who had not been able to join him at Williams. He said: “I will start making changes slowly. It’s a new team, strange faces. I want to change things gradually.”

  Senna knew timing was everything and he was worried. But sustaining him was the simple lack of competition. Schumacher and Benetton were the only rivals and he felt they would still have an inferior car. He was amazed that chief rivals Prost, Piquet and Mansell had simply disappeared. A generation change had happened without him realising, and he was the man who belonged to neither.

  The first week’s testing in England was followed by a trip to France, and Senna was more upbeat as he headed to the Paul Ricard track in the south of the country. He was happy to joke about the first time he had visited the French track, just over a decade earlier, when he had been a young hopeful trying out a Brabham Formula One car. He told his pilot Captain O’Mahoney on the way: “When I arrived by train in Marseille from Milan and was standing there at the station, I didn’t know how to get to my hotel or the track. Today my jet is standing by. That’s not bad progress, is it?”

  After the first tests of the new car, Senna had not liked the cramped cockpit (an Adrian Newey design trait) or the position of the steering wheel. After Paul Ricard, he asked for changes to be made to make more room in the cockpit and raise the steering wheel. This was done by cutting away a small portion of the top of the cockpit that formed part of the monocoque and producing a new piece of bodywork. It also necessitated lengthening the steering column and changing its shape.

  The modification was necessary because Senna did not like the steering wheel mounted so low, as Nigel Mansell had driven with and Alain Prost had also liked. The lower steering had also enabled a lower cockpit height, which was better aerodynamically.

  Senna did not have a chance to test the modifications, which would be ready for the first race of the season in Brazil.

  He was due to fly to Brazil on 13th March to incorporate all his promotional activities, but before that he participated in the major test finale of the pre-season: at Imola, the venue for the San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday 1st May.

  The Imola test ran from Tuesday 8th to Frida
y 11th March, with all the major players present. During the test, the drivers noticed a bump on the track at Tamburello that was causing the cars to jump. Senna and Minardi driver Pierluigi Martini went out to the corner and had a meeting with circuit director Giorgio Poggi. The event was filmed by a fan and the film shown at the trial investigating Senna’s death three years later. It was one of many impromptu safety meetings held at Tamburello corner, often with Gerhard Berger. They always came to the same conclusion: that the corner was dangerous; there was very little that could be done but the agreed changes were made. There was still a slight bump in the track, but the situation had been vastly improved and Martini believed the bump would only present problems for a car that was already struggling. At the time it was a minor and routine incident. Surprisingly no one suggested that a few rows of tyres against the concrete wall might not be a bad idea.

  The surprise of the test was that in the closing minutes of the very last day, Senna’s fastest time was beaten by Schumacher. The 25-year-old German slashed Senna’s best of 1m 21.2secs down to a straight 1m 21secs. Besides being the last pre-season test, it was the first to pit the FW16 against the opposition, and people were beginning to suggest that they had left it all too late. Senna was unruffled. He said: “The times here are not decisive. This is the end of the winter world championship. The real thing will be seen in Interlagos.” But there was no disguising that the young Schumacher and his Benetton had won the winter world championship.

  Senna later let slip to Brazilian journalists that the Williams team had been trying to disguise the car’s true potential: he said it had never run with less than 60 litres of fuel, and its fast laps had been timed from a starting point elsewhere on the track – and from there Senna was the fastest.

  Everything was not as rosy as Senna made it appear, however. Both he and team-mate Damon Hill had noticed difficulties with the car. It struggled, especially in low-speed corners, was highly sensitive and twitchy, and the cockpit was cramped and uncomfortable. Hill complained: “You don’t have to be very far out with the settings and suddenly the car is not competitive. That’s good and bad. Good, because it’s working straight away. But bad in some ways because you can be out of bed very easily.”