Celebrating another win!

Back in 1994 the British Touring Car Championship was riding high, with no less than ten manufacturers and many star drivers involved, so controversy was never far away. That particular season it centred on Alfa Romeo, the flamboyant Italians arriving in Britain with an interesting interpretation of the rules governing aerodynamic addenda! Matters had reached a head prior to the May Bank Holiday meeting at Snetterton and Alfa were forced to reduce the height of their rear wings. Add to that the fact that team leader Gabriele Tarquini rolled his regular 155 race car into a ball during pre-event testing and you can imagine just how highly charged the atmosphere was. But it was events back in their home country of Italy that were to overshadow the weekend… 

More than 20,000 fans were packed into the Norfolk venue excitedly waiting for the action that was to come, yet you could have heard a pin drop when circuit commentator Brian Jones called for a minute’s silence out of respect for Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian having so tragically lost his life competing in the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola the day before. And of course we also remembered Roland Ratzenberger, who had perished during practice for the same Grand Prix. Aside from being Formula 1 stars, both were known personally to many present at Snetterton that day as they had worked their way up through the ranks of British Formula Ford and Formula 3 racing. Ayrton’s connections with the area went further, for he had raced with Snetterton-based Van Diemen in Formula Ford, the Rushen Green team, and then of course spent three seasons of his Grand Prix career with Team Lotus.

To the general public Ayrton was always a controversial figure, impressions not helped by the way he was often portrayed in the press as being cold and aloof, usually by those who neither knew nor understood him. In the hurly burly of a race meeting he could appear distant, and of course often ruthless on the track. Yet those who knew him personally saw a very different person, someone who was kind and thoughtful towards others, particularly children, of whom he was very fond. His legacy is a charity helping the street children back in his native Brazil.

Indeed, it was his attachment to his home country that so nearly brought a premature end to his racing career. Having secured both of the major British Formula Ford championships in 1981, he returned home to Brazil, avowedly to save his then marriage, his wife never having acclimatised to life in Britain – he even missed the end-of-season Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch. Many thought that was the last we would see of him, but the racing bug bit again during the winter, and he returned to Britain to drive for the Rushen Green team in Formula Ford 2000, competing in the Euroseries which included rounds at four Grand Prix. That brought him to the attention of various F1 team bosses, including Ron Dennis of McLaren who offered him a similar deal to that enjoyed more recently by Lewis Hamilton on his path to stardom.

Remarkably, Senna turned him down as he felt he would not have enough control over his own destiny, and after testing for Eddie Jordan’s outfit, elected to sign-up with West Surrey Racing, run by highly respected Kiwi Dick Bennetts from a small workshop near Shepperton film studios. The team provided the perfect environment for Senna and he immediately formed a close relationship with Bennetts, who having run the likes of Jonathan Palmer and Stefan Johansson to British F3 titles had himself turned down offers to move to Formula 1.

Dick Bennetts was a big influence on Ayrton's career

Senna’s first F3 race was actually a non-championship televised event run at Thruxton at the tail end of 1982, and having already returned to Brazil for the winter Senna did come back for this one, as he did not want to risk his position with WSR. Bennetts was extremely impressed with his new charge as he took pole position, set fastest race lap and won the race. Afterwards, he pronounced himself happy, made a verbal agreement with WSR for the coming season and disappeared back to Brazil for a few months in the sun.

The 1983 British F3 Championship was a cracker! The statistics will show that Senna drove his WSR Ralt to victory in the first nine races, only missing out on pole once – to David Leslie’s Magnum at Silverstone’s season opener -  and recorded seven fastest laps. However, the big story of the season was the battle between Senna and Martin Brundle, driving for Jordan. A bit of a frenzy was whipped up by an organisation called Racing for Britain, formed with the good intention of raising funds for impoverished British drivers. They had previously helped Palmer during his F3 campaign, and now the focus was on Brundle as the next great British talent.

Things got a little bit out of hand and flags starting being waved around with silly slogans such as ‘Never let a day go by’ and suchlike. Not unreasonably that all got under Senna’s skin more than the action on the track and he started to feel very much alone in a foreign land. Not far from the WSR workshops was the well-known motor sport watering hole, the King’s Head at Shepperton, where Dick and his crew were regulars, as were various members of the Brabham and McLaren F1 teams. It was almost a job centre for Aussie and Kiwi mechanics stepping off a ‘plane at Heathrow in search of a employment!

Anyway, it was a small pub with a big number of regulars who, even if not particularly interested in motor sport always took an interest in WSR’s activities simply because they knew the team. So, one Sunday lunchtime when there was no race, Dick virtually dragged a slightly unwilling, tea-total, Ayrton from his home in Reading down to the pub to show him that there were some friendly faces. That did the trick. He made some friends and indeed very soon moved into the area, lodging with one of the pub regulars before buying a house in Esher, not so far away. By this time, his great friend Mauricio Gugelmin had arrived from Brazil with his wife and they moved-in with Ayrton, becoming very much ‘locals’.

But back to the racing - the needle-match with Brundle continued. One round of the championship, at Silverstone, was also a European series counter, albeit that was run to slightly different rules, different tyres, etc. With a hefty British points lead over Brundle, Senna elected to run in the Euro section of the race, but got caught out when Brundle also switched late in the day. He also had previous experience of the requisite Yokohama tyres and he beat Senna in the race. That rankled.

Coming unstuck at Cadwell Park

The next British round was at Cadwell Park, and as usual Senna had put pole position out of reach of the opposition with time to spare, but citing too much understeer, Senna got the team to make some changes to the car and with five minutes of qualifying left he went back out. He was flying too – literally, as it happens. The car went light over one of the circuit’s brows and as he came down the right rear landed on grass, having the effect of turning the car sharp left & into the barriers. The car was wrecked and with no time to repair it, out of the race. A little group of us was enjoying a lunch-time pint in the King’s Head that Sunday; last orders were just being called when we heard a screech of brakes outside, the door flew open and in strode Dick Bennetts  -  “if we can’t race at least I’m going to have a pint in my local!  was his reaction, his poor old Cortina having conveyed him from Lincolnshire to Middlesex in record time!

That little indiscretion by Ayrton was followed by one or two other poor results, such that Brundle even briefly gained a points advantage. However, Senna’s engine went off to Novamotor for a rebuild prior to the last round and returned showing an impressive increase in power. With retrospect Bennetts thinks that had that been the case for the previous races some of the accidents and incidents that happened would have been avoided. Whatever, Senna claimed the title at Thruxton’s final round on 23rd October. There was to be one more surprise for Ayrton! Unbeknown to him his parents were flying in from Brazil for the last race. I’m not sure which was the bigger culture shock for them – the cold, windswept wastes of Thruxton or the celebratory session back in the pub afterwards, but after a drink or two they soon warmed to the occasion, if a little bemused that their son was being feted by this assorted collection of English, Aussie’s and Kiwis

Of course Formula 1 offers started coming in, there had already been a test with Williams, but again Ayrton went for the less obvious option by signing for the Toleman team. That would have been akin to Hamilton choosing Force India over McLaren today, but he saw it as a better way to make his mark. It worked too, for before too long John Player Team Lotus had secured his services for the 1985 season, famously taking his first-ever Grand Prix victory in only his second race with the team, a soaking-wet race at Estoril in Portugal. He drove the Renault-powered 97T to one more victory that season, in Belgium, winding up fourth overall in the championship. The 98T carried him to two more wins (Spain & USA) and another fourth place in the 1986 world title rankings, going one better the following year but again with only two more wins – Monaco and USA East again – before he moved to McLaren for 1988. The rest is history, as they say. He won the title three times (1988, 1990 & 1991) for McLaren, before switching to Williams for that fateful ’94 season, and there were the tremendous, controversial battles along the way with the likes of Alain Prost, particularly, and Nigel Mansell.

I have only touched on the Formula 1 story here as I set-out to write a more personal piece, to try and convey something of the man who went on to be the greatest of them all.  The time with Team Lotus is worthy of more detailed analysis another time – for now we will just recall the man as he touched the lives of many of us on the way up. There’s one of the King’s Head regulars who took his small sons to the 1984 British Grand Prix, Ayrton’s first such occasion. He spotted them in the crush during the pit-lane walkabout and pulled them into the Toleman garage, where he showed the youngsters round the car, let them sit in it for photographs etc.

Or there was the Goodyear tyre fitter who got called-in on a day off to fit-up some tyres for the Beatrice team for whom I was working at the time. Learning of his interest in radio-controlled aircraft, Ayrton had invited him down to Esher to fly his that day.

That’s the sort of person Ayrton was and that’s the way so many of us at Snetterton on 1st May 1994 will remember him.

The Honda Years - by Andrew Kitson

John Elwin
April 2009

Images courtesy of:

John Brooks (www.sportscarpros.com)

Jeff Bloxham (www.jeffbloxham.com)

‘The Honda Years’ painting by kind permission of Andrew Kitson, from whom the work was commissioned by Honda in 1995. www.andrewkitson.com

Bibliography:
The Life of Senna by Tom Rubython, published by BusinessF1 Books, 2004.
(A superb 600-page book that you will not put down until you get to the end).