Ayrton Senna's magic moments, chosen by his race engineers

Pat Symonds 

Senna’s first engineer through his maiden season of F1 at Toleman in 1984

To some extent we knew we were getting someone special. A lot of people were talking about him from his Formula 3 year, though there hadn’t been a lot to choose between him and Martin Brundle in their battle for the championship. But just how special Ayrton was became apparent at his first test in our car at Silverstone. 

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He’d already tested Williams and McLaren F1 cars, but the Toleman was his first experience of a turbo and the TG183B with the Hart engine he drove that day was quite tricky to drive. Turbo lag was a big thing in those days, and the way he taught himself to drive around it was quite remarkable. I can’t remember the numbers, but his times from that test would have put him very respectably up the grid for the British Grand Prix the previous July. 

We started to think that this guy was more than just pretty good, and what capped it for us was the way he was talking about the car. His ability to describe what it was doing and where he felt he needed to be finding time because he didn’t have confidence in it – and the reasons why – was quite remarkable. 

Those were days of limited data acquisition. Most drivers could tell you the revs at the end of the straight, but getting the revs in the corners was altogether different. Ayrton could give you the minimum revs in the corners.

He could do a fast lap and remember half a dozen critical numbers from the corners. That was pretty clever. You mustn’t underestimate the guy’s intelligence. He could think his way through any situation.

Having the same tyres as the competition at Estoril allowed Senna to charge onto the podium

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Magic moments on my watch
Monaco is the headline one, of course, because of what he did in the wet and how he might have caught Alain Prost for the victory had the race not been stopped early. But I think his podiums at Brands Hatch and Estoril were pretty special, too, particularly Estoril. That was one of two races where we were on the same tyres as everyone else after our switch from Pirellis to Michelins. 

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Ron Dennis had insisted that if we were going to go onto Michelins we couldn’t have the same tyres as everyone else, so we had to have the previous-generation of tyres. A bit of a strange thing for McLaren to insist of a team that had been nowhere!

There wasn’t an older generation wet and then for Estoril Michelin decided because they were pulling out they weren’t going to make any more of the old tyres. It showed how competitive we could have been with the TG184 had we been on the same rubber as everyone else all year.

Steve Hallam

Hallam recalls that Senna was fascinated by the computers Renault had introduced to Lotus in 1985

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Engineered Senna through three years at Lotus in 1985-87, first with Renault and then Honda engines

When Ayrton joined Lotus we were right on the cusp of the introduction of data systems on the engine side. Our engineer from Renault had a Hewlett Packard computer to which he could download all the data. Ayrton became absorbed by it.

He embraced it like nothing we’d seen before. He worked very closely with the Renault engineers and was forever asking them questions, particularly about how to keep the turbo boost up. 

Renault had some pretty sophisticated inlet management devices designed to minimise turbo lag. Ayrton was able to use them to their maximum. Whatever piece of equipment you gave to him, as long as you could explain what it was all about and why you were doing it, he would exploit it to not just the best of his own abilities but better than the abilities of anyone else. 

Ayrton’s abilities in qualifying were absolutely staggering. I remember him comparing qualifying to tying a tie. He said that if you’re not careful the tail is longer than the front and sometimes you end up with the front bit too long. Getting it right, he reckoned, was like a qualifying lap.

He could graphically describe how to bring in the front tyres and how to bring in the rear tyres for whatever circuit we were at. Sometimes there had to be a compromise: you didn’t want the rears to come in until later in the lap because they would be the first to go at a time when we had 1200-1300bhp. Ayrton absolutely loved qualifying. 

Wet weather mastery at Spa most impressed Hallam almost as much as his maiden win in similarly foul conditions at Estoril

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Magic moment on my watch
If you had to pin me down, I’d probably have to say that first victory in the wet at Estoril in 1985 was his best drive at Lotus, but Spa in the 97T later that year was right up there. I’m not sure it was actually raining at the start, but it was wet under foot and Ayrton said that he wanted the wet tyres in the blankets. The tyre guys reckoned there was no point because they’d cool down the moment we dropped the car on track. But Ayrton was insistent.

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You couldn’t fault his decision-making because he backed it up in the race – once again he delivered. With the exception of when he pitted to change to slicks, he led every lap. Just as he had done at Estoril.

Steve Nichols

Nichol was Senna's first engineer at McLaren and found the atmosphere incredibly tense

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Senna’s first race engineer at McLaren in 1988-89 and the man in the headphones when he won his maiden F1 title in the MP4/4 

When Ayrton joined McLaren he was already a legend in my mind, up there in the best-in-the-world kind of level and someone we knew would be on a par with Alain Prost. Working with two drivers of their stature with the budget and resources we had at McLaren put you under real pressure.

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No one wanted to be the one to screw up when we had everything we needed to win. Senna and Prost wanted the same thing – to win races and championships and they both had the talent to achieve that. So their relationship was always going to be highly intense – they were never going to be best friends. To start with their relationship was what I would call professional, but their rivalry became hardcore, nasty even.

One of the big turning points was Imola in 1989 where they had that agreement whereby they wouldn’t attack each other at the start and on the opening lap. There was a red flag [resulting from Ferrari driver Gerhard Berger’s fiery accident at Tamburello] and Ayrton lost out at the restart but overtook Prost on the first lap.

He just couldn’t help himself. He had the opportunity and couldn’t overcome his natural instincts as a racing driver to overtake. He claimed that the agreement only covered the first start, which I thought was a bit of a stretch. 

It all got very intense after that, but the great thing about McLaren at the time was that it never split the garage. Even at the height of the battle, Neil [Oatley, Prost’s engineer] and me always were still talking to each other even if the drivers weren’t. 

Nichols picks out Senna's recovery drive to clinch the 1988 title as one of his favourite moments

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Magic moments on my watch
There were so many great performances from Ayrton in our two years together, but one I remember is the championship-winning drive at Suzuka in 1988 where he screwed up the start, stalled and came back through the field to win the race and the championship. That was a real highlight.

The other one I remember is Monaco the same year when he crashed out of the lead and blotted his copybook, but his qualifying lap the day before was otherworldly. What was he, nearly 1.5s faster than Prost? Not just anybody, Alain Prost. To qualify that far ahead of a driver of Prost’s level in the same car was something special.  

Neil Oatley

Senna's brain capacity was a big draw for Oatley

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Moved over from Alain Prost’s car for the first half of 1990 before concentrating on the design of the 1991 V12-powered MP4/6

Like all great racing drivers, Ayrton only used a certain percentage of his brain to drive the car and had a lot of spare capacity to analyse what the car and engine were doing. But he raised that to a level most of us hadn’t seen with other drivers. That was very evident in the active ride days [in 1993] where we were able to fine-tune the suspension for very short portions of the track. 

Ayrton was a game-changer in terms of stepping up the involvement of the driver in what was going on. He brought a greater intensity. His strongest pushes were on the engine side and trying to adapt it to perform as he wanted under all conditions.

The tension had grown through the two years that he and Alain had been together. Part of it came down to their equal number one status, but when Gerhard [Berger] arrived in 1990 there was definitely a more perceived number one driver and a number two.

Gerhard learned a lot from Ayrton, but Ayrton also learned a lot from Gerhard on a human level – that you could enjoy life while still being deadly serious about your racing. It made Ayrton a more rounded individual without detracting from how he performed at the circuit. 

Engineering Senna at Monaco, Oatley was struck by the degree to which he thought through his approach

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Magic moment on my watch
Monaco was always memorable. To drive quickly around there is a measure of a good driver.

There is a fantastic picture from 1990 of Ayrton in the MP4/5B at what used to be the Loews Hairpin shot from up in the grounds of the Casino. It shows Ayrton turning into the corner using his left hand to change gear [with an H-pattern gearbox] and steering with his right.

That allowed him to have complete control of the car and really shows how he thought about things.

Gordon Kimball 

Kimball took over running Senna for the rest of 1990, and recalls a frank conversation prior to Suzuka that was telling of his mindset

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Came in for Hockenheim 1990 to engineer Senna and inject some fresh ideas into the set-up of the MP4/5B

It was a real pleasure from a technical side working with Ayrton because he had so much recall of what the car was doing. We would go through the set-up and talk about what we wanted to change. There were times when I said, ‘Well, what if we do this?’.

He’d close his eyes and make that change to the car in his mind and imagine what it would be like as he went around the track. Then he’d say, ‘Yes, it will make the car better in this corner and that corner, but maybe not at that corner. OK, let’s do it.’ He was normally right, though I’m not sure he would have admitted if he was wrong. 

Ayrton was angry after qualifying at Suzuka because he was going to have to start on the dirty right-hand side of the circuit. Typical Ayrton, he thought the world was out to screw him. But he was resigned to it and what he was going to do. He told me that if he wasn’t leading going into the first corner, Alain wouldn’t be leading coming out of it. That’s what he said to me, though I am not sure how widely he broadcast that within the team.

Victory over Prost at Monza was crucial, Kimball believes, in Senna breaking their spirit

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Magic moment on my watch
Monza was where we effectively won the championship. Ayrton’s victory in Italy broke the spirit of Alain and Ferrari.

The MP4/5B wasn’t an easy car, there were fundamental aerodynamic and suspension problems that we slowly got on top of through the second half of the season. If I remember correctly we did something like six days of testing at Monza before the GP and to begin with the car wasn’t very good. Slowly we improved it in small increments and in the race Ayrton managed it brilliantly. He got everything out of the car. 

He was out of brakes by the end of the race, but managed to hide that from everyone else. Alain was only six seconds behind at the finish and if he’d had anything for us I don’t think there would have been anything we could have done. I’ve seen Alain a few times since those days, and I’ve always wanted to tell him that he really should have won that championship. The reality was that we won the title by the skin of our teeth.

James Robinson

Robinson respected that Senna had a strong knack for what was happening under the engine cover

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Nelson Piquet’s championship engineer at Williams joined from Arrows to work with Senna in 1991 before moving onto the test team

In terms of feedback on the chassis side, I wouldn’t say Ayrton was much different to Nelson. But his ability to describe what was happening with the engine really stood out – and was also something that drove him. He would say to the Honda engineers, ‘This is what I want’ and they would go away and do it. They loved him because he always delivered.

The MP4/6 with the new V12 engine had a fly-by-wire throttle, but it still had a cam on the throttle pedal to define how the engine reacted to the inputs. I think we had something like 25 iterations of that over the season. He was always trying to smooth out the torque curve to help him balance the car. He had an ability to relate the engineering information to the team and Honda so we could do all that was needed to be done.

We’d had the gearbox problem at Interlagos and he’d won the race finishing in sixth gear. As he was losing the gears, he’d initially been slipping the clutch at T12 at the bottom of the hill, but sussed that the clutch wasn’t going to be able to take that. So he changed his approach and line and was throwing the car into the corner to keep the revs up. 

After that race he turned up at the factory and spent half a day with Neil Trundle [who ran the gearbox shop]. He wanted to know what had gone wrong and to understand how the transmission worked. Normally first and second are on the same shaft, then third and fourth together and then fifth and sixth. The McLaren gearbox was different.

Later in the season at Spa he was having problems with second and fourth, which were on the same rod in that ’box. He understood what was happening and was able to miss them out. And all because he’d spent that time with Neil after Interlagos.

Senna picked his car up by the scruff of its neck at Phoenix, which impressed Robinson

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Magic moment on my watch
An odd thing that stands out is from Phoenix at the start of the year for the US GP. We got to qualifying and he was mentioning something that wasn’t quite right with the car – I forget what it was – so I suggested we try a bit of this or a bit of that.

Ayrton said, ‘No, no James. You’ve done your bit, now it’s down to me.’ Of course, he goes out and puts it on pole.

Sometimes as an engineer you want to say to your driver, ‘Just get your shit together and get on with it.’ Not with Ayrton.

Giorgio Ascanelli 

Ascanelli was charged with coaxing the best out of Senna's McLaren as his cars suddenly faced a technological disadvantage to Williams

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Former and future Ferrari man was recruited from Benetton and became Senna’s final engineer at McLaren in 1992 and 1993

Ayrton had the utmost capacity to focus for a prolonged period: he could focus on a single item with such intensity. It’s something I never saw in anyone else, and I’ve worked with Mansell, Prost, Berger, Hakkinen and Vettel. He felt things in the car that no one else I’ve worked with felt, before or after. Ayrton was a fantastic tool to have in the car.

When we started working together of course there was a little bit of time when we were sniffing each other out. I remember at Kyalami in 1992 [the opening round of the championship] we were discussing at the briefing what to do for the following day, giving us his usual lesson on what needed to be done to the car.

I was making notes and after about 40 minutes he asked me what I would do. I told him that I do half the things he wanted but not the other half and then said what I would do instead. Then it clicked. The relationship between the driver and the race engineer is all about trust and between Ayrton and myself that was total.

I really believe that he was one of the greats. I am not interested to say whether he was the greatest of all time, but there is one thing for sure – no one saw his talents fading. They seemed to be increasing and increasing.

Unsurprisingly, Senna's Donington heroics are recalled strongly by Ascanelli

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Magic moment on my watch
Donington Park in 1993 is a race that everyone remembers.

Ayrton drove a fantastic race, but he did that too in the MP4/8 that year at Suzuka and Adelaide. But we saw his pure driving skill at Donington in very difficult conditions, conditions that were always changing.

PLUS: The rushed McLaren F1 car that elevated a reluctant Senna's legacy

That was Senna at his best.

David Brown 

Brown only had a short time working alongside Senna after he joined Williams

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Senna’s final F1 race engineer after his move to Williams for 1994

Intensity is a word you would definitely associate with Ayrton. He was really focused on performance – his own performance as well as that of the car. At heart he was a perfectionist. He was hard on the people around him, but he was even harder on himself. He was very self-critical. 

He was not the ogre in his dealings with the team that he was sometimes portrayed to be. He wasn’t difficult to work with at all. But if you didn’t have the answer to his question, you’d scurry away to find the answer – because he was Ayrton Senna.

He was actually a really nice bloke, very personable and very friendly. He’d take an interest in people and their families. At the time I had two kids and at our first race together in Sao Paolo he turned up with two T-shirts of the Senninha comic book character. He told me he’d had to take a guess on what size to bring. That’s something I always remember. 

Insight: The inside story of Imola 1994 from the Williams camp

Testing with Senna at Imola gave Brown revealing insights

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Magic moments on my watch
We did qualifying testing at Imola at the test ahead of the race, low fuel and new tyres. Because we didn’t want everyone else to know what times we were doing, we decided not to time the car from the start-finish line. As I remember we chose to do it from the quick chicane [Variante Alta].

A couple of times he continued pushing round the rest of the lap and flew across the line. Each time, he came in and said, ‘David, David, I know. I shouldn’t have done that. But I have to drive to the finish line – it’s what I do!’

The Williams FW16 wasn’t the easiest car to drive, especially early in the season. It was sensitive and not easy to set-up correctly, but Ayrton was never beaten to the pole in his three races with us. What I can say is that it would have been very difficult for any other driver at that time to qualify that car on pole.

Brown doubts that any other driver could have put the tricky 1994 Williams on pole in the early rounds as Senna did

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