How "devious" Senna thwarted a rising F1 talent's path to success

I headed towards 1986 firmly believing that I would be driving for Lotus as team-mate to Ayrton Senna. When I’d seen how badly my Renault prospects were sliding off the rails early in 1985, I’d worked very hard to pull off a move there.

I’d tested a Lotus-Renault 97T at Brands Hatch that season and it had gone very well. They wanted me and Renault were happy for our association to continue in this way, with Lotus now Renault’s spear-carrier for 1986 after the works team’s withdrawal. And with Elio de Angelis heading to Brabham, there was a seat available for me.

I didn’t know that I wasn’t going to get the Lotus drive until a week or so before Christmas. Everything had been agreed and I’d signed the contract. As for Lotus signing it, they wanted me to go all the way up to their base at Hethel in Norfolk for that. I did wonder why they needed me to do that but I thought it was a good idea anyway because I could spend some time with the engineers and mechanics.

Peter Warr, the team boss, wasn’t there that day. I read something recently in which he claimed that he informed me on the phone some time in January 1986 that I was out of the drive, but that certainly isn’t the way I remember it. As for the book he wrote about his time in F1 with Lotus, he never even referred to the episode.

He was a former public schoolboy who’d served in the Royal Horse Artillery. He tended to act like he thought he was still on the parade ground, with great self-regard. When he had something to say to you, he’d
push his glasses back with one finger, stare at you, and
say, ‘Now look here, chap…’

That day in December he left it to accountant Fred
Bushell to give me the bad news. When I arrived, Bushell,
who later went to jail over Colin Chapman’s involvement in the DeLorean affair, called me into his office. He wouldn’t allow me to go into the workshop, so I was beginning to suspect that something was up. But I never expected the bombshell that he dropped right there and then.

Keeping Senna happy was the foremost concern for Warr, even if it meant thwarting Warwick's career and incurring bad press for Lotus

Photo by: Sutton Images

He told me that Senna, their existing driver, didn’t want me as team-mate and was putting them under a lot of pressure, so I was out. Simple as that. We’d agreed terms and I’d signed the contract – but they were reneging on it. I tore up my signed contract in front of him, since it was now as worthless as he and Warr.

It had granted me joint-number-one status, with alternate use of the spare car and first pick of mechanics. We all know now that Ayrton was a true legend, but at this point he’d only been with Lotus for a year and hadn’t long started winning, having triumphed in Portugal and Belgium.

But as I discovered, Lotus and its sponsor, John Player, wanted him to be happy, and both just buckled under the pressure from him. He was still relatively inexperienced, so joint-number-one status was a reasonable demand from me. But he demanded exclusivity: the best car, permanent access to the spare, the best mechanics, the best engineer, the chief designer dedicated to his car.

I’m not sure I could have screwed somebody over to that extent but, with the benefit of hindsight, and having later talked to Ayrton about it, he never even thought he was screwing me over

He wanted everything. And he didn’t want a quick Brit in the other car.

Nothing personal

It made me realise just how extraordinarily selfish some people are and how weak others can be. I was selfish all
my career, I admit it, you couldn’t stop me. But I think
Ayrton took it to another level.

I’m not sure I could have screwed somebody over to that extent but, with the benefit of hindsight, and having later talked to Ayrton about it, he never even thought he was screwing me over. He just did what was best for him. It was never personal.

I think he just thought he’d stop me driving for Lotus because having another quick driver in the team might compromise his efforts. I heard suggestions that he felt that Lotus couldn’t operate two cars to the same level, but that was bollocks because they’d done it with Nigel Mansell and Elio de Angelis, and again with Elio and Ayrton himself.

Warwick (pictured with Senna in 1984) reckons the Brazilian never considered the repercussions of effectively forcing him out of Lotus

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Ayrton wouldn’t even have considered that by that stage there was no other drive available for me because everybody had signed their contracts. He actually sent me a New Year’s card, wishing me all the best for ’86. When I first looked at it, I wanted to tear it up, because I thought he was taking the mickey, but I don’t think he was. It never occurred to him that I wouldn’t find another F1 seat. But I didn’t.

Maybe this is what makes certain exceptional people, particularly in sport and business, that little bit better than most mere mortals. They only see what they’re doing and never remotely consider whether it’s at the expense of everyone else. That ultimate selfishness is what makes them different, and maybe the best. In some respects.

At the time, of course, I was furious. I’d put all my eggs into the Lotus basket and now Ayrton had smashed them all. In his own way, Ayrton was just as devious as Nelson
Piquet had been in F3 back in 1978.

Warr was supposedly embarrassed and unhappy about
the whole thing, as was sponsor Geoffrey Kent of John
Player, but that was how Ayrton played the game. He’d
walked out of Toleman in 1984, breaking his contract to go
to Lotus for 1985. As soon as Alex Hawkridge had found
out, he got something back on Ayrton by suspending him
from the team to teach him a lesson. It said everything
about Ayrton that, having broken his contract, he was outraged to be penalised like that.

Now, Warr might not have had the balls or decency to
face me with bad news, but he did at least slightly stand up
to Ayrton when he vetoed the suggestion that his friend Mauricio Gugelmin, the reigning British F3 champion,
should be his number two, and instead chose the previous year’s British F3 champion, Johnny Dumfries.

I didn’t
know Johnny that well, but well enough to spend some time with him. He was the Marquess of Bute and part of our ‘Rat Pack’ lunch every year. He was such a gentle, lovely man
who sadly died suddenly at the age of just 62 on 22 March 2021; we all miss him very much.

Opportunities lost

Gugelmin told David Tremayne, who collaborated with me on this book, that Ayrton was very angry when David deliberately ran a provocative main headline in the 29 January 1986 issue of Motoring News: ‘Warwick just too fast for Senna.’ David told Mauricio to let Ayrton know that annoying him had been the whole point of the headline.

Headlines in other publications were also harsh and all of them gave Ayrton a real slagging in support of me. The media were very outspoken about the way he’d been able to dictate things and how weak and unprofessional Lotus had been in the feeble way they’d handled the whole sorry affair.

Warr did veto Senna's suggestion of appointing Gugelmin for 1986 and instead signed Dumfries

Photo by: Sutton Images

Lotus offered me zero compensation. And when you look back, they and Ayrton effectively stopped my F1 career in its tracks. I think I was arguably the best British driver in F1 at that time, although Nigel Mansell had just won two races with Williams and was definitely beginning to establish himself. He went on to win five more in 1986 and narrowly missed out on the world championship, while I was sidelined.

I’d proved in my first year with Renault that I was quick and had what it took to win races. I wanted to put myself up against the best at Lotus with Ayrton there. I’ve never been frightened of doing that. Lotus had been the golden opportunity to show that.

I also thought the new Lotus-Renault 98T looked good. I loved the way technical chief Gérard Ducarouge went about his racing and I thought I fitted in well with the team, the sponsor and everything else. Renault, as Lotus’s engine supplier, was pushing me, too. And now suddenly l lost momentum as the golden boy.

Lotus offered me zero compensation. And when you look back, they and Ayrton effectively stopped my F1 career in its tracks

Some other good opportunities had been around when
I started talking with Lotus, but they’d gone now because I’d put everything into the Lotus deal. With the new season not far off, I had nothing on the horizon just when I should have been taking another important step forward in my F1 career.

I’ve always taken the view that when things get tough, you just have to get tougher and find the next solution. I certainly wasn’t ready to stop. F1 was all I wanted to do. I’m not a quitter and I always look forward to the next chapter. That’s what champions do — and I was still determined to be one.

Very quickly I received an offer from BF Goodrich, the American tyre company, to do the Daytona 24 Hours in one of its Porsche 962s, sharing with Jochen Mass, Jim Busby and Darin Brassfield. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands because I wanted to race something.

I’d driven sportscars before, starting at Le Mans in 1983. The Kremer brothers, Erwin and Manfred, were running their own Porsche-based car, the CK5, with backing from Grand Prix International magazine. Erwin called me at the last minute, with just a week to go while I was in Canada racing with Toleman. I think Alan Jones had been down to drive the car but had changed his mind.

The CK5 was an odd-looking car with a spaceframe chassis. In my head I said that never in a million years was I going to run at Le Mans in that thing. But I asked what the deal was, and Erwin said £25,000. So I just said, ‘Great! I’ll be there tomorrow!’ I suppose that was when I created the saying, ‘Absolutely no way. How much? OK!’

Never Look Back by Derek Warwick and David Tremayne is out now, published by
Evro

Warwick did find his way back onto the F1 grid, but was never in a winning car

Photo by: LAT Photographic