On-track in Senna's first F1 title winner

“It’s incredible. To have the car here and to sit in it, to drive it – it’s a huge privilege. And you can’t help it when you’re sitting in it and you’re looking out of the cockpit to think, ‘This is his car, this is his view!’. You feel the goosebumps on the back of your arms standing up.”

We’re at Pembrey with McLaren and its trusted Heritage driver Rob Garofall to watch and hear one of the key cars from Ayrton Senna’s career. There have been many celebrations of the three-time Formula 1 world champion in 2024, 30 years after he was killed during the San Marino Grand Prix, and the McLaren MP4/4 is a key part of his story.

“We have many prized assets and this really is a prized car,” adds McLaren chief operating officer Piers Thynne. “It’s up there because of the significant dominance. With Ayrton and Alain’s performance we showed we could consistently dominate.”

Much has been written – and, indeed, debated when it comes to the design of a car from the Gordon Murray/Steve Nichols era – about the 1988 dominator. In short, Senna joined McLaren incumbent and established best driver in the world Alain Prost from Lotus in 1988. Armed with the 1.5-litre Honda turbocharged, lowline MP4/4, they proceeded to both put on a fantastic fight for the title and destroy the opposition.

Prost was more consistent and racked up more points but the dropped scores of the time allowed Senna, who had higher peaks and took eight wins to Prost’s seven, to take the title. Only an engine failure for Prost and Senna misjudgement at Monza prevented McLaren from winning all 16 GPs that season.

Heritage manager Indy Lall, who has worked at McLaren since 1981, ran the test team in 1988. He recalls that much of the initial work with Honda was done with a modified 1987 chassis, dubbed the MP4/3B, and that the MP4/4 – which ran at Pembrey in period – arrived late during testing. Fortunately, it was quick immediately.

Heritage manager Indy Lall ran McLaren's test team in period and provides an important link to the MP4/4's late occupant

Photo by: JEP

“It was ahead of the opposition with the aero, lowline chassis and the engine, and obviously we had the powerful combination of the drivers,” says Lall. “It was fast from the get-go and both drivers knew it was quick straight away; reliability we had to work on. It was an incredible feeling knowing you had a brilliant car on your hands.”

Garofall is driving chassis 1, which has an original Honda engine and new electronics from Cosworth, “helping to keep our heritage alive”, according to Thynne. Not only was it the homologation sign-off chassis, it’s the car Senna drove at Monaco. That means it was involved in both his highest and lowest points of the campaign.

Senna’s ‘out of body’ qualifying performance, which has taken on legendary status, put him 1.427 seconds clear of Prost. Equally famously, he crashed out the next day while leading by almost a minute, handing victory to his French rival.

"The engine is tiny and there’s no torque, really at all. So, it’s all generated by an enormous set of turbos and boost. And you feel that when you’re driving it"
Rob Garofall

“It being that car is really cool,” enthuses Garofall. “I’m very, very careful with the cars, so we’re not running them anywhere like with the performance they would’ve had back in the day. And that actually probably makes the cars a little bit harder to drive – because you’re driving them well underneath their potential.

“My job is to run the car around, make sure it’s functioning correctly and working. So, the privilege is obviously sitting in the car and driving it.

“It’s brutal. Obviously technology moves on at an enormous rate, but it’s not as aggressive on the boost as the [1984-86] MP4/2s were with the TAG [Porsche] turbos – it’s a lot more refined from that. But really, we can feel that in period you were relying on the turbos. The engine is tiny and there’s no torque, really at all. So, it’s all generated by an enormous set of turbos and boost. And you feel that when you’re driving it. It’s got absolutely nothing at all and then you get into the boost and the car comes alive.”

The MP4/4, which features pullrod front suspension, is currently in the specification it ran during the second half of the 1988 season, notably without the periscope turbocharger intakes, so using a system fully inside the car’s bodywork.

McLaren's MP4/4 is regarded as one of the finest F1 cars of all time, having won all but one race in 1988

Photo by: JEP

Chassis 1 was meant to make its race debut with Senna at the season-opening Brazilian GP in Rio, from pole. But the gear linkage mounting in the monocoque failed, rendering him unable to select gears. Senna switched to the T-car, chassis 3 (the MP4/4 that will be part of the Silverstone Festival this weekend), but that was illegal and he was black-flagged as Prost won.

Senna then used chassis 1 to win from pole at Imola before that Monaco weekend and then finished second in Mexico on an impressive day for Prost. Senna changed to the T-car during the Montreal event and chassis 1 became the spare car before Prost used it in four races, taking second three times before the Italian GP retirement marked the car’s final race.

In the championship fight, Senna had grabbed the initiative with four straight wins mid-season, including his masterful wet-weather display at Silverstone. Wins for Prost in Spain and Portugal kept him in the hunt before Senna’s best drive of the season at Suzuka.

After almost stalling at the start, he stormed from 14th to catch and pass Prost to win the race and secure the crown in emphatic style. It was a then record-breaking eighth victory of the season. Prost ended F1’s first turbo era – and the MP4/4’s career – by winning the Adelaide finale.

“I would like to thank everybody involved for giving me the equipment which allowed me to get the job done,” said Senna in that year’s Autocourse. “The engineers and technicians, both at Honda and McLaren, have put in an outstanding effort, not only producing a highly competitive engine-chassis marriage, but also endowing it with a level of reliability which has enabled the team to break all the F1 records for a single season.”

Extensive testing in Japan, often with Emanuele Pirro at the wheel, provided a significant contribution and the car’s reliability looks more like something from the 21st century than the 1980s as McLaren led the way on quality control. Aside from Senna’s Rio drama, the only other machinery-based retirement was Prost’s at Monza. The MP4/4’s three other non-finishes from 32 starts came due to Senna’s errors at Monaco and Monza, and Prost’s withdrawal with ill-handling, probably due to a kerb-strike at the previous race, at Silverstone.

Of course, one of the main areas of development in the 36 years since the MP4/4 was F1’s benchmark has been safety, not least because of the events of Imola in 1994. To modern eyes the MP4/4’s cockpit looks low and exposed, though at least a regulation change meant the driver’s feet had to be behind the front axle line!

Garofall was struck by how much he could see out of the McLaren MP4/4's low-slung cockpit

Photo by: JEP

“The view is fantastic – because there’s nothing around you at all,” confirms Garofall. “When you get into a later car, and especially those with the halo, you’re deep down inside. With this, your shoulders are out the top of the cockpit – you can take your arm out and touch the floor, probably! So, you do feel exposed.

“It does open your eyes to how it must’ve been in the day. We’re running around Pembrey 10s off the car’s potential, but you imagine back in that period there were massive grids so, with all of those cars together and feeling that exposed, it must’ve been pretty cool.”

Honda produced an all-new engine for 1988, the RA168E, for McLaren and Lotus, despite it being the final year of F1’s first turbo ruleset. That gave a significant advantage over rivals, particularly those who had already switched to naturally aspirated powerplants ahead of the new regulations for 1989. Efficiency was a key strength, crucial given the fuel capacity limit had been reduced from 195 to 150 litres.

"Because it was so quick from the start we didn’t do many changes. The MP4/4 was just a great car and easy to work on" 
Mark Hannawin

“I think Honda were already committed to the new engine but, in order to get the aero and the weight distribution as low as possible, with the type of [three-shaft] gearbox we wanted, we sort of forced the issue a little bit,” recalls Lall. “That’s never easy for an engine manufacturer, but they were very cooperative.

“Honda is formidable. They’re happy to be led if the trust is there and they should take a lot of the credit for the MP4/4. If you had an idea on how to improve reliability or performance, they would go back to Japan and make 12 of those items. If it worked, brilliant, we’re ahead. If not, then never mind, at least we’ve tried it. That was a good partner.”

Successful racing cars are often not the easiest machines to work on, thanks to compromises in the pursuit of performance. But mechanic Mark Hannawin, who moved from Lotus to McLaren at the same time as Senna and stayed for three years, says the MP4/4 was not like that.

“Out of the box the car was about three seconds quicker than anything else and it was quite nice to work on,” says Hannawin, who recalls sitting in the car before sessions and running up and down the gears to warm the gearbox oil. “Because it was so quick from the start we didn’t do many changes. The MP4/4 was just a great car and easy to work on.

New Honda RA168E engine for the final season of original turbo rule set gave MP4/4 another edge

Photo by: JEP

“The Achilles’ heel was the water pipes to the radiators because they were close to the floor. We’d need to keep an eye on that because you could go over a kerb and crack them.”

Hannawin had enjoyed working with Senna at Lotus during 1987 and had decided McLaren was going to be the place to be the following year: “There were rumours and then at Monza [in September 1987] we knew he was going to McLaren. I lived in the south and reckoned, with Senna, Prost and Honda, there would be a lot of bonuses at McLaren in 1988…”

Hannawin was soon impressed by Ron Dennis’s operation, something Nichols once described as “the total package”.

“It wasn’t just the drivers,” says Hannawin. “Ron put together the best team – the best design team, the best drivers, everything.

“Gordon Murray was on the pitwall and I always found him good for pitstops. If we had a good lead, he’d say, ‘Nice and calm’, or [if it was closer], ‘We’ve got to nail this one’.”

Such was the standard of preparation that it was not unheard of for the spare car to end up winning a race, at a time when some teams struggled to field two competitive chassis, never mind three. Hannawin worked on the spare car at each GP and reckons Senna “used it at every race”.

“Senna would pick the car with the best engine and get the one with the lowest mileage – he’d look at Alain’s data and take it all in,” he adds. “By 1989 we had four cars at a lot of races because Ayrton and Alain would fight.

“They were similar, Ayrton was more into detail. He used to study the data more, especially from Honda. Ayrton knew he could beat Prost, he just needed to learn. His ability to take in information was phenomenal; I’ve never met anyone like it.”

McLaren newcomer Senna worked hard to establish himself in a team that had been geared around Prost

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Lall feels both drivers did their bit for the programme, behind the scenes as well as at the races.

“Both were super-competitive, even though they were different characters,” he says. “Both contributed to driving the team forward. We grew and grew and grew to a point where we could have two cars running anywhere with test drivers doing all the work for the first two days, and then one or the other race driver would arrive for the last day.

“Their driving styles were different. Ayrton was more exciting and daring – it looked like he was taking risks but he was within himself. Prost was calm, very calculated, both were sympathetic with the cars. They were also quite similar on the direction they wanted to go, which made things easier.”

"He was good at splitting the difference between racing and not racing. What was on the track stayed on the track"
Indy Lall

The deterioration in the relationship between Prost and Senna didn’t begin straight away. Aside from the intensity of the title battle, arguably the first sign came when Senna edged Prost towards the pitwall at September’s Portuguese GP, a race Prost went on to win.

The next public flashpoint was their different interpretations of a pre-race agreement at Imola in 1989. Given how both their 1989 and 1990 championship fights ended in unsatisfactory clashes, perhaps 1988 can therefore be regarded as the best contest between two of the sport’s legends.

One thing that emerges when you speak to anyone that worked at McLaren during the Senna-Prost years of 1988-89, is that those in the garages studiously avoided choosing a side.

“Dave Ryan [longtime McLaren chief mechanic] was brilliant; we were one team and we didn’t get involved in the driver politics, even when journalists would try and ask us what was going on,” asserts Hannawin. “Everyone stuck to that, it was a good team.”

It’s a principle Thynne believes continues at McLaren to this day, as we saw at the Hungarian GP in July with Lando Norris stepping aside for Oscar Piastri.

Relations between the drivers began to deteriorate after Senna edged Prost towards the pitwall at Estoril in 1988

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

“I’m extremely happy I don’t get involved with driver management!” he says. “One of the things that’s important is we operate as a two-car, not one-car, team. That culture exists with the drivers, the team, the factory. It’s us versus the rest of F1.”

And, while he was uncompromising on-track, Senna was a different character off it.

“I met Senna when he was karting and you knew almost immediately that he was a special talent,” says Lall, who worked with Senna throughout the Brazilian’s six years at the team. “As you grew to know him, his personality came through – a soft, kind man, very forgiving, a team man.

“He was always special outside the car and took care of anyone in Brazil. He was good at splitting the difference between racing and not racing. What was on the track stayed on the track.”

Working well within the team, one that was ‘Prost’s team’ when he arrived, was something that Senna worked hard on – and it was his rival that ended up leaving for Ferrari.

“Coming to a new organisation, especially one like McLaren with which Alain already had such a strong working relationship, meant I had to make some big changes,” Senna told David Tremayne in 1988. “That became a big challenge for me.

“Logically I knew that fitting in was going to be vital, and that I had to do it as soon as I possibly could. I put my biggest effort into getting to know about everything as soon as I got there – the company’s system, the people, the car.”

Hannawin’s experience tallies with Lall’s: “With the people who worked on his cars Ayrton would go round and speak to everyone and those that were close to him would get hand-written Christmas cards, there were nice touches like that. After one Imola test he flew to Monaco and sent his private plane back to pick us up.

Lall, Garofall and the McLaren heritage team pose with the famous mount after a glorious day's running

Photo by: JEP

“I think Frank Williams said Ayrton could have been Brazilian president and I completely agree with him.”

We never got to see what path Senna would have followed after 1994. Would he have joined Ferrari? Would he have gone into politics? He’ll be forever frozen in time, remembered for the achievements he did manage in his 34-year life.

There were a great deal of those, which is one of the many reasons people continue to celebrate Senna, and the sight and sound of a McLaren-Honda MP4/4 blasting around a circuit is surely as good a tribute as any.

The sight and sound of a McLaren MP4/4 is one that evokes memories of the late Senna in his pomp

Photo by: JEP

Senna's other F1 racers

As well as an MP4/4, the Senna celebration at this weekend’s Silverstone Festival will include a number of the great Brazilian’s other Formula 1 cars. They will form part of what is believed to be the biggest collection of Senna machines ever assembled.

Toleman TG183B

Senna's first F1 car, the TG183B, will be part of a remarkable demo at the Silverstone Festival

Photo by: LAT Photographic

Senna’s first F1 drive came at Donington Park in a Williams FW08, which will also be at Silverstone, but he made his world championship debut with Toleman. The TG183 had proved a consistent points threat at the end of 1983 in the hands of Derek Warwick, and Senna scored two sixths in his first three races in 1984 before failing to qualify for the San Marino GP. Chassis 4, which Senna tested, and chassis 5, in which he scored his first F1 points, will be at Silverstone.

Toleman TG184

Detroit in 1984 was the scene of a rare Senna accident

Photo by: LAT Photographic

The work of Rory Byrne and Pat Symonds, the TG184 was Toleman’s main car for his rookie F1 campaign in 1984. Senna’s sensational run to second in the appallingly wet Monaco GP came in the Hart turbo-powered car’s second outing, and Senna added further podiums at Brands Hatch and Estoril on his way to seventh in the drivers’ table. He used chassis 1, which will be part of the display, at Detroit but crashed out.

Lotus 97T

Senna delivered his remarkable maiden victory in the Lotus 97T Renault at Estoril in 1985

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Classic Team Lotus will bring the car involved in one of Senna’s finest victories. In just his 16th F1 start, at the 1985 Portuguese GP, Senna dominated from pole in treacherously wet conditions. He took Lotus-Renault 97T chassis 2 to victory by over a minute for his first world championship win. Five more victories and 15 further poles would follow over the next three years with Lotus, first with Renault and then Honda power, before Senna headed to McLaren…

McLaren MP4/5

Senna won his second world title in the McLaren MP4-5 in 1990, but was out of luck in Phoenix in chassis 4

Photo by: LAT Photographic

After narrowly taking his first world title with the turbocharged MP4/4, Senna set the pace with the naturally aspirated Honda V10-engined MP4/5 of 1989. The opposition was closer but McLaren still had the best car and Senna’s pace advantage over Alain Prost was greater than in 1988. There were 13 poles and six wins for Senna but unreliability helped Prost to the crown. Senna led both the US and Canadian GPs in chassis 4 but hit technical problems.

McLaren MP4/5B

Senna's Suzuka crash with Prost in McLaren MP4-5B chassis 7 has been immortalised in F1 folklore, but it has now been restored and will appear at Silverstone

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

The 1990 McLaren faced stiff opposition, particularly from Alain Prost at Ferrari as Senna was joined by Gerhard Berger. Senna took six victories and 10 poles in the 700+bhp MP4/5B. With Prost needing to beat Senna in the penultimate round at Suzuka, Senna infamously drove into the Frenchman’s Ferrari at the first corner to seal his second F1 crown. The car McLaren is bringing to Silverstone, chassis 7, is that Japanese GP car, which never raced again.

McLaren MP4/6

Senna was utterly dominant at the start of 1991 in McLaren MP4-6, winning his fourth race on the trot aboard chassis 6

Photo by: LAT Photographic

Challenged by the growing threat of Williams-Renault, Senna pushed McLaren and Honda to keep developing the V12 1991 car. Four wins in the first four races appeared to put Senna in control, but Nigel Mansell came on strong and some of Senna’s drives later in the season were among his best as he secured a third title. Chassis 8, a lightweight MP4/6, is the car in which Senna triumphed at the Hungaroring, while chassis 6 was usually a T-car that Senna used to win in Monaco.

McLaren MP4/7

Wins were rare for Senna in 1992 against the Williams steamroller, but he did take the McLaren MP4-7A to victory at Monza

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

The 1992 season, the last before Honda’s withdrawal from F1, was a tough one for McLaren and Senna. Nigel Mansell and the Williams FW14B proved almost unbeatable, the Briton taking 14 poles from 16 races and nine wins. Senna scored a single pole in Canada, but managed three wins – in Monaco, holding off a recovering Mansell, Hungary and Monza. He used chassis 8 in qualifying four times but its sole victory came courtesy of Gerhard Berger at Montreal.

Chassis used by Senna and a winner at Montreal in 1992 with Berger will also be at the Festival in the Senna demo

Photo by: LAT Photographic