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Egmont's Column: Saluting Senna

It was 15 years on May 1, that Ayrton Senna tragically lost his life at Imola. Wheels24  pays tribute to the great Brazilian driver.

I stood at the Craner Curves, once. It was a dreary, drizzly day. The track swept from my left, out of Redgate, down the hill, into the valley below. The drop from top to bottom was dramatic. Just like Eau Rouge, at Spa, it is impossible to tell the severity of the incline from a TV shot alone.

You’ve got to be there. You have to see it for yourself.

I stood there for half an hour in the cold, scanning the track, coming to grips with the elevation, absorbing the grandeur of that downhill arc.

It all happened in complete silence. The hills of Donington Park were deathly quiet. There were no cars out on the track. No wind at all. No rustle around my ears. No sound. No movement.

Just the drizzle.

And memories.


Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green

   
It was a stormy day, as history will recall, with gusts of wind and intermittent showers of pelting rain.

Senna, the better part of two seconds slower than the Williams cars of Prost and Hill during practice and qualifying, started fourth. It soon became fifth as Schumacher passed him off the line and pushed the McLaren wide. Senna then cut across the Benetton’s stern to slip into an open alley on the inside line.

Into and out of Redgate, he drilled Schumacher. Having been on the tight line, Senna then found himself on the wider radius for the next change of direction as the track swept off to the left. Prost led down the hill, chased by a solid wall of spray. Hill was second, Wendlinger third.

Then the red and white McLaren burst into view on the outside line. Senna wasn’t sizing Wendlinger up; he was gunning for his starboard side, his open flank, on a line flooded with water, with no safety net in terms of camber or tarmac.

Marlon Brando, in Apocalypse Now, talked about “the horror”. It came upon me right there. This guy in the yellow helmet had gone completely insane. I jumped to my feet, shouting at the TV: “Are you totally effen mad, you nut case!?”

But Senna made it stick, of course.

How could I ever have doubted? I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.

It was raining, the track was wet as a raccoon and cars were falling off like flies, Schumacher amongst them.

Yet Senna had sailed passed Wendlinger on the outside of the Craner Curves like a man taking a Sunday afternoon stroll around the block. In the dry. Bathing in sunshine.

At the top of the Donington hills, into McLean’s, the McLaren ducked inside Damon Hill.

And on the run down to the first hairpin, the second last corner, it neatly dispatched of Prost.

Never before or since has a driver picked off the first four cars on the opening lap of a GP, to lead past the line. Not if he was in only the third best car on the grid.

Yet, it all looked so simple, as if the others were playing along.

That’s genius in its purest form. That’s what gave birth to the single greatest lap that has ever been driven.

On a day when the heavens had opened, the sun was shining on Senna. That made many of us young and easy under the apple boughs, and happy as the grass was green.


Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes



Donington wasn’t unique, of course. Senna drove many fantastic races in the wet.

Like Monaco 1984, when – as a rookie – he hurled a recalcitrant Toleman, firing from an underpowered Hart with primitive turbo power kicking in with a vicious bang, from 13th on the grid to first by the time Jacky Ickx had decided to red flag the race on lap 32, with Prost winning on a count-back.

Or Portugal 1985, when Ayrton beat second placed Michele Alboretto by more than a minute.

Or Silverstone 1988, when he lapped team mate Prost after 14 laps.

Or Brazil 1991 when he won in the rain, having driven a car stuck in sixth for half a dozen laps.

Etcetera, etcetera.

In the dry it was more of the same; Damon Hill having been lapped by Senna in Brazil 1994, both of them running a Williams.

It was in qualifying, however, that Senna mesmerised most. In Monaco, he was once five seconds quicker than team mate Cecotto. Think about it: five seconds!
 
And if you’re reckoning, well, who the hell was Johnny Cecotto, let me tell you that Senna was also 1.5 seconds quicker than Prost in Monaco, in 1988.

Yep, Alain Prost. Four times world champion. Driving a similar McLaren to Senna’s, and having expressed complete satisfaction with his final qualifying run in the mid 1 minute 25s.

Then Senna stopped the clocks dead on 1.23:998. Time let us hail and climb, golden in the heydays of his feats; Ayrton was also 2.7 seconds faster than third on the grid, namely Berger in a Ferrari.

Because of feats like this, Senna-watching became a sport in itself. Quite often, the mercurial, mystical, mythical and sometimes monk-like Brazilian would wait and wait and wait until the dying moments of a qualifying session, before firing up his machine and taking to the track.

That’s when F1 inevitably came to a standstill. Nobody paid any attention to even their own interests any more. Everybody downed tools.

To watch Senna.

For Ayrton in full flight was the sharpest edge of genius ever seen in racing. He and his machine were like the glint of a blade, flashing in the sun. Senna’s qualifying runs were stupendously quick.

It was over before it had started.

Just like his life.


In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means


John Watson was on a slow down lap, once, at Brands Hatch. Into Dingle Dell he saw this black Lotus charging up from behind. He slowed down to let Senna past.

What he saw and heard was beyond belief. Senna flung his Lotus through Dingle Dell’s right-left with one hand on the wheel, the other changing gears, the left foot dancing between brake and clutch and his right foot stabbing the throttle to keep boost up. The whole episode happened in the blink of an eye, of course, but with utterly precise timing inside a fluidly smooth “blur of motion” inside the cockpit, as Watson described it.

The Irishman parked his car, walked up to the Lotus garage and had time to say: “I have just seen something...” before team manager Warr and his mechanics interjected: “We know, we know...”

They could, of course, follow Ayrton’s astounding technique and progress via telemetry. Even more unbelievable was the way in which Senna would then recite every second of every lap from memory. He could sit down with engineers and accurately and meticously recall and explain the car’s behavioural traits at different points on the circuit, as checked against read-outs.

Spookily quick Senna was, for sure. Yet his mental abilities bordered on the freakish as well. That’s part of the reason why he was so formidable at overtaking.

On top of that, the man had character and personality. People who knew him often refer to the “mystic” side of Senna’s soul.

He was, furthermore, deeply attached to those who worked with him closely; in his last race for McLaren, he cried on the grid.

Senna was equally deeply concerned about and affectionate towards fellow racers; at Jerez, he once drove out to the wreck of Martin Donnely’s Lotus, when nobody else did.

At Imola, two days before he died, he was alone in visiting Rubens Barrichello in the medical centre after his compatriot’s traumatic accident.

And on the day before his own life was taken, Ayrton – against orders – drove out to the wreck of Roland Ratzenberger’s car on Imola.

Roland had died. Ayrton cried for him.

In the sun that is young once only . . .


And the Sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.



Then came Sunday. And Tamburello, a corner lined by a wall that could not be moved, the authorities said, because of trees lining the stream behind it.

On 1 May 1994 the Sabbath rang slowly in the pebbles of that holy stream. Ayrton Senna had died meters away.

It was 15 years ago, to this day.

Now it’s us who cry.


Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.


Long did I stand there, in the Craner Curves, contemplating what Senna had achieved on that day, on Easter Sunday, 1993.

The greatest lap ever.

In one if the most famous victories ever.

By the greatest driver yet.

Long did I stand, too, on another day, at the statue on the inside of Tamburello. There was the track between me and the holy stream, fenced in by walls on both sides, making it impossible to cross the tarmac.

To the other side.

Where Senna crashed. Where Senna is.

Actually, not impossible, no; only difficult. For the graffiti is there, all over the walls, on the other side, too: Senna forever.

One day, somebody should join in with Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill.

Start at the start: “As I was young and easy under the apple boughs...”

And end with the end: “Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

For that’s Ayrton – young and easy in our memories. And that’s what time held him to – green and dying.

In a sun that was young once only.

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