We Remember
| by Graham Duxbury
When the three time world champion Ayrton Senna crashed fatally at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola on 1 May 1994 the motor racing world was
stunned. Arguably the greatest driver the world had seen was dead. The reverberations associated with this devastating tragedy are still felt today, as ABR’s
F1 specialist Graham Duxbury notes in this tribute to a sporting legend whose star continues to burn brightly in his native Brazil and around the world.
Ayrton Senna – an all-time great
Ayrton Senna was without doubt one of the greatest drivers in Formula One history. He won 41 races and captured
65 pole positions in a career that extended to just 161 races. When his Williams slammed into the unyielding barriers
in the early stages of the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix a huge pall was cast over the sporting world.
➲ Senna is a national hero in Brazil. This picture was taken last month at the Escola SENAI “Conde José Vicente de Azevedo”
in São Paulo, and the artists were expressing their adoration for Brazil’s greatest motor racing son
I
first met Senna in 1984. A serious,
ambitious and driven young man, he
had managed to secure a F1 drive
with Toleman-Hart team, a back-ofthe-grid outfit much like the Caterham
or Marussia teams of today. He had
tested for the likes of Williams, McLaren
and Brabham, not none of them could
offer him anything more than a testdriver role – and he wanted to race. So,
shrugging aside the obvious handicap of
an uncompetitive car, and bubbling with
self-belief, Senna set out to change the
F1 world. His first race – at home in Brazil
- didn’t go well. He qualified 17th and
became the race’s first retirement when
his engine failed.
The next race was the SA GP at Kyalami.
And that didn’t begin much better. A spin
and subsequent crash into the catch
fences at Sunset corner in an early practice
session saw him climb from his car,
brush the dust off his overalls and trudge
relentlessly back to the pits. Could he get
to grips with F1? He answered his critics as
only he could with a storming drive to sixth
place and a valuable championship point.
He repeated the feat again two weeks
later in the Belgian GP when he tamed the
daunting Spa-Francorchamps circuit. But
the best was yet to come. In a soaking wet
Monaco GP on an acknowledged drivers’
circuit where one small mistake often spells
disaster, he drove a storming race.
| words in action
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may 2014
From 13th on the grid, he climbed through
the field, passing Niki Lauda for second place
on lap 19, all the while cutting the gap to race
leader Alain Prost by four second per lap. But
before he could attack the French driver, the
race was stopped for safety reasons. His skill
proven and acknowledged, all that remained
was to move up to a competitive team for
the ’85 season. He opted for Lotus, despite
Toleman having a supposed water-tight
contract with the new superstar. He marked
his 16th GP in Portugal with his first win for
his team. Fortuitously, I had made my debut
with Radio 5 as a F1 commentator for this
event, so shared the excitement with the fans
who had tuned in - or who were watching on
TV around the world.