Ayrton Senna

Today (19 August 2011) "Senna" opens in Toronto and i'm taking off early from work to catch a matinee' viewing. This is about as good a time as any to open this thread...

From Prost's thread:

This has to be said and i'll say it again here...

The director of the movie "Senna" - Asif Kapadia - was on a Motor Sport Magazine podcast with then McLaren manager Jo Ramirez (who, unusually, was a trusted friend of both Senna and Prost)...and in the podcast he said something like this:

(Paraphrasing) "We had access to all of Bernies archives...and when we looked at the video of the cars coming out of Tosa at Imola, Schumacher's Benetton was the only car which exhibited unusual signs of, *ahem*, traction control...even the other Benetton didn't have it..."

Go to the Motor Sport Magazine website and click on 'podcasts' and listen for yourselves (June 15th podcast, I think).

Why do I bring it up? Well Senna suspected Schumacher's Benetton B194 had TC/LC and was driving out of his skin to make up for the difference. He noticed that it sounded and behaved differently (to even Verstappen's B194) while he watched them circulating from the wall after retiring at Aida (the second race of the year).

I don't need to go on about it, but you get the point.

Where does Prost come into this? Well, the Podcast goes into how Senna was on the telephone with Prost during that time talking, among other things, about that precise matter.

If Senna said that Schumi's car was using a form of TC, then personally I'd believe him. Prost believed Senna too. There aren't exactly any better qualified people to know such a thing. One thing I must say, however, is that despite the fact that Senna was trying to make up the difference through his own driving to keep up with Schumacher, I don't think this had anything to do with his death, something that a few twisted people (in my opinion) seem to think. Tamburello is not a corner that should worry an F1 car, even back then.

There was no greater expert on the sights and sounds of a Formula One car at Aida that day than Senna himself...And if his expert ears and eyes noted that only Schumacher's B194 sounded and reacted like it had traction control then i'm going to believe it. Period.

As per the accident at Tamburello...well, the saftey car that day wasn't exactly a Mercedes-Benz AMG...I believe it was an Opel and, as a result, a bit 'too' slow. The tyre pressures dropped significantly and that would have affected the ride height. Tamburello had a few bumps and when they went flat out again right after the SC pulled in, there's a reasonable chance the ride height wasn't what Senna would have imagined it to be.

[Safety Cars were a newer phenomenon in Formula One back then too, by the way. They were first properly introduced the year before (1993) and used only in two Grand Prix races.

They made many rule changes after that race, including making sure Safety Cars were faster so as to ensure tyre pressures didn't fall off significantly.]

Regardless, what are CTA members' memories and thoughts of Senna?

Mine were mixed. I thought he was immense and the fastest since Villeneuve ... but a bully. I was never his biggest fan primarily because his on track tactics at times bordered on insanity. Whereas Villeneuve risked his own life mainly, Senna didn't seem to have a problem with risking other drivers' lives while he was taking chances with his own.

Having said that, i'd rate the Brazilian thus All Time:

1= Senna
1= Prost
3. Clark
4. Fangio
5. Schumacher
6= Stewart
6= Moss

What are your thoughts and memories of the man and the driver?
 
Inferior equipment? A car isn't all about the engine. Renault weren't the only, or even the main, reason Williams won in '93. Plenty of good engines have failed to salvage bad cars, and perhaps the Benetton was one such? Whether it was or it wasn't, you have to concede it's a possibility.

As a starter, which of the two teams had traction control from the start of the season?
 
McLaren and Mercedes have the SAME engine in an era where horsepower differential is mimimal.

RBR and Renault have the SAME engine, etcetera, etcetera...

McLaren had a "customer" Ford engine. It, by contract, was TWO specs weaker/older than Benetton's "works" engine.

Do you get the difference.

Do you also know that engines made huge differences in 1993?

1993, engine-wise, was nothing like the post-homologated era where areo is everything.

I'm not interested in debating this any further, frankly. If you want to compare apples with oranges, go ahead.
 
Inferior equipment? A car isn't all about the engine. Renault weren't the only, or even the main, reason Williams won in '93. Plenty of good engines have failed to salvage bad cars, and perhaps the Benetton was one such? Whether it was or it wasn't, you have to concede it's a possibility.

As a starter, which of the two teams had traction control from the start of the season?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1993 I believe only Mclaren and Williams had traction control but Mclaren were seriously handicapped using an underpowered Ford V8 engine it was two specs behind the official works entry of Benetton.
If anything Mclaren were the least prepared of the three teams that season due to having to change engines and
1) Senna deciding very late on he was going to drive after all after Mclaren had signed Hakkinen and Andretti
2) Andretti did not help by not bothering to come to Europe and deciding he would rather spend Christmas at home rather coming to Europe for testing to develop the car

so when the season started they really had to look to Senna to develop the car
 
Oh come off it, Ray, aero was still everything then! I know you don't really believe otherwise.

Or we can debate exactly why Ligier-Renault finished so far behind Williams-Renault all that time ago.
 
Ray - I'm suring your choosing to miss the point. The reason I brought up Mika and Nigel is to show drivers compeating with each other at different stages of their career is not a fair comparassion. Hence the Schumacher of 93 being beaten by the Senna of 93 is not an exceptional result because Senna was at the peak of his skills and Schumacher was at the begining of his - so this amazing acheivement your talking about is an amazing acheivement at all

Apart from that - What Galahad said.
 
Oh come off it, Ray, aero was still everything then! I know you don't really believe otherwise.

Inferior equipment? A car isn't all about the engine.

In those days engines were key.

Look at what happened to McLaren after Honda left!

It took years for McLaren to get to the front. Years.

Once Honda left, the sharp end needed Renault engines to be fully and consistently competitive (Williams 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997; Benetton 1995).
 
And yet Benetton won 9 of 16 races despite their engines in 1994. I give up, I really do.

Because Schumacher's B194 was employing traction control and Williams lost one of the greatest drivers who ever sat in a Grand Prix car at only the 3rd event of the year...While he was LEADING!

Further, not every year is going to be a winner, is it? 1994 was an anomoly. Benetton ended up dumping Ford for Renault in 1995 for a reason.

In addition you conveniently forgot the word I used: "consistently"! 1994 from 1992 - 1997 is hardly "consistent", is it?

You decided to take one year and ignored 92, 93, 95, 96, 97. :no:

Take a wider look, please, Galahad.
 
Yeah Ray, we get it, you were there, now if we could steer this back on topic.

Senna may not have been a saint on the track but he was a bloody good bloke off it.

After his death it was discovered that he had quietly donated an extremely large portion of his personal fortune (estimated at around $400 million) to aid poor children.
 
Jacques Villeneuve won the WDC in his 2nd season inspite of cheater Schumacher's blatent attempt to crash him out of the final race.
While the above is true, Villeneuve was already an accomplished single seat open wheel driver, coming into F1 as the Indy champion. The hurdle for him to climb was nothing like for the others.
 
If we are looking only to statistic data, there is one interesting fact about Senna. Fastest laps (hereinafter - FL) – only 19 (relatively little, if we compare with wins and pole positions). Prost – 41 FL, Mansell – 30 FL, Piquet – 23 FL… even Berger have 21 FL!
How can we explain this?
 
(..) especially in light of the more powerful and reliable Ford engine being in the German's car.

About engine power its hard to judge now, but about engine reliability Ray's statement isn't true.

Season 1993

Mclaren – Ford:
Ayrton Senna – 1 retirement due to engine failure;

Benetton – Ford:
Michael Schumacher – 2 retirements due to engine failure;
Ricardo Patresse – 1 retirement due to engine failure.
 
McLaren's WCC positioning was largely down to Senna's 6 victories. If you don't think 6 wins will help your WCC points, then I don't know what will.

You can look at numbers ... but I actually saw the races.

Schumacher had only 1 win...and he was using the works engine which, by contract, was 2 Steps ahead/superior to Senna's.

Let's see Hamilton or Alonso or Vettel beating someone who's got a contractually superior engine by 2 iterations.

Senna did it with pure talent...a talent which was superior to Schumacher's.
in many ways, `93 was Senna's best season. He did amazingly to get 6 wins when by all accounts, the Williams' should have won every race!
 
About engine power its hard to judge now, but about engine reliability Ray's statement isn't true.

Season 1993

Mclaren – Ford:
Ayrton Senna – 1 retirement due to engine failure;

Benetton – Ford:
Michael Schumacher – 2 retirements due to engine failure;
Ricardo Patresse – 1 retirement due to engine failure.

What were Andretti's and Hakkinen's numbers?

And if Benetton's engines weren't superior/more powerful, why didn't they let Ford give Senna the same engine?

Kindly tell us. :)

Shumacher simply wasn't in Senna's league. Had Senna's car been given the same engine as Schumacher, the difference would be even greater.
 
Nobody has any knowledge of Andretti's performance, finishing position or otherwise as it has been wiped from the collective memory of all F1 fans and all recorded information has been deleted by FOM (well, the cassette was wiped actually)

Anyway, suffice to say we all have different opinions of the relative power of the two Ford engines used in 1994, none of us knows the aerodynamic differences between the McLaren or the Benetton and NONE of us is privvy to the discussions as to why McLaren had a different unit to Benetton so, please, can we just leave it there as we are having another go round the Carousel and it's getting rather tedious.

Thank you

FB
 
Ok, i'll just say these one last time - if I may please - and hope people will answer.

Anyway, suffice to say we all have different opinions of the relative power of the two Ford engines used in 1994

It doesn't take rocket scientry to figure out that when an engine is 2 iterations newer/further developed then it's numbers WILL be superior...And if it wasn't, then Benetton WOULD NOT have vetoed Ford from providing their latest engines to McLaren.

Ray, that is total engine failures for McLaren-Ford in 1993. Thus car 7 suffered no retirements due to engine failure.

Understood.

I, however, would like to state - if I may be allowed to - that "Failure"/"non-failure" isn't the only metric for unreliability/reliability. In other words, if an engine "finishes" a race, that doesn't mean it was completely 100 percent "reliable" in all it's functions.

Correct?

Nobody has any knowledge of Andretti's performance, finishing position or otherwise as it has been wiped from the collective memory of all F1 fans and all recorded information has been deleted by FOM (well, the cassette was wiped actually)

I have all the races on video tape! Collecting dust! :)

Haven't watched them in years and years...but my memories of Andretti are these:

- Tangling with Wendlinger's black Sauber every other race; and

- Wildly helicoptering his Marlboro McLaren into the high fence of the Interlagos 1st bend breaking area after the lights went to green.

:D
 
I don't think anyone is doubting that Michael Andretti took to Formula One like a duck to lava. Nor are we doubting Senna's natural ability.

What we are doubting is your underlying assumption that because it had a different engine, the McLaren was a worse car in totality compared to the Benetton. I also repudiate your treatment of the statistics provided by Namejs, especially when not providing any evidence whatsoever for your assumption that in various metrics the Ford in the McLaren was not reliable.

The question is essentially whether Senna had a better year, in 1993, than Schumacher. Many of us believe that he did. However, we also are sure that you can't prove it, no matter how much you shout from the rooftops, skyscrapertops or CN-tower-tops that you're right.
 
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