The McLaren test that persuaded Senna to stay

The faces said it all. The temperature was marginally above freezing and a small group of McLaren team members were huddled around the timing desk on the pitwall shortly before lunch.

Each time the car flashed past, the mechanics would look up to savour the reaction on the face of Ayrton Senna’s Italian engineer, Giorgio Ascanelli, who looks rather like a junior Pavarotti. Each time he obliged them by opening his eyes wide and grinning, before instructing the pit signaller to put new figures on the pitboard.

Senna had not driven a Formula 1 car for three months and yet here he was setting the fastest time of the winter. He spent all day Wednesday reacclimatising to the speed, even spinning a couple of times as he discovered the new car’s limits.

By lunchtime on Thursday, all doubts about the competitiveness of the new McLaren-Ford MP4/8 evaporated as Senna put the hammer down: 1m21.2s, 1m21.0s, 1m20.4s, 1m20.3s. It was a breathtaking display of consistent speed.

To put Senna’s achievement in perspective, Damon Hill had set Williams’s fastest time of the winter the day before at 1m21.0s, while the McLaren boys, Michael Andretti and Mika Hakkinen, had managed 1m21.5s and 1m21.7s respectively after two weeks of testing the all-new package.

Towards the end of the day, Andretti improved to 1m21.1s as Senna popped in another mind-blowing sequence: 1m21.0s, 1m20.5s, 1m20.2s.

It has been a hard winter for McLaren. Uncertainty over who would supply the engines and who would drive the car this year had lowered the morale of a dedicated crew, used to success. Last Thursday they rediscovered their faith.

As they packed away the mountains of electronic equipment ready for South Africa, they were all pondering the great question – would Senna be joining them for the first race at Kyalami.

Senna seemed relaxed but tired as he spoke after the test. It had been a hard two days, he said, but he was satisfied. “The car is of course pretty fast,” he said with classic understatement.

Carefully rubbing his eye, he continued: “Silverstone is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult circuits to set up a car and to find a good balance between the infield and the high-speed corners like Stowe, Bridge and Becketts.

“My goal coming here was really a second step on a positive path towards racing this year. The first step was meeting Philip Morris in Lausanne, Switzerland, which was constructive and positive. Step three we will make the decision” Ayrton Senna

“I even thought in the last couple of years, ‘I just don’t know how to go fast around this circuit’. But between yesterday and today I had the opportunity to drive at speeds that I could not believe I could do.

“In fact, I think I can go faster, but I cannot coordinate my mind and body to do it. My mind does not react as quickly as it needs to in order for me to go faster. It’s very difficult to drive at that speed, because there are incredible G-forces going through your body and the reaction time between what you see and what you do is almost nothing; you hardly see something and it’s gone. There’s no time to think.”

Senna sat back in his chair, reflecting as he spoke on the past two days. A deeply thoughtful man, this 32-year-old is not given to opening his mouth before engaging his brain. And although weary from a hard day on the track there was definitely a twinkle in his eye. He was obviously impressed by the speed of the new McLaren and was perhaps weighing up in his mind how the car might develop over the coming year.

Senna also faced negotiations with Dennis and Marlboro before being certain of racing for McLaren in 1993

Photo by: Pascal Le Segretain / Sygma via Getty Images

But he was careful not to allow his new-found excitement to blind him to the fact that if he wanted to race the car this year, there was still some hard negotiating to be done with Ron Dennis and sponsor Marlboro.

“It’s a dangerous situation to be in,” he reflected. “Particularly when you have been away for three months without driving. I am not up to speed on my reflexes, so I have to control myself.

“Between the first and second days I took a good step forward, not just myself, but also the car, we really improved the car. But you know, you lose a second a lap if you just think about something.

“It’s difficult to tune your mind or your body. You tell your hands, ‘OK turn a little bit more here’ or ‘lift here’, but it almost happens too late.

“You think about something and it’s already too late. So you go by instinct, you guess what is going to happen so you can act as it happens. If you get it wrong you will go off. It’s not too bad in slow corners because if you get it wrong you spin, but in fast corners it’s very tricky.”

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Is this a race-winning car?

“The performance I think is there,” continued Senna. “Naturally there are still difficulties with reliability. With all the electronics there are small things which have to be understood before they can be adjusted and modified. There is still a lot of development to do.

“My goal coming here was really a second step on a positive path towards racing this year. The first step was meeting Philip Morris in Lausanne, Switzerland, which was constructive and positive. As a result of that I came over to test the car and having had that opportunity I will go away and think carefully about the situation. Step three we will make the decision.”

Despite negotiations, the decision rested fully on Senna’s shoulders for what he wanted to do next

Photo by: Torsten Blackwood / AFP via Getty Images

Although he refused to admit it, Senna clearly realised that he wanted to race this year. But there were other considerations. Money is always a sticking point in negotiations between Senna and McLaren. He has been with the team for five consecutive seasons, won three world championships and, each time a contract has needed renewing, he has added a few million to the bill.

In the past, Honda paid up, terrified that he might defect to Ferrari or Renault, but this time there is no Honda. It was up to McLaren boss Ron Dennis and main sponsor Marlboro to decide how much Senna is worth to F1.

But without doubt Senna was encouraged by his Silverstone test. “It was not just one-off quick laps,” he reflected. “But we did it on several occasions. I am surprised at the huge progress in two days, both in myself and in the car. I wonder how far we can go?”

“The V8 is totally different engine. It has a lot more power at the bottom and middle of the rev range, but less at the top end. It also goes around corners differently. The throttle control is totally different and it has taken a lot of effort for me to learn the new characteristics of the engine. We will always want more top-end power on a V8 engine” Ayrton Senna

The atmosphere in the McLaren garage was reminiscent of the good old days a few years ago, when Senna and McLaren were at their mightiest. In the final qualifying session for a race, the Brazilian would wait patiently for the right moment before gunning for pole position. Did he get the same feeling at Silverstone last week?

“You know when you’re going quick,” he replied, thoughtfully. “Almost corner by corner you know, and then the final lap time on the pitboard is just a consequence. As you do a fast lap, you just know it’s fast and it’s just a question of balancing your aggression with your experience and self-control.

“I find this fascinating, trying to find that balance between not being too conservative but not overdoing it and getting it wrong.

After McLaren’s Honda partnership ended, how Senna gelled and assessed the Ford V8 was a crucial point in his decision-making

Photo by: Ercole Colombo / Studio Colombo / Getty Images

“I am particularly fascinated by this kind of situation at really high speed, which I found today. You go by instinct. You feel the time coming as you go around and then after 80 seconds or so you get a magic result. It’s a great thing.”

After many seasons with multi-cylinder Honda engines, both V10 and more recently V12, how did he enjoy driving McLaren’s new Ford HB V8 engine?

“The V8 is totally different engine,” he said emphatically. “It has a lot more power at the bottom and middle of the rev range, but less at the top end. It also goes around corners differently. The throttle control is totally different and it has taken a lot of effort for me to learn the new characteristics of the engine. We will always want more top-end power on a V8 engine.”

One of the most fascinating things about talking to Ayrton Senna is his ability to analyse out loud what racing means to him, to take apart a quick lap or to describe how he motivates himself. Once he starts thinking and talking like this, you can listen to him for hours.

Fortunately, he was in just such a mood after his return to an F1 cockpit last week. This has been his life for nearly 10 years now, could he really contemplate not racing?

“The feeling I get from racing is something I can’t explain,” said Senna. “It is not something I necessarily understand but I have experienced it, felt it and it’s incredible.

“This year, in January, the passion was really low. It was like a small flame. A friend of mine kept persuading me to do this test. He pushed me and slowly the flame grew bigger and bigger and the passion started to come back and I could see it and feel it.

Senna admitted his passion for racing was low during the winter before the 1993 season

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“Sometimes in life you just can’t change things no matter how much you might want to. I think that friend did a really good job in persuading me to come back.

“This has been my life for so long now. Sometimes I think, ‘You have got so much out of this, personally speaking, from material benefits, you have got the respect of so many people around the world, you can’t just drop it. You can’t do that. First of all for the people who have got to know you or who follow you, you just can’t do it.’

“But it comes more and more difficult to drive the car fast, to find the balance one needs to judge all of those things and to make all the necessary decisions, whether they are personal or technical. This is the hardest part of my profession and it has been like this now for the past two or three years.”

“I did not come from Brazil to England and zero degrees cold this weekend just to stand around. I’ve been in Europe for 10 days and it has taken that long to meet with people and make all this happen. We will just have to wait and see” Ayrton Senna

But surely having turned in a series of laps inside the best time of both Williams-Renault drivers, he must feel that he can challenge Alain Prost and put him under a lot of pressure?

Senna thinks for a full 15 seconds before answering slowly: “I have always been moved by a challenge. If you can see a challenge then you have gone a long way down the road to meeting it.

“I did not come from Brazil to England and zero degrees cold this weekend just to stand around. I’ve been in Europe for 10 days and it has taken that long to meet with people and make all this happen. We will just have to wait and see.”

On Monday, the news filtered through to a waiting world that Senna would race for McLaren in 1993 – the Brazilian is back.

Despite committing to McLaren for 1993, it was the beginning of the end of the partnership for Senna

Photo by: Pascal Rondeau / Getty Images