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<strong>Ayrton Senna Special:</strong> Part 26 - The beginning of an era - Tears in Brazil and Monaco (1988)

Ayrton Senna Special: Part 26 - The beginning of an era - Tears in Brazil and Monaco (1988)

Published on 20 Apr 2019 20:00
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By: Fergal Walsh

It was to be Ayrton's fifth home race at the Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet in Rio de Janeiro. In our previous report, we wrote that the McLaren was the fastest in the first test. Although the team was not well prepared for the first Grand Prix, it was clear that the McLaren-Honda was the right combination.

In qualifying Ayrton bagged pole position, having already been the fastest in every practice session. His lead over Nigel Mansell's naturally aspirated Williams-Judd was more than half a second. Teammate Prost was six tenths behind in third place. Despite the pole position, the Brazilian was not at all satisfied with the car. During the warm-up on Sunday, which was done in wet conditions, Ayrton was again the fastest. Ayrton was hopeful to win his home race for the first time on Sunday afternoon. His best performance in Rio de Janeiro was in 1986 when he finished second in the Lotus-Renault.

When he put his car on the starting grid, Ayrton realised that there was a problem with the gearbox. He went back to the garage and decided to start in the spare car, but it was set up for Prost. The advantage for Ayrton was the problem of Ivan Capelli on the starting grid which caused the start of the formation lap to be interrupted. After the race started and everyone had passed the exit of the pit lane, Ayrton started his race. At the start Prost took the lead and Ayrton drove from 24th to 18th place in the first three laps. After 13 laps he was already seventh. It was going to be a big challenge to catch up and Ayrton showed that he would not be inferior to Alain Prost in terms of speed.

Senna caught up with his 'nemesis' Nelson Piquet shortly afterward. Ayrton climbed up to second position when he made a pit stop. A long and difficult stop caused Ayrton to fall back to sixth place. During the pit stop one of the mechanics had already pointed out that the cooling system on the left side of the car was faulty. Two laps after Ayrton left the pits, the 30th lap, an official entered the track with a black flag and a license plate.

That sign said #12 and it meant that Ayrton was taken out of the race by the race officals. Ron Dennis was sure at the time that McLaren had carried out the car-swap according to the rules, but the race management didn't see it that way. Ayrton's official disqualification was due to the fact that "car number 12 did not comply with the start procedure". Ayrton finally dropped out and the race was won by Alain Prost.

"It is clear that this is a great disappointment", he told the Brazilian press. Ayrton didn't want to get many more words out of it.

Monaco

After winning the San Marino Grand Prix, Ayrton returned to his hometown as the defender of the title of this race. Ayrton, who won the race in a Lotus Honda in 1987, was a favourite of the bookmakers. On Saturday afternoon he drove to an incredible pole position time of 1:23.998. The result was not the most shocking, but the margin with teammate Prost was. No less than 1.427 seconds was Ayrton faster. The Brazilian drove as if he came from another planet. Senna described his sessions as a build-up to Sunday's race as an incredible experience.

Senna was the fastest during the race on Sunday. Berger and Prost were not involved at first. This would be different later on. Ayrton drove away from the field and had a lead of 50 seconds at the start of the 54th lap. This was also the lap where Alain Prost passed Gerhard Berger for second place. After Ayrton knew that Prost had got by Berger he started to drive even faster. The Brazilian set the fastest lap after fastest lap and was determined to humiliate his French teammate. Ron Dennis saw it all happening from the pit wall and decided to tell Ayrton on the radio that he had to slow down because there was a 1-2 awaiting of the team. Senna responded and saw his margin decrease by six seconds within a few laps on his pit board.

In the 67th lap, Ayrton lost his concentration at Portier, the bend in front of the tunnel. He drove his McLaren into the wall and damaged his front suspension. The disappointment could be seen in Ayrton's face. He then left for his apartment and was only discovered late in the evening by Jo Ramirez.

"I kept calling the apartment, but he didn't answer the phone. At 22:00 hours the phone was answered by a Brazilian woman who used to take care of the apartment. In Portuguese, I said that I knew Ayrton was there and I wanted to talk to him. She insisted that he wasn't there, but I said I knew he was. He just didn't want to talk to anyone, but I knew I had to talk to him. Eventually he came to the phone and he was still crying. He said he didn't know what was happening." After Ramirez trusted him, Ayrton mercilessly retaliated. He won six of the next eight races and would win all the races at Monaco for the rest of his career.

The theories

There are three theories about what happened that Sunday in Monaco:

1. Ayrton understeered into the corner and ended up next to the racing line. That's why he crashed into the guardrail on the left side.
2. He hit the guardrail on the right side. He had too much damage and couldn't stop the car, so he crashed into the guardrail on the left side.
3. He would have had a flat tire and would have been unable to make the turn.

Theory 1 can be rejected. There were two black stripes of braking on the back of the car. These are not the signals of a driver whose car combs with understeer.
Theory 2 comes closest. It looks like Ayrton was indeed too far on the inside and hit the guardrail. Also the damage on the right side of the nose is an indication that this option is the most logical one.
Theory 3 is one of the possibilities since on the picture you can see that Ayrton has a flat left rear tire. However, it can also be rejected because of the skid marks behind the car. A car with a puncture is no longer lying horizontally on the asphalt and therefore two identical skid marks are no basis for this theory.

The official failure was finally announced by McLaren as a concentration error.