CAR magazine's most iconic features: Russell Bulgin talks F1 with McLaren driver Ayrton Senna. An archive gem from September 1990
Ayrton Senna died in a tragic accident at San Marino on 1 May 1994. Three decades on, we remember the F1
Are you a happy man? Ayrton Senna — pale, gaunt, quiet— looks puzzled: ‘Today, no. Today I am jetlagged. But usually, yes.’ But, in Formula One, you’re perceived as a solitary obsessive with strong religious views. An oddball. Three days after the Mexican Grand Prix, which he led for 60 laps in his Marlboro McLaren Honda before a slow puncture separated the right rear tyre from the rim and cost him the nine points of victory, Senna is testing at Silverstone. He’s tired, but he will talk. Softly.
Mexico marked Senna’s 100th grand prix start. Since his debut in 1984 he has taken 23 race wins, 46 pole positions and the 1988 world championship, displaying a level of competitiveness extraordinary in any sport. How do you maintain this level of intensity on track? ‘It’s a focused situation, where you tend to go deeper and deeper in order to find the next step. The situation takes you to a different world. Because you have this research for going into areas, into places, where you have never been before.’‘That’s exactly right. It’s something that is very lonely in a way, because once you get in a car, on a circuit, it is yourself and the car, nothing else. That situation is extremely absorbing.
‘Because for that moment I was vulnerable for extending my own limits, and the car’s limits: limits that I never touch before. I was not aware, exactly, of what was going on — not that I was not in control — I was just going-going-going. An amazing experience.’ Senna took pole position, on a circuit with an 86mph fastest lap, by the astounding margin of 1.427 seconds.
Senna says nothing for 24 seconds. ‘l don’t really understand what you’re saying.’ The question is repeated. ‘l think anything that you are aware about in your life, and many other things about which you’re not aware, were given to you by Him. Whether you understand, or you don’t, whether you live that way or not, that’s the way it is.
‘It’s something like knowing it’s going to happen before it happens — do you understand? It’s like believing things that you cannot see and feeling things that you are not touching. This is the key, the power, for it — if you have all the other things which you’ve got to have. Otherwise you can believe as much as you want, but it’s not going to work…’
How tough is it to continue at that level? You seem, for example, to have very few bad days. Does this dedication take its toll in other ways? Are you a difficult man to live with?In a sport as demanding as Formula One, how can you be so committed at each race, in every practice session? What about fear? Your pole position lap at Monaco this year was captured by an on-board camera: the combination of aggression and precision was almost frightening to watch.‘If you know why you are doing it, and how you are doing it, then you feel fine. You know the limits and so on. You have it in your hands.
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