Motor Sport Great Read

Lap of the Gods: Ayrton Senna's stunning start at Donington '93From the archiveAyrton Senna by Alain ProstFrom the archiveRoebuck: 'Senna was the most complex character I ever encountered in F1'

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 05:10:00 GMT

The image is clear in my mind's eye: a ball of first-lap spray containing two Williams-Renaults, Karl Wendlinger's Sauber, Michael Schumacher's Benetton and Ayrton Senna's trim McLaren MP4/8 tagging on at the back. When the cars reappeared about 90 seconds later, the Brazilian led by several lengths and only Wendlinger had gone missing — harpooned by Senna's team-mate Michael Andretti, although by then the Brazilian had been well clear of both. There were few giant trackside screens in those days, so you had to use your imagination to fathom out what had just happened. And bear in mind that a McLaren-Cosworth wasn't really what you needed in 1993. "I'm not sure," says McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh (now team principal, then operations director), "that I ever saw a Renault power curve in period, but we felt we were about 50bhp in arrears."
Senna had won the previous race in Brazil, which was also fairly wet, but lagged during Saturday's dry qualifying session at Donington, when the Williams FW15Cs of Alain Prost and Damon Hill were more than a second clear of anything else, with Schumacher third ahead of Senna. "The whole tone of the weekend became Ayrton v Alain Prost," says Whitmarsh, "and that was quite personal, given their fraught, well-documented history. Alain was a great, great driver, but had a Renault-powered Williams while we were running a Cosworth with wire springs rather than pneumatic valves. It was a plain customer V8 and not the latest specification Benetton was using.
"Thanks to Sega sponsorship, Williams had Sonic the Hedgehog logos on its car, so after Brazil we put a squashed hedgehog decal on the side of ours as a bit of an in-joke."

It was swiftly apparent that a second might soon be needed.
Senna dealt quickly with Schumacher and Wendlinger, passing them before and through the Craner Curves, then outbraked Hill into McLeans and went tearing after Prost. The Williams wasn't particularly user-friendly in the conditions, both drivers reporting that their cars were locking the rears during automated downchanges, but that hardly explained the ease with which Senna dispatched his nemesis at the Melbourne hairpin. By the lap's end he was six tenths clear.
Then as now one of the lynchpins of McLaren's design team, Neil Oatley was watching from the pit garage. "We could hear fragments of commentary," he says, "including the words Wendlinger' and 'Andretti', so I assumed they'd gone off. I remember being quite staggered at the size of Ayrton's lead. He'd only passed Prost a couple of corners before the finishing line, but such was his advantage that I initially thought Alain must have spun. Ayrton looked really comfortable from that point on."
I was watching from the inside of Redgate, with fellow journalists Paul Fearnley, Mark Skewis and David Phillips, the latter over from America to write a piece on Andretti. As the clamour subsided in the wake of the cars' second passage, David's voice — "Um, did anyone see Michael?" — provided a melancholic contrast to the excited chatter.

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"Honestly, it's very difficult for me to talk about Ayrton, and not only because he's not here any more. He was so different, you know, so completely different from any other racing…
October 1998 Issue
By Nigel Roebuck
"There was a great deal of fuss about Ayrton leading," Phillips says, "and I assumed I hadn't noticed Andretti in all the excitement. Next time around, though, he clearly wasn't running so I trudged away to find him. I wanted to stay and watch, but had a job to do. I didn't have the right pass to get into the pits, but eventually talked my way into the McLaren garage and found Michael. He was very hooked up in the race, though, because the team wanted him to observe what was happening and it wasn't easy for him to talk. We eventually agreed it would be simpler if I went to see him in the States! And anyway, I was keen to get back outside to watch the action.
"That's when I was grabbed by Michael's then w...

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Working for Eddie Jordan: 'He shut the door in my face. I've worked there ever since'Related articleEddie Jordan obituary: F1's last rock 'n' roll team bossEddie Jordan the managerRelated article'I had my first F1 car and no money': Eddie recalls birth of Jordan 191 — 30 years onJordan joins, and rocks, the establishmentFrom the archiveJordan 198: the car that carried Damon Hill to Belgian GP victory'Eddie was always top dog'Eddie the dealmakerRelated articleEddie Jordan might be gone, but he's still the inspiration for F1 dreamersRelated articleThe billionaire Trump associate who bought Jordan F1 team — and turned a quick profit

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 09:48:57 GMT

The death of Eddie Jordan has prompted some impressive tributes from former drivers and paddock contemporaries. But what was it like to work for the colourful Irishman – and how good a leader was he?
Few knew EJ better than Andy Stevenson, who joined him as an F3 mechanic towards the end of 1987. Some 38 years later Stevenson is still at what is in effect the same team as sporting director of Aston Martin, one of several employees who has remained on board what was originally Jordan GP.
In 1987 Stevenson was working for the Magnum F3 outfit when team manager Bosco Quinn left to rejoin Eddie Jordan Racing, winners of that year's British title with Johnny Herbert. Quinn was keen for Stevenson to follow him to Jordan.
"He called me up and said do you want a full-time job working for the British F3 champions?," Stevenson recalls. "I jumped at the chance and went to Silverstone one evening to have an interview with Bosco.
"He said, 'I know what you're like, I know your skillset and your attitude.' And towards the end of the interview he said, 'You've got a job. This is how much we're going to pay you.'
"Then Eddie came in. I'd never met him before. He said, 'Bosco, who's this c***?' Bosco said, 'It's Andy, I've just offered him a job.' He said, 'Don't hire him, I don't like him, I don't like the look of him. He doesn't belong here.'
"To be honest at the time I was a bit star struck, because Eddie was a big name in motor sport already by then, he was manager of some successful F1 drivers, and he had been around a while. We all knew who he was.

"I turned up for work for my first day on the job, and the office was still locked because I got there nice and early. Eddie was the first guy who turned up. I introduced myself to him, and he literally turned around and said, 'What the f**k are you doing here? I told Bosco not to hire you.'
"I thought he must be joking, but he wasn't. I went to follow him in, and he said, 'No, f**k off,' and shut the door in my face. So I sat in my car, and 10 minutes later, Bosco arrived. I told him, 'Eddie said I haven't got a job', and he just said, 'Ignore him, come in with me'. So that was my introduction to Eddie. And I've been working there ever since…"

Obituaries
Eddie Jordan, who has died aged 76, was one of the biggest characters in Formula 1: a charismatic team boss to whom wheeling and dealing with sponsors came naturally; an incisive and unbridled TV pundit; and a man who remained a mover and shaker in the paddock until the very end
20th March 2025
By Damien Smith
Stevenson soon found out how Jordan tried to get the best out of his employees.
"I was only a young kid, and I always felt like Eddie was picking on me," he recalls. "He'd ask me what I was doing every single day, he'd ask me what my plan was every single day. 'What are you going to do that's better? How are you going to make the cars go faster?' And I found it quite tough.
"As you grow up you learn to understand these things. What Eddie was actually doing and what he did with everybody, he was finding the best way to motivate me. And with Eddie, he knew if he motivated you, he got the most out of you, so he got the most value.
"It also meant the team was as strong as possible. And the people that always hung around the team, stayed with the team and worked with Eddie, were those that could react and could dig deeper and improve themselves.
"Some would say because he didn't want to pay the big bucks, he'd hire people, and he'd mould them."
"He had this ability to spot potential, and not only in drivers, but in staff as well. Mechanics, designers, commercial staff, press, he would spot potential in them, and he would extract that potential. Some would say because he didn't want to pay the big bucks, he'd hire people, and he'd mould them.
"He would make you feel more confident in yourself and a stronger person. And to this day I still get up every day trying to do a better job than I did the day before."
Anyone who spent any time ar...

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Emerson Fittipaldi: Young gun, old masterFrom the archiveLotus 72: the most successful GP car ever?From the archiveThumbs up from Emerson Fittipaldi as he's reunited with title-winning Lotus 72

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 07:41:00 GMT

Emerson Fittipaldi's language dates him, reminding you of a time in motor-racing more violent and dangerous, yet also gentler, less hard-nosed. 'Dice', for example, is a favourite word of his, yet it has fallen into disuse in contemporary Formula One. These days the drivers tend to refer to 'a fight' or 'a battle', which is ironic, really, when one considers that the potential consequences are so much less than in the days of the simple 'dice'.
"People ask me about my career," says Fittipaldi, "but, really, I had two completely separate careers. When I retired from F1, at the end of 1980, I thought I was retiring from driving for good. By 1984, though, there I was, on the grid at Indy."
His rise in motor-racing was swift. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1946, he made a name for himself in local karting and touring car events, and by 1969 had moved to England, where he so impressed in Formula Ford, and then F3, that by mid-1970 he had been invited by Colin Chapman to join the Lotus F1 team. In the German Grand Prix, only his second race, he finished a remarkable fourth in a Lotus 49.
This car was obsolete by now, and for the Italian GP, at Monza, Emerson was entered in a 72, Chapman's latest masterpiece, and the car with which team leader Jochen Rindt was on course for the world championship.
It was my first year in F1, and I quickly began to realise how fragile life was
"On the first day of qualifying, I crashed – and it was a huge accident. I just looked in the mirrors, because Jack Brabham was coming up behind me, and I missed my braking point – when I looked back, there was Ignazio Giunti's Ferrari in front of me. I went over the back of it, landed on the sand, went over the bank, and into the trees. The toughest thing, though, was to walk back to the pits and tell Colin what had happened.
"That car was going to be Jochen's for the following day, the Saturday. It was brand-new, and Colin had wanted me just to bed everything in, but now it was destroyed. He asked me what had happened, and I told him: I was 100 yards deeper into the comer than I should have been. We were running without wings, looking for better straight-line speed, and… I just locked up, and hit Giunti. I had to be honest, and say that I just screwed up. Then, in the afternoon Jochen had his accident."
In the final qualifying session, approaching Parabolica, the corner at which Fittipaldi had crashed the day before, Rindt's Lotus suffered a mechanical failure (almost certainly a broken front brake shaft), plunged off the road, and hit a guard-rail post at more than 150mph.
En route to hospital, he died.
For Emerson, not yet 24, and on the cusp of his F1 career, this was a massive blow. Rindt, as well as being his team-mate, was a man he had idolised.
"Emotionally, it was devastating," he says. "Very tough. I had breakfast with Jochen that morning in the Hotel de la Ville in Monza, and he invited me to drive for his F2 team the following year – he and Bernie Ecclestone were going to have this team between them. I said, 'Sure, I'd love to drive for you', and he said, 'OK, well, we'll do the contracts later' – and a few hours after that he was dead. It was my first year in F1, and I quickly began to realise how fragile life was – the odds on getting killed were so high back then. I'm so happy to have survived."
Naturally, the remaining Lotus cars were withdrawn from the race at Monza, and Chapman did not take his team to the next grand prix, in Canada, either. On the horizon loomed Watkins Glen.

"After Monza, there was a month with a lot of pressure," says Fittipaldi. "First, Colin didn't know if we were going to the States or not. Finally he called me, and said, 'Emerson, I'd like you to go to Watkins Glen as number one driver', and for me that was a big surprise."
What happened when they got to the Glen, he was expecting even less. First, he qualified a superb third, behind only Jackie Stewart's Tyrrell and Jacky Ickx's Ferrari. And then he won the race, on...

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Foe and Friend: Knowing James HuntFrom the archiveJames Hunt and Hesketh: The Unlikely LadsFrom the archiveNiki Lauda Vs James Hunt: Opposites attackFrom the archiveHow McLaren crafted James Hunt's title-winning, underrated M23 F1 carDSJ on…

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 07:00:00 GMT

James Hunt was the first Grand Prix driver I really disliked.
It was, I suppose, a result of me being a member of the establishment, schooled in manners and diplomacy by Bruce McLaren. And if James specialised in anything apart from driving very fast, it was tweaking the nose of the establishment. He flatly refused to conform. He had surfed into Formula 1 on the foaming Hesketh champagne wave. The portly, wealthy young Lord Hesketh had come up through the proper schools, so he knew how to behave. It amused him to see the outrage in the paddocks of the world when he arrived with his helicopters and Rolls-Royces.
James was his perfect driver.
After the Hesketh team withdrew from F1, James was ideally placed when Emerson Fittipaldi suddenly announced that he was leaving McLaren. Team boss Teddy Mayer was a member of the establishment brigade and Hunt probably didn't come very high on his list of prospective drivers; it was rather as Nigel Mansell would come to McLaren 20 years later. Hunt's advantage was that he was the only available driver with any form, and team sponsor Marlboro was happy to have him on board. Mayer and Hunt rode with an uneasy alliance that stormy season of 1976, which ended in Japan with an enraged Hunt shouting abuse at Mayer at the end of the race in which he had clinched the World Championship. James was under the impression that Teddy had given him wrong pit signals and lost him the title — instead of winning it for him!

The Sunday after that wet race in Japan I was back home in East Horsley, Surrey when the telephone rang just before lunch. It was a publisher who said he had Hunt in his office and would I be interested in writing a book with James on his championship victory? I said I wouldn't. Surprised, the publisher wanted to know why. I said I thought writing books was a chore, there wasn't enough money in it, and besides, I didn't like James Hunt. There was a long pause, and then the publisher said he thought he might be able to do something about the money. He offered £3500. To me in 1976 that was a king's ransom. But there was a catch — the book had to be completed in two weeks and James would be at his home in Marbella during that fortnight. I asked him to phone back after lunch.
My wife Sandra agreed that it was worth me being away for 14 days to earn that much money. When the publisher phoned back for my decision I took a deep breath and said his fee wasn't high enough. He immediately increased it by £1000 and I immediately accepted.
I flew to Malaga where James had booked me into the Marbella Club. We talked and taped in the mornings, and I transcribed and wrote in the afternoon and into each evening. So much for the delights of Marbella — I never saw more than the walls of my room. To try and speed up the process James arranged for an English secretary to transcribe the tapes. I told her I wanted to know exactly what James said, not what she thought he said. It was taking me an hour to transcribe a tape, but this poor girl spent an entire morning on one tape and phoned in tears to say she'd only transcribed two pages.

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It looked like an extravagant joke, an extended April Fool's stunt played by a bunch of ex-public schoolboys with more money than sense. It ended, as everyone had predicted, in…
June 1997 Issue
By Shaun Campbell
"What's the problem?" I asked, puzzled. "He never completes a sentence," she sobbed. "I have no idea what he's talking about…" I listened to a tape I was working on and realised she was right. I had been automatically finishing sentences for him, the way I did with Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme when I used to write their columns.
Seven days after agreeing to do the book I was back in London with the completed manuscript. The deal had been one-third payment on signing the contract, one-third on delivery of the manuscript and the final payment on the publisher's acceptance. The book was completed so quickly that I received all the money while my s...

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Gerhard Berger: Nigel Roebuck's LegendsFrom the archiveGerhard Berger: 'The risks were a turn-on for me. I was always looking for the edge'From the archiveDouble trouble: Berger on Alesi

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 07:30:00 GMT

A couple of days before the Revival Meeting at Goodwood, BMW held a splendid lunch in honour of Gerhard Berger, who – for the moment – has left the world of Formula 1 after 20 years, first as a driver, then as BMW's competitions director. To commemorate the occasion, we were each given a model of the Benetton B186-BMW in which Berger won his first grand prix, in Mexico in 1986.
"Ha! I remember this car. Fantastic horsepower. I really loved the turbo era, particularly with qualifying boost: top of the hill at Monaco, into Casino Square, and you got wheelspin in top gear, even in the dry.
"We had a good season with that car, but it could have been better. They slowed us down the whole time because the new concept of engine — laid on its side in the Brabham — did not work and so they never gave us the power because we would have been far ahead and, politically, they could not have the old engine in front of the new one."
It was that kind of occasion, a time for reminiscing. And it dawned on Gerhard that he was talking about nearly 20 years ago, a worry for one who always claimed to have little or no interest in the past. The following day, he was due to handle a variety of different machines at Goodwood: Nick Mason's 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, Lord March's '63 Ford Galaxie and — undoubtedly closest to his heart — the ex-Sheene Yamaha 500 of '81: Barry, who died earlier this year, was among Gerhard's dearest friends.
"I've never really been into 'old cars'," he grinned, knowing his words would appal us, "but people say this GTO is really special. What's it look like? It's an open car, or what?" To his delight, we rolled our eyes in horror. "What I am really worried about is damaging it," he went on. "Nick's a good guy, and they tell me a GTO is worth millions." Indeed so, we said.
A couple of days later, though, I watched him at Goodwood, getting the hang of the car, drifting it beautifully through St Mary's, and clearly enjoying himself. "It's lovely to drive, I must say. Beautifully balanced. The most difficult thing was getting used to shifting gears again — it's a long time since I had to do that in a racing car."

Berger retired from driving at the end of 1997, a year which contained a great deal of personal trauma. Contracted to Benetton once more, at midseason he missed three races following surgery for a persistent sinus problem, and then his father, to whom he was very close, was killed in a light aircraft accident. Gerhard returned to the cockpit at Hockenheim, awash with emotions of every kind, not least a determination to silence those who murmured he was past it. This was the old Hockenheim, with its long, flat-out stretches and fast chicanes: Berger started from pole and dominated the German Grand Prix. "He may be the oldest guy in F1," Martin Brundle commented admiringly, "but he's still the bravest."
"That was a very special race for me," said Gerhard. "All that weekend I felt I was somewhere else – this speed was just coming, coming, you know, and I didn't know from where. There was so much in my mind – losing my father, and the fact that no-one believed in me any more. Everybody was saying, 'Yeah, he's a nice guy – but why doesn't he stay at home now and let some young guy drive his car?' I was very pissed off: it was time to remind everyone of what I could do.
"By that time, I already knew I was going to stop at the end of the year, and actually what I really wanted to do was go up to the podium and say goodbye. But then I realised how much money I would lose by doing this, and I wasn't a strong character at that moment. On the one hand, I was angry with myself for being weak: I should have said, 'Okay, who cares about three million dollars?' But on the other hand, I said, No, no, no, I'm not giving that up!"
If his first and last F1 wins came at the wheel of a Benetton, the meat of Berger's career was spent with Ferrari, for whom he drove in 1987-89 and '93-95, and McLaren, where he partnered Ayrton Senna in '90-...

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