From: ali@pyra.co.uk (Ali Shirnia)
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport
Subject: Re: Senna: Love him or hate him
Date: 13 Apr 92 10:49:09 GMT
Reply-To: ali@pyra.co.uk (Ali Shirnia)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Ltd, Farnborough, ENGLAND


johnf@apollo.hp.com (John Francis) writes:

> ....
> the only things Senna managed to do beter than Prost were qualify on
> the pole many more times (flashy, but irrelevant as far as the drivers
> championship goes) and finish in first place a couple of times more often.
> Unfortunately he only finished in the points half as often as Prost.

Flashy? What garbage.

I have a friend of mine who was a McLaren mechanic. he used to work on
Prost's front-left. He is now sponsored by Ron himself in FF. 
The next few paragraphs are from him. If you remember Prost kept complaining
about the lack of performance of his engines compared to Senna because 
he kept getting out-classed by Senna for qualifying by more than 1 second.
Honda used to get really pissed off with Prost, because they use to have
the drivers choose their own engines and all engines were the same, given the
margin of error in engineering, which is very little in F1.

Any way, Prost leaves and enters Berger. My friend now has to work with berger.
One day after a full day testing, Berger comes in with a massive smile on
his face, and a great time. He tells my friend that when you push this car
the chassis becomes very unstable. So you think, this is it. This is the 
limit of this car. But if you keep your head down, kiss your arse goodbye 
and  keep pushing hard and pass that point, the whole car becomes really
stable again. You can get an extra 1 to 1.5 seconds by pushing beyond this
point. And he (Berger) continued: "that is why I think Prost was slower than
Senna".

> 
> I also wonder about the "inferior equipment" claim.  For most of the last
> few years the Honda engine has enjoyed such a power advantage that it has
> been able to overcome the shortcomings of a McLaren chassis. When Mansell
> had the Honda engine Mansell won; when Senna had the Honda then Senna won.

Mansell still managed to loose with the benefit of having Honda pushing
and revving behind him. last year his car, from race 1, to the last race was
at least 1 second a lap faster than Senna's. 

Senna got lucky for the first 4 races and Mansell got unlucky, from then
on Mansell, kept screwing his own chances. According to Hunt, "his car
advantage was the stuff you can dream of".

> Villeneuve, however, managed to be a good driver without such a lousy
> attitude. So did Jim Clark. And Niki Lauda. And . . .  And . . . And . . .

Yeh, I might agree with that, but Senna's attitude does not make him a
worse driver, maybe just someone you may not choose as a friend. From 
distance and in his car, one of the greatest sites to watch.

> ....................  He lost one championship because Goodyear made a lousy
> call on how well the tyres would last; he lost a very good chance at another
> because his pit crew made a complete mess of a wheel change.  And yes, he
> probably lost one because he drove the car too hard and it broke. I still think
> that is better than losing a championship because you are driving the car slowly
> so that it won't fall apart.  After all, Senna did exactly the same in 1989!
> 

What garbage. The only drivers with problems with their tyres in Australia were
Rosberg and Mansell. These two lost out because they were heavy on their
tyres. Every driver in Australia got a lousy call from Goodyear but Rosberg and
Mansell screwed up. Everybody knew Rosberg and Mansell for cooking their tyres.
Rosberg never had his car out of a turn nose first and mansell, who knows.

Championship number three was screwed by Mansell. His team contributed to it
but it was mansell who knocked the engine off in Canada, busy waving to
the crowd on the last lap. It was also mansell who screwed up in Japan.
he blamed his brakes but he had trouble all weekend with his brakes and
should have left some margin for error. Hunt said that he believed the
cause for the accident was that mansell could not control the knock he got
from hitting the curb, behind Senna.

One thing I have to make clear is that although I sound like a Senna fan,
I am not. I just hate over-rated drivers like Mansell. I love watching
Warwick, Prost, Schumacher, Senna, Rosberg and Amati :-)


                                                     
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                   Work sucks, I'm going skiing .....
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport