Both Senna and Häkkinen were reportedly very impressed with the car/engine combination, despite the 3512's poor reliability record since its Formula One debut and its poor reliability during the tests (the engine's best result to that point was a lucky 3rd place at the infamous 1990 Japanese Grand Prix, which would ultimately prove to be its best ever result). Häkkinen claimed that during the Silverstone test, one of the engines blew up as he was racing down the Hanger Straight. He claimed that right up to the point of detonation the engine was pushing out more and more power and actually felt much faster than the Ford. He also told that the blow up was very big with bits of the engine actually flying past his helmet. Senna later fueled rumours that the car would be raced during the 1993 season when he reportedly said during testing ""It would be very interesting to race the Lamborghini in Japan"". His belief was that regardless of reliability, the McLaren-Lamborghini would at least be as fast as both the Williams-Renaults and Benetton-Fords who he was struggling to keep up with in races using the customer spec Ford V8 (though Senna won in Japan using the Ford V8 and backed that up with his last ever win in Australia). Senna even allegedly rang Ron Dennis from the pits during the Estoril test (according to reports Dennis took the call in his private limo as he was in England at the time) and told him that he felt that they should seriously think about using the V12 instead of the V8.