Prost and Senna (Part 2)
1984 was a pretty big year, so how about a post only for that season?
The new season arrived and together with the 1984 season, Ayrton Senna, Martin Brundle, and Stefan Bellof joined Formula One, the young guns hungry for a chance to challenge the established stars.
Alain Prost was now in what would be the dominant team for the season: the mighty MP4/2 McLaren-TAG Porsche, driving alongside Niki Lauda.
Lauda was not particularly happy to see a driver who could frustrate his quest for a third title with the same car as him, and he had lobbied the team to retain John Watson. John Hogan, the man behind the scenes and the money at McLaren, told him there was nothing to be done, Watson was gone and Prost was in.
Lauda, as usual, simply put his head down and focused on the business at hand. It was not just the fact that Prost was obviously a much better driver than Watson, and he would have a harder time winning. Lauda was particularly annoyed at giving another driver a title opportunity in the car he had developed, using the engine he had fought to have, even going behind Ron Dennis’ back to get the TAG turbo in the MP4/2.
For the first race of the season, the Brazilian GP (with yours truly in attendance for the first time – thank you, dad!), Michele Alboreto got past the pole sitter, Elio de Angelis, at the start and led the first 11 laps, until his Ferrari started having brake issues.
Lauda took over and held it until Lap 37, when Prost led one just as his teammate retired with electrical trouble. Derrick Warwick took the race lead and held it until Lap 51 when he also retired.
Prost inherited the lead, took it to the end, and crossed the line with just over 40 seconds over Keke Rosberg, bagging the first 9 points of the season. Even with Lauda not scoring, McLaren led after the Brazilian GP. They would take it to the end of the year, no other team having any chance of troubling the eventual champions.
Senna was the first retirement, his engine lasting only 8 laps before his turbo failed, the first chapter of a troubled run of home races for Senna, a sequence of disasters he would only truly shake in 1991, when he would finally win his home race. By that time, the race had moved to Interlagos, and Senna had scored two podiums, had 3 retirements, one disqualification, and one 11th place finish.
But that was long into the future. At that moment, it was a truly terrible start to his life in F1, made worse because Brundle, his F3 nemesis, finished P5 for Tyrrell, scoring points in his first-ever race.
The other promising rookie, Bellof, lasted 3 laps longer than Senna, and was the second car to retire, with throttle issues.
Prost, on the highest step of the podium and enjoying the Rio sunshine under a shower of champagne, was elated to give a big middle finger to Renault.
His old team dropped from second in the Constructors’ Championship, three points behind the champion, to 5th place, without a win for the entire season, finishing more than 100 points behind the dominant McLaren.
To be fair to Renault, Ferrari was 2nd, scoring 57 points, but as McLaren demolished the field, the Scuderia finished 86 points behind the champions.
Want to see how much of a drubbing that season was?
This much.
McLaren started in the lead, thanks to Prost’s 9 points and lack of reliability seeing six different teams in the first six positions, and the gap towards the chasing pack kept increasing until the preposterous final margin. It was a proper destruction of the rest of the field, Ron Dennis’ takeover of McLaren paying dividends in just the second season of the marriage between Project 4 and the team started by Bruce McLaren.
For Senna, the first disappointment would quickly be forgotten, as he would score his first points in the next race and go on to finish higher than both Brundle and Bellof, even before both drivers lost all their points once Tyrrell was disqualified.
Wait, Tyrrell disqualified? Why would you axe a team from the entire season?
Great question, overjoyed you asked that, as it allows us to go on a long tangent.
Ken Tyrrell abhorred turbo engines, and remained adamant that they were illegal under Formula One rules. So it was that his team was the last holdout still using normally aspirated power and was, therefore, extremely disadvantaged against everyone else.
This lack of power would not be such a big deal, however, if the sport had not instituted a minimum weight for the cars. A lighter non-turbo engine would be down on power but would need less fuel, would be lighter and more nimble, and maybe they could compete. As it stood, Tyrrell would have to find a way to circumvent the minimum weight rule to have a fighting chance.
Ken Tyrrell took inspiration from the 1982 brake water cooling trick (that saw Prost inherit the win at the Brazilian GP after Piquet and Rosberg were disqualified, which we talked about in Part 1). With pitstops now happening regularly but refuelling banned, the team installed water tanks in their cars.
The car would be weighed, pass the check, then dump the water to become a lot lighter. Late in the race, the car would make a late stop to replenish the tanks and get back to the minimum weight. If questioned, the argument was that their non-turbo engine was using a water injection system to draw more power, and so the team needed to stop late in the race to make sure there was enough water to avoid a catastrophic failure.
Yes, the Cosworth engine was still as reliable as it had ever been, but it was severely underpowered compared to the new turbo monsters, and it was a nearly plausible argument that the team was pushing their engines beyond what they should, and so they had to worry about failures.
For all races not contested on street tracks, Brundle and Bellof (and after Brundle’s accident at Detroit, Stephan Johansson) were completely outclassed. But, once the race go under way, the light Tyrrell could make time on the heavier turbo cars, and it managed good results to start the year.
Until the system was discovered also at Detroit and the season took a bad turn. The “water injection tanks” would eventually be deemed illegal, and the team’s appeal would also be rejected. As the legal fight went on, the team kept on racing, but it would all come crashing down after the 13th race of the season at Zandvoort.
Once Tyrrell’s appeal was adjudicated, the teams lost all its points, was banned from taking part in the last three races of the season, and both Brundle and Bellof saw their 1984 exploits go up in smoke. The timing would work wonders for Johansson—the first driver I ever met outside a race, while on holiday—, as he would have a car over at Toleman, including taking Senna’s place in the Italian GP, but more on this later.
To this day, most people feel that the harshness of the penalty was mostly because Jean Marie Balestre, the assh, I mean, the president of FISA, wanted to make someone pay for a fuel irregularity which he could do nothing about, as Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham team had run a0 slightly altered mix the previous year which was technically legal.
That and also the fact that he was a power hungry, spoiled, vindictive cretin, who was pissy because Bernie, no saint himself but less bad than Balestre, at least up to that point, had outsmarted him both in the FISA-FOCA war and then with the Brabham championship.
Readers can select which part was more relevant, but it is highly likely that poor Ken Tyrrell paid at least part of the price for Bernie's sins.
On Balestre, we present Exhibit A on my judgement of him, talking to Senna:
And the prosecution rests.
The little whistle at the end, someone thinking “holy crap, that was terrible”, really sells the whole thing.
Tangent over, we can return to the story.
As stated above, the season was dominated by McLaren. Twelve race wins, and only once when one of their cars finished but was outside the Top 3 (Prost was P4 at Detroit, Lauda retired). McLaren had one other "bad" day at Canada, when Nelson Piquet won, but both McLaren drivers were still on the podium.
Apart from those, races ended with a McLaren win. And four out of those 12 were McLaren 1–2 finishes, which was a remarkable feat in an era where reliability played a big part. Lauda failed to score seven times, Prost just six, with both coming out of Belgium and Detroit with zero points.
Lotus’ de Angelis was the driver with the most scoring finishes, but he only managed one win for Lotus and finished 3rd in the Drivers’ Championship, with 30 points (the champion finished with 72).
Toleman was nowhere near the top, but would end the year seventh in the Constructors', on the strength of Senna's 13 points (Johansson would score 3 points In Italy driving Senna's car). Senna ended the season with two sixth place finishes and scored 3 remarkable podiums.
One of those podiums would go down in history as another chapter in the Senna legend, and crucially as the first salvo in the rivalry with Prost.
Fittingly, it came at the most glamorous event of the year: the Monaco Grand Prix.
The weirdest tradition in Formula One, a track which outgrew Formula One almost from the start of the championship back in 1950, the Monte Carlo track saw the first direct battle between Prost and Senna, even if things did not come to blows just yet.
The 1984 race was held in torrential rain. And it is not one of those “yeah, it’s raining hard, but…”. It was a proper downpour, completely drenching the track and making visibility almost non-existent.
On a supremely wet day in the Principality, Senna chased Prost for the win, the mighty McLaren sweating over the lowly Toleman approaching like an out-of-control freight train. Stefan Bellof was chasing Senna with his Tyrrell as well, and he was a threat if any of the two drivers ahead of him should falter, but the up and coming Bellof is usually—and sadly—overlooked when this legendary race is discussed, probably because it would be one of his few highlights in Formula One, as tragedy would soon curtail his promising career tragically short.
The Monaco GP is normally a particularly tough race, as the track is narrow, there are no proper straights for the drivers to relax even for a second, and the turbo cars, with their incredible lag between accelerating and the power arriving to the wheels, made controlling all that power when coming out of each corner a mighty challenge.
Now add very, very little visibility, the aforementioned turbo lag while negotiating tight turns and an extremely hard downhill braking zone for the hairpin and the conditions could not be more perilous.
The race was limited to 20 cars only so that seven drivers were left out, including Bellof’s teammate Brundle. The lonely Bellof Tyrrell would start from P20 and last, while Senna would get going in the middle of the pack after setting the 12th best time in qualifying.
Senna completed Lap 1 in 9th place, Bellof was right behind him in 10th. Senna managed to get past Laffite for P8 on Lap 3, which Bellof only managed on Lap 6. They would climb the rest of the way separated by 1 or 2 cars until Lap 27, when they would be second and third, having dispatched everyone else in their path besides the leader.
Prost had the lead at the start but was passed by Nigel Mansell on Lap 11—the first led lap for the Lion in his career—, before the Briton crashed on Lap 16, with Prost back in front.
On Lap 17, Senna was P3, chasing Lauda, while Bellof was P6 behind Keke Rosberg’s moustache.
On Lap 19, Senna was in second place. On Lap 21, Bellof got Rosberg, six laps later he went past René Arnoux, but they both had gained a place after Lauda’s retirement.
We can see, in the fastest lap plot below, just how much Senna and Bellof were pushing and how much Prost was managing things, trying not to crash, and generally driving as slow as necessary to win.
At the front, Prost had a comfortable lead—if anything could be comfortable on the day—but he had not forgotten that day in Hockenheim when Didier Pironi crashed into him in similar conditions.
Every time he completed a lap, he gesticulated frantically for the race to be stopped. Yes, the approach of Senna and Bellof probably made him worry and gesticulate with renewed vigour, as losing to a Toleman or a Tyrrell in the dominant car of the year would not look good on his resume, but one can also understand why he had no desire to continue driving in the appalling conditions, especially with the race set for 77 laps, which meant, when Bellof took second place, there were still 50 laps to complete.
Senna and Bellof, zero tragedies in their past and finally fighting for a win in Formula One, simply kept going.
Senna was gaining on Prost, Bellof also coming, but still having to cover a lot of ground to reach the fight at the front. The upstart rookies were taking it up to the established powers.
However, on Lap 31, race steward Jackie Ickx decided that the conditions had degraded enough to make it too dangerous to carry on. He stopped the race.
Prost was awarded the victory, while Senna and Bellof completed the podium. Neither rookie was pleased by the result, as they were both certain they could come out on top if the race had run to the end.
We can, however, appreciate what Senna and Bellof did. They romped through the field, surviving until the early end, while many more experienced drivers failed to do so.
Because the race was stopped so early, though, the six top classified finishers were awarded only half points. The 4.5 points Prost would receive for the win would cost him dearly before the year was over. Keep in mind, for later, that should the race have continued and Prost finished in second place, he would get 1.5 points more, six points for a second place finish.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, obviously, and the memory of Pironi's crash was still fresh in Prost's mind.
And we cannot overlook the fact that nothing is ever certain in Monaco, as Senna would prove a few years later while driving for McLaren.
There is also that rumour that Senna’s car had a terminal problem and would not last another 5 laps, so maybe the legend would be indeed very different if Ickx had not stopped the race. And imagine if Bellof lost his first win in Formula One later in the year?
Even if Senna's car had expired, Bellof was coming and Prost would still have to complete the remaining laps holding off another eager rookie, so who knows what could have happened? What-ifs are rarely useful in racing, doubly so at Monaco, but it is an alternate scenario that would have massive implications for Formula One’s history.
Now, it is important to remember that Ickx was probably the worst person in the world to be managing that race if you wanted it to go to the end.
For those not familiar with the original Mr Le Mans, Ickx was a fierce proponent of safety.
He was responsible for the demise of the famous Le Mans Start, where drivers would stand on one side of the road and run to their cars, jump in and start the race because he felt—and was absolutely correct—that it created an enormous and unnecessary risk in a race that has plenty of it.
So it was that, at the start of the 1969 race, Ickx staged a protest. He calmly walked to his car, strapped on his belt, and then started the race. Ominously, while driving in last place in that first lap, Ickx would drive by a fatal accident, and the Le Mans start would never be used again.
The accident with the Porsche 917 of gentleman-driver John Woolfe was terrible, throwing him off the car as he approached Maison Blanche without a seatmate, as he could not clip his on during the first trip down the Mulsanne Straight (sans chicanes). Woolfe had purchased the 917 days earlier and told a friend it was very scary to drive, and it ended in disaster.
He put two wheels on the grass approaching Maison Blanche, lost control of the car and spun. The car hit an embankment and threw him out, the car’s fuel tank landed, already burning, in front of Chris Amon’s Ferrari, which hit it, lodging it underneath the Ferrari 312P. It exploded almost immediately, but Amon managed to activate the car’s extinguisher and exit unharmed. Woolfe, meanwhile, was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
Tragically, that year’s edition of the 24 Heures had already claimed one life during the early practices in March, when Lucien Bianchi, Jules Bianchi’s uncle, had a mechanical malfunction and hit a telegraph pole.
The Le Mans start, incidentally, is why Porsches still have their ignitions on the "wrong" side of the wheel; they put it there so that their drivers could enter the car, put 1st gear in while turning the engine on and get away faster than others.
Back in 1984, it would be tough to imagine an older and more experienced Ickx would let people drive around Monaco in appalling conditions and do nothing. By the time the race was stopped, 7 drivers had crashed or spun out, including Lauda.
The full lap chart tells the story of how many drivers failed to negotiate the conditions.
There are too many retirements for anyone to say this was safe to carry on. This is not an F3 field full of rookies at the start of the season. This was a field with plenty of highly experienced F1 drivers, whittled down to 20 drivers to minimise risks, and still many of them dropped out before 20 laps had been completed.
Hypotheticals aside, it was now an undeniable fact that Senna had proven his talent, and there was no way he would be at Toleman for 1985.
Before the year was over, Senna had signed with Lotus—burning his bridges at Toleman in the process—which did no favours to his reputation as a ruthless negotiator and businessman.
He had told Peter Warr to not announce anything before he had the chance to talk to Toleman, which Warr ignored, making team manager Alex Hawkridge furious. Senna did not complain much, since he had a better car for next season and was confident he was not going back to Toleman.
Hawkridge, though, knew he could hurt Senna in one way: refusing to let him drive. So it was that Johansson got Senna's car for the Italian GP, scoring a P4 in the process.
Senna was back in the car for the last two races, as Johansson was given the team’s second car, which had sat empty since Cecotto’s accident during the British GP weekend. The motorcycle star had broken both legs and would never drive in Formula One again.
McLaren’s dominance carried on until the end of the year, and as the F1 circus headed to Portugal for the final race of the season, Lauda had 66 points, Prost had 62 ½ and the stage was set for a showdown in Portugal.
Nine points for a win, six for second place, four for third, three for fourth, then two and one for P6.
Prost’s best chance was to win and hope Lauda failed to finish P2. And Saturday’s qualifying presented Prost with a golden opportunity to do so. He would start in P2, next to Piquet, who had scored his 9th pole of the season.
Lauda would have to get going from P11 after an engine problem in qualifying left him down on power.
If positions held, Prost could finish second, jump up to 68 ½ points and Lauda would have to climb to 5th place to be champion again.
Oh, remember me saying Balestre was a cretin?
Well, he called Hogan into his office and started detailing the plans for the celebration of Prost's championship. Before the race.
Hogan quickly extricated himself from that tight spot and kept mum on it until after the chequered flag fell.
As it happens, Balestre's plans were unnecessary.
Keke Rosberg had a rocket start—which included putting a half of his car on the grass—to jump from P4 to the lead, Prost lost a place to Mansell. Lauda remained in the mid-pack, carefully negotiating through the slower cars, while Piquet was out of contention after spinning out in the first lap.
Prost found a way past Mansell on the second lap, and at the start of Lap 9, Prost gets past Rosberg into the first corner. Prost was now in place to be champion.
Senna also got past Rosberg and held 3rd place for a few laps until the other McLaren found him.
Lauda made steady progress through the race, and it took him only 2 laps to get past Senna’s Toleman, finding himself in third place with more than half the race to go. Ahead of him was Nigel Mansell, never an easy driver to get around, even if you had a better car, and Lauda had to close in on the Lotus before even thinking about getting around Mansell.
Then Mansell’s front brakes failed, helping Lauda’s cause. Lauda closed in and as Mansell could not stop his car, it was a fairly easy move. But, contrary to his normal style, Lauda pushed hard in this race, even ending up with the fastest lap—by a good margin on Prost—, which Lauda set one lap before passing Mansell.
Prost won the race, as he needed to, but because Lauda drove his McLaren through the field to the finish in second place, he claimed his third title by half a point.
Remember the 4 ½ points Prost got in Monaco and the thinking about 6 points for second in a full race being better than a win with half points? The extra 1 ½ for second place would certainly have been useful here.
Hogan, a man who saw much of F1's history, tells the story of that race as seeing the only other teammate duo after Fangio and Moss that he considered as teammates in the true sense of the word. Lauda kept his celebrations to a minimum out of respect for Prost, going so far as to tell him, on the podium, not to worry because he would be champion the next year.
And Prost, although crestfallen to come up short again, this time by the absolutely thinnest of margins, knew that he was the future of McLaren. He would never again win more races than the champion and still come up short, like he had the previous two years. He won 7 races to Lauda’s 5, both had 9 podiums, and Prost led 345 laps—which pleasantly meant he led 34.5% of the season’s laps—, while Piquet was second with only 241. Lauda, showing Prost how to drive as slowly as required, never started on pole position and led only 168, but still walked away with the crown.
Prost had a magnificent season, no doubt about it, but it was still not enough, by the slimmest of margins, to triumph over the more experienced Lauda, who had a rocky start but once he got by Prost after his home race, never allowed Prost past again.
Prost, however, knew he had won over the engineers, the mechanics, and the support staff at McLaren over the course of 1984. The next season would be an entirely different year, and he was sure he would not have to worry about #1 and #2 status.
Senna would partner de Angelis at Lotus, driving the legendary 97T in John Player Special black and gold livery. The Italian was no slouch, as his 3rd place finish in 1984 proved, and Senna’s season would be a lot tougher than his time at Toleman against Cecotto and Johansson.
Curiosity for the year, the 1984 season saw NINE Italian and seven French drivers take part, a far cry from the dearth of Formula One talent both nations have experienced lately (even though France had a resurgence lately with Gasly and Ocon).