How Senna mastered Donington - with a little help from above

It was 30 years ago today that Ayrton Senna passed four cars on lap one of the 1993 European Grand Prix at a drenched Donington Park, ending up in the lead. Legendary commentator Murray Walker classes it as the best lap he ever saw and few disagree.
 
Senna’s former race engineer James Robinson recalls: ‘Everyone quotes Donington in the rain, but you only have to watch classic examples like that to see what Senna was made of. Even with such self-belief you just don’t overtake four cars on the opening lap of a grand prix in the pouring rain at a track where there are guys who have driven more laps than you.
 
‘But while the rest were thinking, “If I go any faster I’m going to fall off because I haven’t been round here for fifteen minutes and it’s rained heavily since then,” Ayrton could judge the grip level on the outside. He would say: “I’ve driven Donington in the wet so many times in earlier formulae I know where the grip is. It’s not on the racing line when it’s raining. In this corner it’s here, in this corner they resurfaced it two years ago and it’s here.” He’d just put that information together. That’s what made him special.’
 
Senna’s explanation was simpler still. That Easter Sunday, hours before golfer Bernhard Langer declared his US Masters victory was extra special, coming as it did ‘on the day my Lord arose,’ Senna nipped in first. When Brazilian TV asked him how he’d managed to destroy the Donington field, he said: ‘God is great and powerful and when he wants nobody can say anything different.’
 
Einstein was right. God doesn’t play dice; he drives fast cars and plays golf. Moreover Senna had enjoyed another intervention from above a couple of years earlier, as the Brazilian maestro finally took his first ever win at his beloved home circuit of Interlagos…
 
‘Ayrton finished the last seven laps with only sixth gear,’ adds Robinson. ‘Riccardo Patrese’s Williams was chasing us and they didn’t know. Over the radio I heard a couple of comments in Portuguese and Ayrton was sitting in the car praying.
 
‘That was a new experience for me but you soon understand that’s him. His thought process led him to conclude somebody could help him through this and sort it out. That’s what set him apart – his sheer belief in his own ability, that he could do what other people couldn’t do. And, though he’d probably hate me for saying it, the belief that somebody else was looking after him. I’ve never experienced that with any other driver.’

This is an adapted extract from Overdrive: Formula 1 in the Zone