Ayrton Senna The Rain Master Donington 1993

We are missing TWO Great Ones, these days...

 

Never tire of that.

 

This has to be one of the best & most spectacular races ever.

 

What a great looking track Donnington, I read huge money was spent to get it F1 rated, then never used by F1 again?

They had a club racing fatal there, last year...(or longer, a friend has gifted his old Octane magazines!)

 

What happened at Donnington, how they basically went bankrupt because of a lousy deal with the F1 people, was truly a tragedy.

On topic...

This is always always absolutely amazing. Senna's pass on Wendlinger, then on Hill, absolutely masterful. Then The cherry on top of the cake when he not only passes Prost but just disappears ahead, so quickly...

I miss him. What a driver. The best.

It's about the same difference as if Alonso did that to Hamilton & Rosberg today...

Except that won't happen.

 

Always fun to watch. Thank you for posting.

 

+1 yes great stuff

 

It´s fun to watch but i never thought of it as such an amazing feat...Senna himself regarded the Estoril race as incredibly more difficult...i believe Ayrton had his car ery well tuned for these conditions and that helped him a lot. I believe it´s a lot more impressive to make such progress in a dry track...

 

Senna was really outstanding on that day whilst his great rival Prost was completely wrong-footed.

The Frenchman never fully overcome his aversion of wet conditions and stopped 5 times for tyre changes, never getting the hand of his car.

 

A 4 second lead at the end of lap 2 says it all, an amazing sense of how much grip he knew he had on the car to push it to the limit.

 

That was in my opiniom Prost's biggest fault as a driver, his lack of confidence in the wet....some say he got this way after Didier crashed against him in heavy rain, during Hockenheim practice....

 

Sure, the Estoril race was more difficult, but having the confidence to know exactly what the limits of the car is, in the wet, while overtaking the way he did, and opening up the difference he did so quickly... That is just mastery.

 

Great drive, but it is overrated. His Estoril 85 as well as the MS Spain 1996, Spa 1997, Monaco 1997 and Spa 1998 drives are all more impressive, IMO. He had TC in 1993.

 

The rainmeister...

 

I agree on all points. Plus Senna knew exactly where the grip was on that wet track as he knew it backwards and forwards. He was on a totally different line at every corner cause he knew exactly where the grip was

 

That is part of what makes him a master.

 

The real rain master - Gilles Villeneuve. At the 1979 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, the Friday practice had rain and extremely wet conditions. Drivers went out and pushed their limits, scared themselves silly, went as fast as they dared... then watched as Gilles went out in even worse conditions, ran lap after lap, ending up 11 SECONDS faster than anyone else. His teammate Schechter said "I scared myself rigid that day. I thought I had to be quickest. Then I saw Gilles's time and I still don't really understand how it was possible. Eleven seconds!"

"When we saw him going out in the rain, we said, 'This we've got to see'," renowned F1 journalist Dennis Jenkinson recalled. "Some members of the press, who think they know it all, don't bother going out when it rains. But I was on the corner watching him and all the hardball members of the press were with me. We had to see this. It was something special. Oh, he was fantastic! He was unbelievable!"

Nigel Roebuck was another 'hardballer' who braved the elements and saw the performance first hand.

Gilles Villeneuve won huge respect from all those who saw him compete © Sutton Images
Enlarge

"Gilles was the one bloke who made you go and look for a corner in a practice session, because you knew that where everybody else would go through it as if on rails, Gilles would be worth watching. That day in the rain at Watkins Glen was almost beyond belief. It truly was.

"You would think he had 300 horsepower more than anybody else. It just didn't seem possible. The speed he was travelling at didn't bear any relation to anybody else. He was 11 seconds faster. Jody was next fastest and couldn't believe it, saying he had scared himself rigid! I remember [Jacques] Laffite in the pits just giggling when Gilles went past and saying, 'Why do we bother? He's different from the rest of us. On a separate level'."

On returning to the pits Villeneuve whipped off his helmet and beamed at the assembled members of the paddock, who were looking on in disbelief. "That was fun," he said. "I was flat in fifth on the straight, about 160mph. It should have been faster but the engine had a misfire and was down about 600 revs. But for that I could have gone quite a bit faster, but then maybe I would have crashed."

"Gilles was the last great driver. The rest of us are just a bunch of good professionals." - Alain Prost

Harvey Postlethwaite, who was hired by Ferrari to design the follow-on and much more successful 126C2 that won the Constructors' Championship in 1982, later commented on the 126C: "That car...had literally one quarter of the downforce that, say Williams or Brabham had. It had a power advantage over the Cosworths for sure, but it also had massive throttle lag at that time. In terms of sheer ability I think Gilles was on a different plane to the other drivers. To win those races, the 1981 GPs at Monaco and Jarama — on tight circuits — was quite out of this world. I know how bad that car was."

Senna? He was great in the rain. Schumacher? Not quite as great as Senna, many of his memorable rain drives were when Brawn had called the weather correctly and had set up the spare car for wet weather and Schumacher drove with wet settings when many other drivers were running dry settings. Still, after Senna Schumacher was the best of his era.

Neither of them could have touched Villeneuve in the wet.

 

I agree Senna and Shumi were well below Gilles in the rain, but i don't believe Senna was any better than Shummi...also i think you missed someone else..Jean alesi, he was as good if not better than the other 2 you mentioned, his 1995 suzuka performance was simply out of this world, as well spain 1992.

 

Awesome drive by Senna that day, almost as good as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0B09GdlG1U

Nigel in Ferrari #27 channeling his inner GV....

 

This was épic, i remenber it very well!!!