Monaco Grand Prix: Reliving Ayrton Senna’s 1988 Qualifying and Race

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: May 15, 2014

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Today marks 26 years since the Monaco Grand Prix of 1988, the weekend which saw Ayrton Senna, the three-time Formula One World Champion, achieve the one thing that all athletes seek to achieve in their chosen sport: perfection.

It was the event in which Senna truly, after dropping several hints in the four seasons since his F1 debut, announced his arrival on the world stage.

The Brazilian out-qualified Alain Prost, his McLaren teammate, by a margin of 1.427 seconds around the streets of Monte Carlo.

It is often said in F1 that the most accurate measurement of a driver's true ability is his results in comparison to his teammate, who has access to an identical car.

This is amplified in qualifying, when cars are trimmed down, fitted with the fastest tyres and given lowest fuel load with the aim of posting the quickest possible lap time.

It is even more significant at a street circuit such as Monaco, where the barriers are threats rather than safety mechanisms and where the driver, rather than his car's aerodynamic efficiency, is the decisive factor.

That the 28-year-old Senna, with only seven grand prix victories under his belt, managed to out-qualify the 33-year-old Prost, a winner of 29 races, two world championships and with four more years of experience to rely on, was staggering.



Senna's complex personality and poetic description of that lap, arguably the greatest in the history of Formula One, has left what the Brazilian meant by his lack of "conscious understanding" open to interpretation.

Some, as BBC Sport's Andrew Benson has referred to, have claimed that the Brazilian had something of an out-of-body experience as he waltzed his McLaren MP4/4 around the French Riviera—but that theory is almost certainly incorrect.

Instead, Senna experienced a relaxed intensity, a calm ferociousness, which allowed him to disregard the ex...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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