{"id":10199,"date":"2014-04-29T12:24:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T02:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelwyres.com\/?p=10199"},"modified":"2014-04-29T12:24:19","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T02:24:19","slug":"ron-dennis-the-rare-moment-of-senna-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/2014\/04\/ron-dennis-the-rare-moment-of-senna-weakness\/","title":{"rendered":"Ron Dennis: The Rare Moment Of Senna Weakness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While I was never particularly a fan of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ayrton_Senna\">Ayrton Senna<\/a>, there is no doubt that he ranks with the very best of all time when it comes to racing drivers.  He could make a car do things that nobody could, and that made him special.<\/p>\n<p>As the 20th anniversary of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1994_San_Marino_Grand_Prix\">his death at Imola in 1994<\/a> approaches, I read with great interest <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.formula1.com\/news\/features\/2014\/4\/15769.html\">thoughts from McLaren boss Ron Dennis<\/a> about his time working with Senna between 1988 and 1993.<\/p>\n<p>I found his comments on the famous incident between Senna and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alain_Prost\">Alain Prost<\/a> at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1990_Japanese_Grand_Prix\">1990 Japanese Grand Prix<\/a> most interesting:<\/p>\n<p><center>\n<table border=\"1\" width=\"450\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\">\n  <tr>\n    <td align=\"center\" width=\"450\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"290\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wopi_kqW8Mk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/td>\n  <\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/center>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I looked at the traces (from Senna&#8217;s car), the brake and the throttle pedals, and you didn&#8217;t need to be Einstein to work out what had happened.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;He came back to the pits, and I said, &#8216;I&#8217;m disappointed in you.&#8217; He got it. I didn&#8217;t have to say any more. It was one of his rare moments of weakness. I don&#8217;t think it was anything that he was particularly proud of, but it was the finishing touch when pole position was on the wrong side of the road.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;He said, &#8216;there&#8217;s no way I&#8217;m able to get to that first corner first. If I get to that first corner and I&#8217;m not able to get through, I won&#8217;t be exiting it.&#8217; It wasn&#8217;t a great moment, but he had very few lapses in his life and he was an incredibly principled person &#8211; a great human being.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a fairly clear statement that Dennis knows that Senna deliberately caused this accident.  Most people probably felt so &#8211; (I know I did at the time) &#8211; but to hear this from someone like <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ron_Dennis\">Ron Dennis<\/a> is a stark admission.<\/p>\n<p>Senna &#8211; a genius, but like so many geniuses, flawed.<\/p>\n<p>May he continue to rest in peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I was never particularly a fan of Ayrton Senna, there is no doubt that he ranks with the very best of all time when it comes to racing drivers. He could make a car do things that nobody could, and that made him special. As the 20th anniversary of his death at Imola in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,214,477],"class_list":["post-10199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport","tag-20years","tag-f1","tag-senna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelwyres.com.au\/mwdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}