MOTORSPORT: 20 years since Senna's last victory

It was the 1993 Australian GP in Adelaide. As a race it was far from the best of GPs, but it was special for many reasons. And it was to become more memorable, as six months later Senna was dead -- killed in that horrific, haunting crash at Imola in Italy.

In the Adelaide race of 1993, Senna annihilated his arch-rival Alain Prost, whose Williams-Renault seat he was to take for the '94 season following the Frenchman's retirement.

The margin was less than 10 seconds but Senna had played Prost and his teammate Damon Hill on a break, even though the best laps of the Williams pair had been way quicker than Senna's in his McLaren-Ford.

The weekend was quintessential Senna:  pole position in a car that had no right to be there, utter dominance of the race, yet not the fastest lap. Only 19 times in his 161 GPs did Senna claim the fastest lap, yet so often he dictated the terms of races.

Qualifying was his specialty -- a then-record, at the time of his death at just 34 years of age, of 65 pole positions. And 41 victories: 10 fewer than Prost and 50 less than Michael Schumacher subsequently ended on.

Yet Senna remains in so many minds the best, above not only Schumacher and Prost but Juan-Manuel Fangio and Jim Clark.

Senna's rivalry with Prost took F1 to its greatest heights as a global sporting spectacle. So often the competition between the mesmerising Senna and ‘Professor’ Prost was so bitter (primarily because of Senna's uncompromising aggression), but the ice was broken on the Adelaide podium that Sunday afternoon of November 7, 1993... On Senna's terms, as it always had to be with the Brazilian.

This correspondent's fondest memory in a life of watching and reporting on sport was seeing Senna pour champagne from the podium down the throat of Jo Ramirez below, then dropping the empty magnum to the jovial Mexican.

Ramirez, the long-time McLaren team co-ordinator (after having worked with his countrymen Rodriguez brothers, Ricardo and Pedro, Brazil's first F1 world champion Emerson Fittipaldi and later Mika Hakkinen), had achieved the impossible -- being a wonderful friend and confidant to both Senna and Prost throughout their long feud, initially as teammates.

Even though as a Collingwood supporter I have had the thrill of witnessing the Magpies win two AFL premierships, the moment that comes closest to the joy of that Adelaide celebration was 10 weeks later in '93 seeing the Brazilian soccer team, after winning the World Cup, hoist a banner proclaiming: "SENNA. Together we accelerate to a fourth world championship."

This week I had the privilege of viewing, even holding, the magnum from which Senna sprayed the champagne in Adelaide in '93. Signed by him, it's in the possession of a mate (who shall remain nameless for security and privacy reasons), a gift from Ramirez.

While my memories of that '93 race and podium are exceptionally fond, flicking through Ramirez's book, Memoirs of a Racing Man, I came across his fuller recollections, so it's best that the story be recounted in his eloquent words.

"Adelaide was the final race of the season and probably the most emotional F1 weekend of my life, as there were so many different milestones: Ayrton’s last race in the McLaren; Alain Prost’s last ever race;and at the time we [McLaren] were neck and neck with Ferrari with 103 GP wins each," Ramirez said.

"If we won this race we’d automatically become the most successful F1 team in history and, of course, we were more than keen to achieve this.

"There was no doubt about it – it was never going to be the same at McLaren without Ayrton Senna.

"Even he was apprehensive about joining another team purely because they had a better car, when deep inside himself he knew we were the better team.

"He put his [McLaren] MP4/8 on pole, the first for a Ford-engined car in 10 years, and at the start line he called me over to the cockpit, apparently to do up his belts, which I thought was strange as he always did the last little pull himself using two hands.

"As I came close to him I realised that this wasn’t what he wanted. He said: ‘It’s a very strange feeling for me to do this for the last time in a McLaren.’ And I replied: ‘If it’s a strange thing for you, just imagine how hard it is for us. I don’t need to tell you how important this win is. If you win this one for us I’ll love you forever.’

"Ayrton grabbed my arm very hard and I saw tears in his eyes!

"Damn it! I got so worried that I’d made him emotional just before the start, but like a good Latin he was a very emotional man and always coped with it.

"And he won. McLaren was the most successful F1 team [a 'title' Ferrari has reclaimed since] and Prost was second on the podium.

"Two weeks earlier, in Japan, they’d also finished in the same places, and Prost had offered to shake hands at the press conference, but Ayrton didn’t even look at him.

"Alain even thought that they should exchange helmets after the last race of the season, in Australia, which would have been a really nice gesture, but after Ayrton’s coolness in Japan he forgot about it.

"But in Adelaide they did shake hands, to the smiles of the whole world.

"Ayrton was pleasant and warm, maybe because it was his idea or because Prost was no longer his worst ‘enemy’ on the track.

"Tina Turner gave a concert after the race, to which we all went, and during her performance she dragged Ayrton on to the stage and sang Simply the Best to him.

"Needless to say, it brought the house down!

"That evening we had a team dinner in the Trattoria, an Italian restaurant in Adelaide, to say goodbye to the great champion, and to celebrate being the most successful F1 team of all time.

"Ayrton was with his girlfriend, Adriane, and I presented him with a steering wheel from one of his victories... I also reminded him that although he was only second in the 1993 championship he’d won five races in places and conditions where power wasn’t an issue, only driver ability.

"Therefore, he was still the best.

"I ended up saying: ‘Three world championships [in 1988, '90 and '91], 35 Grand Prix wins, 47 pole positions and 447 championship points with McLaren. If you think you can do better anywhere else, you’re welcome to try!’

"A truly remarkable weekend – and the end of an era."

Today, with a few mates, I intend to visit the unobtrusive Senna memorial in the Adelaide parklands on the outside of the kink at turn one of the street circuit that hosted 11 GPs from 1985 to 1995, a shorter version of which now hosts the opening of the V8 Supercar Championship while Australia's F1 World Championship round is run at Melbourne's Albert Park.

Since Adelaide's GP days and Senna's death there has been the reign of Michael Schumacher, winner of seven world titles, then the emergence of Fernando Alonso and now Sebastian Vettel.

Still just 26, Vettel is already only four wins short of Senna's 41 and, in Red Bull cars that are the product of designer Adrian Newey's genius, a four-time world champion.

Vettel may yet rewrite all the record books. Newey already ranks him in the top three or four F1 drivers of all time.

But is he, or will he be, better than Senna?

For many of us, never... Because Senna was Simply the Best.

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