

Picture the scene: Eddie Irvine has just taken a brilliant sixth-place finish in his maiden Grand Prix, and having changed out of his overalls, he’s now sat in the Jordan team’s rather rudimentary hospitality cabin in the Suzuka paddock, savouring the moment.

Irvine has worked hard to get to this point, a portion of his personal savings having helped him secure his F1 chance off the back of several years of F3000 competition in Europe and Japan.

But whilst the Ulsterman can afford to be quietly satisfied with his debut F1 outing, not everyone is happy. In fact, a raging three-time world champion is on the war path, and Irvine is his prime target.

Suddenly the door to the Jordan unit swings open and in marches Ayrton Senna, followed swiftly by a string of worried faces from McLaren, including the Brazilian’s race engineer Giorgio Ascanelli and the team’s director of communications Norman Howell.

Only moments earlier Senna had collected the winner's trophy, but now, after being egged on by old pal Gerhard Berger, he’s here to give the grid’s newest member a thorough dressing down - and all because of a relatively minor racing incident.

“What the **** do you think you were doing?” says Senna, who’s already lambasted Irvine in the post-race press conference, by way of an opening comment.

“I was racing,” comes the Jordan driver's blunt reply.

“You were racing?” says an incredulous Senna, seemingly taken aback by Irvine’s less than apologetic response. “Do you know the rule that you're supposed to let the leaders come by when you're a backmarker?”

“If you were going fast enough, it was no problem,” comes the quickfire retort.

This ‘discussion’, recorded for posterity by journalist Adam Cooper, would continue for some time…