A post on Twitter a couple of days ago from @AyrtonSenna, showing Ayrton at the wheel of a test-spec McLaren MP4-8 fitted with a Lamborghini V12 engine, reminded me of something I wrote for F1 Racing back in 2007…





LATE summer, 1993. Ron Dennis is being chauffeured in a plutocrat’s barge alongside backer, billionaire and confidante, Mansour Ojjeh. McLaren head

of communications Norman Howell is with them.

A carphone (the latest thing) rings. Half a decade before mobile ubiquity,

very few people have this number. Must be important.

Dennis extends a manicured palm towards the trilling black handset; picks

it up (untwirls the curly cable), places it on his ear.

“Ron, hi,” in soft South American. “It’s Ayrton.”

Senna is in a state of some emotion. He has earlier stepped from the cockpit

of a Lamborghini-engined McLaren MP4-8 ‘hybrid’ and has been beguiled by

the glimpse of a possible future. One with V12 power, a wailing rev-addicted screamer behind his shoulders; the promise of more competitiveness.

More speed.

1993 has been difficult for Senna and McLaren. After three world titles together since ’88, the team has been reeling under blows from the Williams-Renault technical sledgehammer. Senna has nonetheless gladiator’d his way through the year and will end it as runner-up, despite the handicap of a customer Ford V8 weaker not only than the Renault V10, but shy, too, of the similar, but higher-spec, factory Ford motor powering Benetton. But Ayrton Senna, unquestionably still the greatest driver of his day, despite the recent successes of Nigel Mansell (1992 champ) and Alain Prost (who would win the ’93 title), wants more power. And his desire has been piqued by what he has just tasted.

The pungent V12 sculpted onto the proven-excellent MP4-8 tub (designers Neil Oatley, Henri Durand) will, Senna believes, give McLaren the wallop needed

to challenge for the ’94 crowns. It will allow him to re-commit to the team for which he has driven only on a race-by-race basis throughout ’93. It will allow him to ignore the overtures of Frank Williams who craves Senna’s presence

in one of his team’s cars like Senna craves B.H.P.

He begins to lobby. He reminds Ron of the success the team enjoyed with

Honda V12 engines… [Honda’s RA121E 3.5-litre V12, indeed, powered Senna and McLaren to a 1991 title double – the only V12 ever to have won F1 championships.] But it is already too late. A train of events is in place that

will lead to Senna’s departure from McLaren; take him, fatally, to Williams.

Things were so very nearly very different. Dennis, tempted by the giddy

promise of the still-untamed Italian V12 reached agreement in principle with Lamborghini’s owners, Chrysler, for McLaren to run the engines through ’94.

A handshake deal to that effect was made at the ’93 Frankfurt motor show between Dennis, Chrysler president Bob Lutz and Lamborghini F1 chief Daniele Audetto (though Dennis, it would later emerge, never believed the deal had

been ‘inked’). Lutz and Audetto began to make plans on that basis, encouraging engine design chief, mercurial, brilliant Mauro Forghieri, to listen to Senna’s entreaties for a less brutal top end and a fatter mid-range.

He was heeded, of course, because he was Ayrton Senna, triple world champion. Legend. Twenty-five horses, grazing in the rarified pastures at the top end of

the rev range, were culled. But sixty more were found on the lower slopes.

The changes made the engine more driveable; the car faster.

Mika Hakkinen, McLaren’s ’93 test driver before replacing the woeful Michael Andretti for the final three races of the season, and the only man alive to have driven the McLaren-Lamborghini, tested it soon after Senna. Fourteen years on, the experience is still etched into his soul: “I remember that test very clearly – it was a very exciting time. The Ford engine was a good package but we had very high expectations of the V12 power from the Lamborghini and we were right

to – when you put your foot down, you would really go.

“There were a couple of problems, for sure. It was very long, for a start, and that didn’t help the chassis. The fuel consumption was higher and it was a bit too heavy and needed more cooling. But it was a really exciting engine.”

Never more so than one chilly afternoon at Silverstone: “Ha! Yeah… I’ll never forget the feeling of it around there. It was amazing. The power kept on coming. It was fantastic, we were really flying. But on the Hangar straight going towards Stowe, it exploded – I mean really exploded! It was massive, maybe the biggest engine blow-up I ever had. It was actually shocking. Engine bits and pistons were flying past me left, right, everywhere. I could see them coming past my helmet. It was such a big bang, it blew a hole in the floor. Still, it was one of

the most special moments in my F1 career. And what an incredible sound…”

No doubt, the Lambo 3512 wasn’t ready for a championship campaign, but there was time to test and develop. And the chassis was already a honey. Giorgio Ascanelli, then Senna’s race engineer, remembers the all-nighters pulled to graft the V12 onto a monocoque designed for a bijou V8. “It was three months of solid work, in the middle of a championship season: new launch control, revised chassis, gearbox, drive-by-wire… It was a lot of work. Only a great team like McLaren could have done it. But we came out with something pretty special.

It was a bit longer and heavier than the V8 car, but more stable and easier on

its tyres. And it was considerably more powerful.”

It thrilled Hakkinen. It inspired Senna, who wanted to race it straight away, before ’93 was out. If it blew up, so be it. At least he would be quick.

Dennis, though, tough-loving, romantic-but-unsentimental Ron Dennis, was unwavering. The team would finish the season with the Ford motor they’d had

at the start (and Senna would win his last McLaren race – Australia ’93 – brilliantly, from pole). Besides, Dennis, forward-thinking, company-first Ron Dennis, already had other plans. He had conjured a ’94 deal with Peugeot, an ambitious French industrial giant jealous of compatriot Renault’s multiple-title success.

Peugeot came to McLaren with its prototype A6 V10, sackfuls of Francs, and the promise of an intensive development programme. It was a major manufacturer, offering the stability and deep pockets Dennis had pined for since his team’s split with Honda at the end of ’92. Financial inducements made the partnership inevitable, but it was agreed without Senna’s blessing and would incur the undying wrath of Lamborghini/Chrysler management. A brief liaison that could have brought spectacular success ended after a few short months as one of F1’s most acrimonious, though almost overlooked chapters.

When announced, the Peugeot deal caused immediate fall-out. Senna left the team (not solely because of the abortive Mc-Lambo partnership, but he knew

a McLaren-Peugeot would be no match for a Williams-Renault in ’94); Chrysler axed its funding of the F1 project: Lamborghini had to order its factory closed (although under Italian law it remained open for one more season, during which it supplied engines to Larrousse).

A few months on it became clear the McLaren-Peugeot was on course for ignominy as one of the least successful cars the team had ever built. It finished

a distant fourth in the ’94 championship with 42 points, eight podiums, but no wins. The Anglo-French partnership began to fray early, torn by frustrations borne of unreliability and Dennis, Lamborghini’s nemesis, Peugeot’s fleeting darling, began exploring a new relationship, with Mercedes (destined, with bittersweet irony, to merge with Chrysler four years later). Lambo’s Formula 1 operation, emasculated, shuffled into God’s waiting room.

Ayrton Senna was killed on May 1 1994; the Williams-Renault dream expired, morbidly, with his FW16 ricocheting from Tamburello concrete. There are many who remain in F1, close, then, to Senna and close, still, to those involved in the McLaren-Lamborghini affair, who believe that had team and engine builder agreed to race together in ’94, Senna would have stayed on.

They believe he might still be here to speak late and long about his epic duels with heir apparent, Michael Schumacher.