Monaco 1984
'Who is that guy???'
3 June 1984.
Senna would come to Monaco for the firs time.
He qualified 13rd, which was pretty fast for a debutante on Monaco.
On race day, rain fell on the track. Already 3 cars went of at the opening lap.
After the first lap Senna was already in 9th position.
Prost was leading from Mansell, who overtook Prost on lap 11.
By then Senna was Already in 3rd position!
Catching Prost at a vast rate.
On lap 16, Prost was leading Lauda and Senna.
On lap 18, Senna caught Lauda. On the start finish straight Senna placed the Toleman exquisitely to Lauda's left and sliced by.
On lap 27 the gap between Senna and Prost was 21.701.
On lap 28 the gap was 18.139.
On lap 29 the gap was 15.369
On lap 30 it was 11.779.
Senna was gaining incredibly fast on Prost.
Lap 31 it was 7.446.
By now race director Jacky Ickx, decided enough was enough. It was a very controversial decision to stop the race there were Prost is French and were Monaco is all French.
On lap 32 Prost slowed down his Mclaren at the start finish line, Senna passing it all at full bore a couple of seconds later. But the race had officially ended on lap 31.
Senna thought he'd won, but the rules are that if a race is stopped, the positions of the previous lap count.
So Senna finished 2nd at 7.446.
He had entered the present tense, and we'd enter The Senna Era.
'I think Ayrton was robbed from his first Gp victory. He took it completely calmly, he wasn't (visibly) upset.' (Hawkridge)
'We were almost leading after a hard race, and suddenly it was stopped halfway through. Maybe I would have won taken the lead and crashed myself after another 5 laps and have nothing, but I believe we could have won. After some time just reflecting, I thought it was a fantastic result because of the way things developed. I probably got more publicity than if I had won.' (Ayrton Senna).
The Senna Era had started
