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myth - a widely held but false belief or idea.
Myths are present everywhere in our lives and that’s the reason why the Myth Busters TV show lasted so long. Given how popular F1 is, it is only natural that some myths are present among it’s fans, too.
While I was reading this thread, I came across a belief that a few fans have regarding Ayrton Senna. The belief is that Senna was much faster than any other driver on F1’s history. But how can one even compare, objectively, Senna with the likes of Jim Clark or Fangio ? So, I decided to investigate about Senna’s speed by looking into the some facts.
There is no better way to start then by the ultimate, even legendary, example of Monaco 1988 qualifying, you know, that session in which Senna claimed to be driving so focused/concentrated that he got into an “uncoscious” state, even with some religious beliefs involved. Ayrton was 1.4s faster than Prost on that session. But, is that really something that only he could do?
Well, the answer is no. On the 1982 Monaco qualifying, Renee Arnoux already outqualified a younger Prost by around 1.2s, on the same car. It seems Prost isn’t a good reference point, qualifying wise, because even Berger, a mediocre driver, could get closer to Senna, for whatever reason that maybe be (some speculate that Prost didn’t bother setting up his car for qualifyings, in a lot of circunstances throughout his career). Maybe more impressive than Senna’s 1988 qualifying is Stefano Modena’s one from 1991, though, where he qualified 2nd, behind Senna by only 0.4s while driving a Tyrrel against Senna’s mighty Mclaren.
But the really interesting case is Mika Häkkinen, who debuted, with Mclaren, on the late 1993 season and already matched Senna on the first two qualifyings. The third being an odd one as it was defined on Friday's Qualifying rather than on the regular Saturday session.
The impression is that Senna wasn’t particularly faster than Mika. But how quick was Häkkinen?
Well, we can compare him to Schumacher. They both raced together on F3 during 89 and 90. On the later they raced with different chassis so the comparison is impossible but, on 89, Schumacher outqualified him on Macau.
But that was just one session. Fortunately, we can compare both through Herbert and Brundle who were team mates of both drivers during several GPs.
Against Brundle
Martin never outqualified neither of them and the gaps are :
to Schumacher
0,7
1,3
0,2
1,3
0,2
0,2
1,3
0,6
1,4
1
1,6
1,8
0,9
0,7
1,7
1,3
average of 1.01s
to Hakkinen
0,7
0,7
0,7
1,7
1,1
0,6
0,3
0,5
0,7
0,4
0,4
1
0,1
1
average of 0.70s
We can see that Schumacher was considerably faster versus Brundle.
Against Herbert
Johnny only outqualified Schumacher once and by an odd gap of 3s. With Mika the case is completely different though. Herbert did better on qualifyings on both the seasons that they raced together, 1991(5-3) and 1992(9-7).
These are the gaps with Herbert outqualifying Häkkinen:
1,3
0,2
0,4
0,7
0,2
1
0,6
0,2
0,3
0,7
0,2
0,1
0,4
0,4
average of 0.47s
These are the gaps with Häkkinen outqualifying Herbert:
0,8
0
0,1
0,1
0,6
0,3
0,2
0,3
0,4
0,1
average of 0.29s
and these are the gaps with Schumacher outqualifying Herbert through the late 1994 to all of the 1995 season :
0,6
1,5
0,5
2,8
2,1
2,1
1,1
0,8
2
1,5
1,9
2,5
1,4
1
1,5
1,2
2,3
1,1
average of 1.55s (imho, the most impressive gaps on F1’s history given how good Herbet was versus Häkkinen )
Contrary to what Brundle wrote on one of his articles (and apparently said on tv), Schumacher was definitely, confortably, quicker than Häkkinen (going by the chronometer/facts and not by bitter, ********, thus, biased opinion) and that automatically means that he could also be faster than Senna, which is what the thread is about.
Looking further into the data, on 1993, Schumacher outqualified Senna by: 1.6s on the Silverstone, 1.2s on Hungaroring and almost 1s on Spa. They both used the same engines on those qualifyings, so could the modest Benetton be that much quicker than the mighty Mclaren or was the difference also due to the drivers? On 1992, Senna’s Mclaren had 100HP more than the Benetton, nonetheless, Schumacher outqualified Senna by 1.5s on Mexico (also outqualified by Berger). How could that be possible?
It must also be remembered that Brundle outqualified Senna quite a few times when both raced together on British F3 and he never did that against Hakkinen and Schumacher on F1, so that’s another fact that highly suggests that the belief of Senna being much faster than anybody else to be one of F1's myths that some fans believe in.
If you still think Ayrton was much faster than anybody else in history, please, post the reasons/facts. I hope this thread, at least, gives us something to talk about, untill Melbourne, other than the Rich Energy thread.
