[javadog]

1993 was a bad year for Ron Dennis. He had lost the Honda factory engines that had worked well, and set his sights on getting Renault power. Alain Prost was still no friend of Senna and had enough political clout to kill those chances. Neither could he get the factory ford engine contract away from Benetton, so they ran customer engines. They were down 60 to 80 hp from the top teams all year. He thought he could make up some ground by running his own TAG electronics instead of the Ford electronics, but that turned out to be a really bad decision, as not only did that not help him, software problems all year screwed up the engine, the transmission, the suspension and other things. Because of his inability to get the contracts sorted in time, the car was late in development and it was only tested at one track before the season began. That was a real problem, as a couple weeks before the season began, regulations were passed that severely limited in-season testing, limited the amount of practice sessions and limited the number of tires available. The preseason testing was largely crap as it was plagued by bad weather and their inability to keep the engine running.

He also had driver problems. Senna really wanted a ride at Williams, so Dennis hired Michael and Mika Hakkinen. Michael had a normal contract with options for another two years, Mika essentially came on board for free. Dennis and Senna continue talking and only came on board four days before the season started. Mika was forced into a role as test driver. All three drivers got to do limited preseason testing at Silverstone, Michael had to share his car with Mika. Michael went first, got literally no useful seat time because of the rain and glitches but McLaren put Mika into the car anyway, which was not a good decision. After Michael left, they finally sorted out the engine problems and Mika was able to actually run the car. It would've been much more beneficial to give Michael more seat time, but the test arrangements were predetermined and they did not deviate from them. Michael did a little bit more testing during the year, but they also put Mika in the car which did Michael no good.

Dennis was also on Michael's ass from almost the beginning. He qualified fifth at the second race but, rather than tell him he did a good job, Dennis told him he had nothing to be happy about. Never mind that he was driving a dog of a car against a half a dozen people with better rides, on a track he'd never seen before. To illustrate just what a ****ty car they had, Senna finished the Spa race two minutes behind the winner. And, Dennis told him that he wouldn't discuss his contract with him until November, long after any other rides would've dried up in either F1 or in Indycar. And, he told Michael that he wouldn't be driving every race of the season as Dennis was determined to get Mika some seat time in races to evaluate his ability for the following year. If you look at this season in detail, there are times that Dennis put Mika in the car, at the expense of Michael.

Then there were at least two races were they ****ed his qualifying. No question that was on purpose. I mentioned earlier where they turned off the function in the software that told the car where it was on the track. There was another race, where they held him in the pits in qualifying, until a rain shower started on one part of the track, that prevented him from setting a good time.

And yet, all I hear from the British press and the British fans was that he should have spent more time there. I never hear of the practice sessions where Michael set a faster time than Senna. I never hear of the fact that Senna's commitment was on a race by race basis and there was no guarantee that Santa was going to show up for the next race. He didn't hang around the shop either, he had houses in a couple different places and flew in to the races. As I recount above, at one such race he arrived 10 minutes before practice started. 10 minutes.

I'm one of the people that think Ron Dennis was one of the biggest problems McLaren ever had. I was a big fan of McLaren in the late 60s and early 70s, but the more influence Ron Dennis had, the less I liked the team. If you look at their history, their greatest successes came when they were paired with an engine partner that was dominant, whether it be Porsche, Honda or Mercedes. When they didn't have the best engine, their results were less than wonderful. When Senna left McLaren at the end of 1993, it was 50 more races before they won a race again. And who among us can forget the year that they were stripped of all of their points for cheating?

There's no doubt that McLaren has an impressive facility in England and some of their cars, particularly those designed by Barnard and Murray, were ahead of their time. I'm also a big fan of their F1 road car, as our good captain will be pleased to know, as I think it is more interesting than some of the F1 efforts. I still hate Ron Dennis, and I am glad the F1 team is hopefully rid of his influence.


I'm also reminded of the success that Nigel Mansell had taking Michael's seat in IndyCar racing in 1993. Most of the press focused on the fact that an F1 driver took an IndyCar driver's seat and did well, whereas the IndyCar driver took an F1 seat and did poorly. If you will compare Michael's 92 season with Mansel's 93 season, in the same car, you'll note that they won the same number of races but Michael lead 550 more laps then Nigel did. In 1994, in their first race head to head at the first race of the season, Michael whipped his ass.