The other side of Senna — his rage at Prost and Suzuka 1990

At no point did it appear to strike him that it was also a bad end to the championship for Prost, nor that his red mist, fit of pique, temper tantrum, call it what you will, might not only have endangered the pair of them, but also 24 drivers following them into the corner. Nor did he mention what might have happened later in the race had he led and Prost tried to overtake.

During all this Berger and Patrese shuffled uneasily, perhaps stifling the temptation to get up and place a hand over their colleague’s mouth before he could do himself more harm. Gerhard attempted to inject a little humour into the poisonous monologue by remarking: “I think you should should hope that Balestre doesn’t come back next year…!” It merely fuelled the egotistical fire, for Senna was now wound up too tight.

“I don’t care. I don’t care! I think for once we all must say what we feel is right and what we feel is wrong. [Expletive] rules that you cannot tell your mind, that you cannot speak what you’re thinking, you are not allowed to say somebody did a mistake, somebody did something wrong. And nobody was able to say that because we had the shit in ’89 and I said what I thought and you all know that was true what took place afterwards was a theatre. It was shit that took place.

“Why do people say I caused the accident in 1990? Because if you get [expletive] every single time you’re trying to do your job cleanly and properly, by the system, by other people taking advantage of it, what should you do? Stand behind, stay behind and say, ‘Thank you. Yes, thank you’? No. You should fight for what you think is right.

“And I was really fighting for something that was correct. Because I was [expletive] from the year before, I was [expletive] in the winter, I was [expletive] in the qualifying procedure here when I got pole and the pole was supposed to have been on the good side. If it had been I would have got a better start and nothing would have happened because I would have got a better start. I would have been first without any problem. But it was again a result of a decision, a bad decision, influenced by Balestre. I know that. We know that from underneath. And we all know why, and the result of it was the first corner. It was not my responsibility. I did contribute to it, yes. But it was not my responsibility.”

It was not Ayrton Senna’s responsibility that he and Alain Prost crashed? Why, then, did a leading photographer who was at the corner say immediately afterwards, “Prost braked and began to turn in, and there was absolutely no change in the Honda’s exhaust note as Senna hit the back of the Ferrari”? Why then did Nelson Piquet concur with that “Senna just drove straight into the back of Prost, and that’s all there is to it.” Whose foot was on the throttle which according to Honda’s own telemetry — was never closed throughout the manoeuvre?

“I was really fighting for something that was correct” Ayrton Senna

In America Sam Colt and Messrs Smith & Wesson put their names to guns, but nobody has ever suggested through history that they should be held more responsible for killing people than those who actually pull the triggers. The ultimate responsibility is the user’s; it cannot be abdicated. Ayrton Senna’s comments and the sentiments behind them are shocking because this man drives racing cars for a living. Because this man so often takes time off to tell others as he did with Nigel Mansell before the Japanese GP how they should drive, what tactics are acceptable and what aren’t.

What Senna was effectively saying is that nobody is allowed to overtake him or beat him into a corner, and that the price if they do could well be an accident. He threatened as much to Mansell before the Japanese GP. All last year he absolutely denied responsibility for the first corner accident in Suzuka, this man who is always telling us the importance of honesty, yet during the height of his tirade he spluttered, “I was determined to get to the corner first, and I was not prepared to let the guy” he could not bring himself to name Prost “turn that corner in front of me. Because, if I was near enough to make that corner, he couldn’t turn in front of me. He just had to let me through.”

Last year, in his hotel room in Adelaide, he refused point-blank to accept that photographic evidence showed him hitting the rear of the Ferrari and not, as he claimed, its side. That he was only that close anyway because he had not lifted and thus could not have hoped to make the corner at the speed and on the line on which he was travelling.

“He took a chance,” he continued, almost evangelical in his intensity. “It didn’t work because I went for it. I didn’t care if we crash. I went for it. He took a chance and we crashed. He turned and we crashed. But that was a result of ’89. That was a result of all the shit that I already told you and you already know. It was built up, it was unavoidable, it had to happen. It was bad. It was bad for me. It was bad for everyone.”

He did not need to add that such high-speed tit for tat was bad for the sport. As we left the press room, ears still ringing, the overriding feeling was one of intense disappointment that a man of such outstanding skill — on one of the finest afternoons of his career — should have elected to dig up the past in such an unbecoming manner. Disappointment, and the feeling that Ayrton Senna may well have cause to regret some of his comments in the years to come.