'The pitwall guided Verstappen; Senna could push as hard as he liked'

F1

Max Verstappen's Monaco GP win was a triumph of performance, tyre management and strategy — a stark contrast to Ayrton Senna's experience 35 years earlier, writes Mark Hughes: "There was a time when the driver could largely do whatever the hell he wanted"

Max Verstappen and Ayrton Senna in the Monaco Grand Prix 35 years apart

Verstappen and Senna: 35 years apart

Max Verstappen delivered an almost flawless victory in challenging circumstances at Monaco last Sunday. With possible rain forecast in the latter part of the race, his challenge was to get the medium compound tyres on which he started to last long enough that he wouldn’t have to make a pitstop until the rain had arrived. If he’d had to pit while the track was still dry because his tyres were finished, there was every chance that Fernando Alonso, on his hard compound tyres, would save a whole pitstop over him by being able to get straight onto inters – and that would have likely lost Red Bull the race. But Verstappen had to conserve the tyres while also pulling out a gap on Alonso of around 10sec so as to insure against the saving a stop under any safety car might give Alonso if Verstappen got caught out at the wrong place on track when it came out.

It was a complex and conflicting set of demands but of course he was guided into how to do it by the strategists and his race engineer. Even at more conventional tracks than Monaco and without any uncertainty about the weather, getting a car to the chequered flag in the quickest possible time is now way more complex than in years past. These heavy, super-powerful and torquey cars can overwhelm the tyres quite easily without regard to how many laps they must do, there’s a trade-off in brake cooling and aerodynamic performance which might make it quicker for the driver to lift and coast occasionally than to have the brakes cool enough that he could attack throughout. There’s a similar trade-off to be made in deciding the fuel level. There are mechanical tricks at the driver’s disposal to help with the car balance and tyre performance over the varying track and car conditions, but they are usually guided by their engineer in how and when to use them.

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So all these things are optimised and re-optimised according to circumstances. The driver delivers within those very closely-monitored parameters. There was a time when once the driver got in the car he was shut off from the outside world and could largely do whatever the hell he wanted, drive the race in whichever way he saw fit. The team prepared the car, made it as good as they could make it, tapped him on the shoulder as the grid was cleared and they’d next speak after the race. Pit-to-car radios began making their appearance in the early 1980s, but still performance decisions were not taken by the team. They simply provided occasional information.

Contrast Verstappen’s highly managed day in the car with Ayrton Senna’s 1988 Monaco Grand Prix. Senna was driving a car around 250-300kg lighter and about three-quarters the size of a current car and with only around 60% of the power and torque. There were no planned pitstops. The tyres were hard and robust. Even Senna’s almost mystical pole lap was around 12sec slower here than the fastest 2023 cars. So there were far fewer performance variables: the driver pushed on as he felt appropriate and monitored his tyres largely by feel, though essentially he could push as hard as he liked. There was a fuel read-out to observe and different boost levels to choose from. But in general there was far less management required.

Max Verstappen going up hill at St Devote in 2023 Monaco GP

Much heavier but also more powerful: Verstappen's Red Bull

Ciancaphoto/Getty

Ayrton Senna going up St Devote hill in 1988 Monaco GP

Senna started the '88 race with no pitstop strategy

GP Photo

In his first season at McLaren and with the incumbent Alain Prost enjoying the status of ‘world’s best driver’ Senna was on a mission to correct that perception. He arrived in Monaco, the third round of the ’88 championship, determined not only to beat Prost but to humiliate him. Monaco, he believed, offered him the opportunity to do this. His ‘out of body experience’ in qualifying had put him over 1.5sec faster than Prost at the time, though Alain subsequently trimmed 1sec off that deficit.

Prost got a better start off the line and was even thinking of positioning himself to put a move on Senna into Ste Devote – but then missed the up-change into second gear! In an instant Gerhard Berger’s much slower Ferrari bundled Prost down to third, setting Senna free and consigning Prost to a long afternoon staring at the Ferrari’s rear wing.

Senna sprinted away. He later confided he believed he could lap Prost and that was his initial target. He was 2.1sec in the lead at the end of the opening lap, 7.5sec ahead after five laps, 17.5sec after 13 laps. This searing pace was magnificent, though completely unnecessary in the winning of the race.

Max Verstappen leads in to Turn 1 at 2023 Monaco GP

Medium-tyred Verstappen led in '23

F1/Getty

Ayrton Senna lead sinto Turn 1 in 1988 Monaco GP

Missed gearchange dropped Prost to 3rd in '88

Allsport/Getty

Once Verstappen had won the start last Sunday he edged away from Alonso at the rate appropriate to his task – of getting the safety car insurance gap of 10sec before the safety car window opened, but all while taking care of the tyres which might have to last until near the end of the race. His car was faster than Alonso’s so this was a perfectly feasible task, but still it needed careful management. By lap 22 he had the 10sec gap.

The tyres were graining, first the fronts, then the rears. “Use the fronts to protect the rears as required,” he was instructed. Front graining is relatively easy to bring under control, rear graining can easily get into a runaway state and wear out the tyre in no time. Verstappen would adapt his driving accordingly.

Senna had the gap at 41sec after 40 laps and still Prost was stuck behind Berger. But on the 54th lap he finally got a run on the Ferrari and was able to overtake into Ste Devote. Prost immediately began lapping flat-out, going around in 1min 26.7sec on lap 57, the fastest of the race so far. This was only 1.3sec off Prost’s qualifying time, 1sec of which was accounted for by the fuel weight still in the car with 21 laps to go and on 57 lap-old tyres. He was effectively driving faster than he had in qualifying.

Gerhard Berger ahead of Alain Prost in 1988 Monaco GP

Prost watched gap to Senna widen as he was stuck behind Berger

Allsport/Getty Images

Before Sunday’s rain arrived on lap 50 Verstappen, in his careful monitoring of the gap with his tyres, was lapping around 7sec slower than his pole time, only 1sec of which would be accounted for the fuel weight difference. “Fernando starting on the hard made me do a very long stint, probably almost double to what we would have liked, but because of the rain in the area, we couldn’t really stop. I mean, if it would have been nice and sunny, I would have stopped, put the hard tyre on, and you catch up and you wait until Fernando does his pitstop, but we couldn’t do that because the risk of rain was around so I had to stay out.”

Verstappen succeeded in getting those tyres to the rain phase of the race. But when to pit? Because initially it was raining only from Mirabeau down to Portier. The rest of the track was bone dry. Also, it wasn’t certain if the rain would continue – and if it didn’t, switching to inters would be disastrous. So everyone stayed out, carefully sliding through the treacherous part of the lap but waiting to see what the weather might be about to do. The radio conversation between Verstappen and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase gives a great insight into how this crucial phase was managed.

Lap 48

Lambiase: “Drops of rain around T6 to Turn 8. Just be careful with your worn tyres.”

Lap 50

Verstappen: “I’ve got a few drops here.”

Lap 51

Lambiase: “I’m hearing comments of increased rain at Turn 8, Max.”

Verstappen: “Also here.” (Mirabeau). He has a big sideways snap out of the hairpin 1 and a snap into the following right-hander.

Verstappen: “Yeah, yeah. It’s raining.”

Lambiase: “Ok you let me know if you need to box to stay on the track Max. it’s as simple as that.”

Lambiase: “Alonso first sector 8-tenths slower.”

Overhead view of Max Verstappen Red Bull in 2023 Monaco GP

Patchy rain made for hazardous laps on old medium tyres

Red Bull

Lap 52

Verstappen: “Get some inters ready.”

Lambiase: “Yep, they’re ready.”

Lap 53

Lambiase: “Go easy at Turn 3 Max. Easy at Turn 3 as well.”

Lambiase: “It might just be survival in that section of track, Max, if the rest of the track is dry.”

Lambiase: “Everyone behind you is slower than you.”

Lap 54

Verstappen: “Ok, good to know.

Lambiase: “So just take care up the hill and through Turn 3-4 as well.”

He gets a big oversteer snap out of Mirabeau. Then the chattering of the gearbox as the back wheels lock into the hairpin.

Lambiase: “Strat 3 Max when you can. Strat 3.” That’s the engine braking setting, helping him not lock the rears.

Lap 55

Lambiase: “Ok we expect Fernando in this lap.”

The rain has suddenly spread across the track and increased in its intensity. Verstappen makes four downchanges into Massenet. He’s on tickover through Mirabeau and the hairpin. He scrapes the barrier entering Portier.

Lambiase: “Pitting for inters. Box.”

He pits for inters and rejoins.

Max Verstappen exits Monaco pits with intermediate tyres

Verstappen’s only stop of the race was for intermediates

Red Bull

Lap 56

Lambiase: “Strat 14. You’re going to have to really look after these tyres on the dry portions of the track. You’ve got the position.”

That was the race essentially won.

Back to 1988. Senna has been alerted to Prost’s pace by his pitboard. He’s 40sec in the lead with just 12 laps to go. There is absolutely no prospect of him being caught. But he’s on a mission. He responds with laps even faster.

Prost sees this and backs off. McLaren boss Ron Dennis talks to Senna on the radio, telling him Prost has backed off into the 1min 29sec, that Senna has no need to be lapping so fast. He backs off, but finds himself making little mistakes everywhere. His rhythm has been disturbed. “The trouble is when you’ve been going ten-tenths it becomes very difficult to do nine-tenths,” he later explained.

Max Verstappen at Nouvelle Chicane in 2023 Monaco GP

Verstappen built comfortable gap to Alonso

F1/Getty

Ayrton Senna at Nouvelle Chicane in 1988 Monaco GP

Slowing down proved Senna's undoing

Corbis/Getty

On the 67th lap he crashed nose-first into the Portier barriers. He was out, an unbelievable error from such a dominant position. He climbed out, removed his helmet and balaclava and walked to his nearby apartment, completely devastated. “His post-accident emotion was pure anger at himself and he couldn’t cope with it at all,” recalled Dennis. “It was two or three hours before he surfaced.”

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“He didn’t just want to beat me,” recalled Prost. “He wanted to humiliate me. He wanted to show the people that he was much stronger, much better – and that was his weakness.”

“I just came so close to perfection that weekend,” recalled Senna at the end of the season, “that I… I relaxed and I opened windows for mistakes and I learned that there and since then I progressive come back because I lost some confidence at that point, progressively I fight back and I got much stronger after that. Somehow that incident, somehow I got closer to God and that has been very important for me as a man.”

The colours were somehow more vivid, the characters of the players more nakedly exposed, before we got so smart.

Max Verstappen at Loews Hairpin in 2023 Monaco GP

Red Bull

Ayrton Senna cornering in 1988 Monaco GP

Oli Tennent/Getty