If there is a better driver than Ayrton Senna in Formula One today I would like to see him. The Brazilian driver wins in the wet, he wins in the dry, he wins on fast circuits, he wins on slow circuits and he wins on street circuits. He is invariably on pole position and he goes past slower cars as if they were not there, and through traffic as if it were stationary.
He seems to do all this with the greatest of ease, but after winning the German Grand Prix he actually showed signs of strain. When he said it had been one of his hardest races, he meant it; not hard from the point of view of the opposition, because there wasn’t any, but hard from the point of view of the conditions.
The Hockenheimring is fast and slippery when wet, and race day was wet, but the biggest problem was the varying conditions. Occasionally some parts of the circuit almost dried out, sometimes the rain stopped, sometimes there was terrible spray from the car ahead, other times there was none. The sheer concentration needed to combat these conditions, apart from continually passing slower cars, had visibly “drained” Ayrton Senna. But he had led from start to finish and never put a wheel wrong, a feat that few others could claim in the difficult conditions.
