“Ayrton Senna is joining Williams…” I have to say that even though I was the team manager at the time, I had a certain feeling of trepidation when I heard this news. It was pretty daunting, because he was Ayrton Senna… he was coming with a little bit of a reputation.
I suppose we thought he might be difficult to work with – all of the top drivers were demanding, but it was something we’d got used to. We’d had Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost at the team, but nobody quite knew what Ayrton would be like. Still, we were professional and we knew what we were doing.
I first met him at Williams’s factory over the winter, probably at the start of 1994. He popped in for five minutes to say hello and he was quite quiet and extremely polite. That was the thing that immediately struck me about him. He was very calm. He was direct and matter-of-fact.
You could see he was trying to weigh the place up because we were different to McLaren, where he’d been for six years. McLaren had been moulded around him and he had to start that process all over again with us, but we were determined to make him feel as welcome as possible.
The relationship was very new at the first race and, after first practice, we were in the debrief room looking at the time sheets. Ayrton’s race engineer, David Brown, said something like, “Bloody Senna is always there or thereabouts isn’t he?” to no one in particular. Ayrton, who was sitting next to him, just looked sideways with an enquiring look. David turned the colour of a beetroot. “Sorry mate, force of habit,” he said. There was a good atmosphere about the place.
Although things hadn’t been going well over the start of the season, there was no panic from Ayrton himself. He was calm and determined to help the team get to the root of any problems we had with the car. He got his head down, worked with the team and was pulling us in the right direction. He was prepared to work – and to work hard. He wasn’t jumping up and down when things weren’t going right.
Williams team manager Harrison was just starting to get to know Senna as the Imola weekend arrived
Photo by: Motorsport Images
After he spun off in Interlagos chasing Schumacher, he came back into the garage where I was with David Brown. He apologised for going off and said that it wouldn’t happen again. I think that really summed up the bloke.
Still, working at Williams, the pressure was always on. And after two non-finishes in the first two races of…
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