After the criticism from Fernando Alonso in the Japanese Grand Prix to Honda, we remember another occasion when Honda had a bad time dealing with one of their drivers due to the same issues.
We were at the start of the 1991 season when the teams changed from V10 engines to V12. Back then pre-season was held in Estoril, Portugal. Ayrton Senna was driving the new McLaren MP4/6, which would be the last car where the Brazilian legend would win his last title.
However, Ayrton was merciless against Honda, saying things that even Alonso would hardly think of: “I don’t know what they (Honda) did during the winter. There is no progress and no power.”
Despite dominating the weekend in Phoenix, and winning the following three races, Senna didn’t go back on his words, as Williams-Renault and Nigel Mansell started growing in performance, impeding Senna from taking the top step of the podium in the next 5 races, allowing the British duo to jump Senna and McLaren on the standings.
“The Williams is in fact very quick. It’s very hard for me to keep up. Honda is working hard to improve the engine, but Williams’ chassis is much better than ours. If we don’t get new equipment, we will have problems on the second half of the season.”
Although Senna was able to secure the win in Hungary, he was still not impressed with the team’s evolution, but ended up realizing he was going beyond the limits on the critics, and apologised to the engineers for the way he was dealing with the situation.
Senna was proven wrong at the end of the season when he was able to beat the Mansell-Williams duo. Can McLaren pull off something to ease Alonso’s frustration?
