- Tome of Excellence
- Posts
- Lap of the Gods
Have you ever driven in the rain?
It’s the absolute worst.
I can’t stand it.
You have to drive slower and take your turns slowly and less sharply (I don’t take them sharp anyway).
It’s like you’re all of a sudden driving a boat around.
As far as I know, nobody enjoys driving in wet weather.
Well… there was one man.
Three-time Formula One World Champion Ayrton Senna.
Greatest racing helmet of all time.
Okay, I might have embellished a little.
He didn’t enjoy the wet weather at all.
Senna was so much better than his contemporaries in the rain that everyone assumed he did.
Ayrton’s first-ever win in Formula One consisted of dominating everyone else in the rain at the 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix.
The Ferrari in second place was behind him by over a minute.
Over a minute.
He didn’t just excel in the rain, though.
Ayrton was much faster than anyone in the history of Formula One.
He achieved pole position (best qualifying time) in 40% (65/162) of the races he started.
Senna participated in 17 races with wet conditions and won 10 (55.56%), the highest winning percentage of all time in those conditions.
I could rattle off statistic after statistic to show how impressive the man was on paper.
He’s more than a collection of statistics.
Let’s dive into a couple of things that separated him from the pack:
No Limits
“Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose.”
Senna was different not just because he was the fastest, most notable driver on the F1 grid.
He practiced introspection.
He was a devout Catholic.
“On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'Okay, this is the limit'. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.” - Ayrton Senna
To him, racing was a vehicle (no pun intended) of self-expression and self-discovery.
The goal was to push your limits on the track constantly.
Every lap was a chance to improve and be faster.
During an interview with three-time F1 champion Jackie Stewart, he famously said, “I am not designed to come second or third. I am designed to win.”
His conviction was unshakeable, and it showed on the race track. He threw his car into corners and braked at the last second, looking to embarrass and dominate his rivals.
It didn’t always work out in his favor, though.
During the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, at a track where he still holds the most wins (6), Senna led the race by a massive margin to his teammate Alain Prost.
He kept pushing the car, lap after lap, even after being ahead by over 50 seconds.
Ayrton crashed out of the race in the 67th lap and walked home to his apartment in Monaco, furious at himself for costing the race.
This was after he qualified for the race 1.4 seconds faster than his 2x World Champion teammate in the same car.
He was trying to reach the limit.
Senna found his limit in the Monaco barriers.
Enter the Flow
1991 Australian Grand Prix (He won this race)
Senna was among the first athletes I can think of to discuss entering “the zone.”
In the previous point, I mentioned the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix and his qualifying lap, and most people consider that to be the finest lap ever put onto a timesheet in a race car.
Ayrton himself had this to say about it:
“And suddenly I realized that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.”
He entered the flow state.
He wasn’t consciously driving his car anymore.
It felt effortless for him as if he were watching himself drive.
Mind you, this is one of the most challenging tracks in Formula One to master, a race in which Senna won a still-record SIX times.
It looks like this -
The famous hairpin of Circuit de Monaco
It has winding hairpin-style turns, long wind tunnels, and tight chicanes.
Senna was known for this phenomenal ability to reach down and find that extra gear or just a bit extra speed to edge out the next guy.
He delved into the flow, and sometimes, like in Monaco 1988, it frightened him.
It’s so foreign to know you’re aware of where you are, but everything is in the background.
If you’ve ever been able to reach the flow state, you’ll know how odd it can be.
Summary
1994 Williams FW-16 - the final car Senna drove.
Look…
I wanted to write this for a few reasons:
Senna is one of my sporting heroes. I didn’t grow up watching Formula One; I was too young to watch him race (he died before I was a year old). I watched the 2010 documentary on him (Senna) roughly a year after it came out and have been obsessed with learning about him ever since.
Entering the flow state at 200 MPH speeds is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever heard about.
To point out that Senna donated hundreds of millions of his fortune to help poor kids (especially his home province of São Paolo)
The 30th anniversary of his death is coming up on May 1st, and I wanted to pay tribute.
From now on, I’ll post newsletters more frequently, so be ready for multiple weekly.
(P.S - Watch F1 and Scuderia Ferrari)
(P.P.S - Share this newsletter if you like it)
Until next time,
Evan.
Reply