Andretti: I Was as Quick as Senna

[Copef1]

Incredible! he was undoubtedly Senna's worst team-mate, pathetically slow and unable to make two consecutive laps without errors. I remember that once Senna had to use his car to do a few laps in qualifying and got knocked out by the absurd setup ... they replaced him with Hakkineno in the last three GPs for obvious incapacity

Worse than Johnny Dumfries? Worse than Satoru Nakajima, who had 5 years in F1, and never even got a sniff of a podium? Andretti was a far more accomplished driver than either of these Senna teammates, but don't let facts get in the way of your hatred for him.

 

[gecco]

For all who want to know more about Andrettis Mclaren Adventure, watch this:

It's one of 7 episodes following the McLaren 1993 season.
Must watch if old F1 is one's thing really

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

Yeah, Hakkinen out qualified Senna, then threw the car into the wall on lap 33 of the race. Hakkinen also had two full seasons under his belt at this point with lotus, where he had plenty of DNF's, just like Andretti. We will never know if Andretti would have been better, because history played out where he only got 13 starts. Michael says he was on pace with Senna in testing, not that he was faster than him in a race, or qualifying. Can you disprove that? Michael got thrown into a team beginning a decline, with Senna as a teammate. A difficult situation for anyone. Hakkinen had 6 full seasons in F1 before he won, Michael had 13 races. When he got back to IndyCar he started winning again right away, if fact he won his first race back at Surfers Paradise.

I wonder how many times Andretti and Senna even tested opposed to each other on the same day...
Since Senna spent that whole off season pissed off and pouting about having the Williams door closed on him, and refused to sign outright with Mclaren saying he would rather take a sabatical, his presence on South Africa was confirmed just before the GP, and that was a 1 race deal (other 1 race deals followed until Senna decided to stop being a baby).

 

[gecco]

Andretti was undoubtedly not on par with Senna, but to assume he was a bad driver would be wrong either I suppose. America nor elsewhere you don't build a reputation for yourself let allone win a championship, without being a capable driver. It was often suggested, that two main factors were responsible for Andrettis mediocre performance:
1.) He did not know most, if not all, of the tracks on the 1993 calendar.
2.) At 30 years of age at the time, and only having driven steel brake rotor equipped cars during his decade long career, he could not adapt to the insanly short braking distances of the lighter F1 car with its carbon brake discs. At least not in the time Ron Dennis granted him.

 

[Trezoitao38]

I saw all races from 93 season from youtube.

When Schumacher made his first F1 weekend, he made a superb lap on qualify.

When Senna sit in a F1 car first time, he made Frank Williams impressed.

That was the problem with Michael Andretti. I think, if he had one or two entires season, he could improved, like Damon Hill did.

But on F1 you need to be better than this.

And Hakkinen was a very good pilot, same league on Michael Schumacher. He proved this on Portuguese GP, he proved when he won two champioships. Hakkinen was very good on qualifys, on this aspect I can say, he was better than Schumacher.

 

[jpalesi]

Worse than Johnny Dumfries? Worse than Satoru Nakajima, who had 5 years in F1, and never even got a sniff of a podium? Andretti was a far more accomplished driver than either of these Senna teammates, but don't let facts get in the way of your hatred for him.

Maybe not worst in absolute terms, but I'm not sure if there were a lot of expectations for Dumfries, or for Nakajima that was a Honda driver. But when the '91 IndyCar champion shows up, you expect a little more than being an embarrassment aka 4 accidents in the first 4 races.
In that sense, he probably was the worst in terms of expectations you can have from such driver.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Maybe not worst in absolute terms, but I'm not sure if there were a lot of expectations for Dumfries

The 7th Marquess of Bute came of a very disappointing year in the completely new F3000 series in 1985. However, he won about as many races in British F3 in 1984 as Senna had done in 1983 (percentage-wise), and absolutely dominated that year. The same year he was 2nd in European F3, beating e.g Gerhard Berger.

If his F1 shot came a year "too late" and his momentum was broken, if he wasn't that good of a driver after all, I have no idea. He surely wasn't seen as the next great big driver, but he was chosen as Senna didn't want Warwick in the team, and wanted the resources focused on him as he felt Lotus didn't have enough resources to field two top cars. That certainly had an impact for Dumfries.

He did get to win Le Mans overall in 1988 though. So completely hopeless he was not.

 

[aimlogacc]

No way, sorry.

 

[RichardHessels]

Yea as in free-fall from a high building.

Senna won five races and finished second in the championship in a car that Andretti couldn't figure out how to stop spinning and crashing in. It was embarrassing to watch. He very nearly killed himself and Gerhard Berger in Brazil. Britain and Germany were low points, out of many to choose from. On top of that, once given the drive, Hakkinen immediately displayed properly, in the same car Andretti failed with all season.

He can (and does) say and blame whatever he wants, but it was clear to anyone with two neurons to rub together that Andretti was out of his depth in F1.

He just had troubles mastering those pesky right-hand corners.

 

[chili pepper]

He just had troubles mastering those pesky right-hand corners.

A bit of a sidebar, but just want to make sure you know not all Americans like NASCAR and we do actually have some lovely road circuits over here as well...and drivers who can handle them...

Having said that, and recently been given the opportunity to do a fair number of laps at speed at Talladega Superspeedway, driving really fast on banked ovals/tri-ovals is a hoot! I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and I can see why those good ole boys like it, it's a rush.

Now, back to your scheduled online debate...

 

[RichardHessels]

A bit of a sidebar, but just want to make sure you know not all Americans like NASCAR and we do actually have some lovely road circuits over here as well...and drivers who can handle them...

Having said that, and recently been given the opportunity to do a fair number of laps at speed at Talladega Superspeedway, driving really fast on banked ovals/tri-ovals is a hoot! I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and I can see why those good ole boys like it, it's a rush.

Would love to experience this kind of jaw-dropping speeds on a banked corner. Andretti is still one of the great icons of motorsports.

 

[Warlord_Gonagy]

Well, winning five races in a Ford powered McLaren in 1993 against a completely dominant Williams-Renault indicates just how amazing Senna was that year. Just watch the Donington GP again, when he humiliated (no other word will do) Prost. Do you really believe any other driver on the grid that year could have done as well?

Yes. Prost and Schumacher both COULD have. They had the potential. The difference is that Senna achieved that potential more often than the other two did. But either of them had the talent to pull a miracle like that off (Schumacher was always great in the wet; I think, in Senna's position at Donington, he probably would've done pretty well too).

 

[RichardHessels]

Just to get things in perspective.

Senna was no superhuman, he had his fair share of mistakes.

 

[BarbaricAvatar]

Wow, April came around again quickly!

 

[Dazmaniac]

Shame he couldn't back his claims up on the track.

 

[aka2k]

Too bad Michael couldn't keep the car between the white lines. Maybe he would be able to stay within Senna laps... I mean, to not be lapped by the maestro.

 

[aka2k]

Even his crashes were spectacular.

 

[NDG]

It's sad to know these things just pass by without notice. I'm sure these kind of stories will always pop up given the amount of drivers that drove in F1 never producing a win let alone a championship. F1 is a car thing nowadays. Gone are the days when a mediocre team or car can win races because of a great driver.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

Worse than Johnny Dumfries? Worse than Satoru Nakajima, who had 5 years in F1, and never even got a sniff of a podium? Andretti was a far more accomplished driver than either of these Senna teammates, but don't let facts get in the way of your hatred for him.

He was more accomplished no doubt. But that doesn't change the fact that his F1 stint at McLaren very much reminds me of Alex Zanardi's second stint at Williams. Both were at similar age, supposedly the best drivers in USA, but it took Zanardi over 10 races to even get one decent quali performance in. So maybe there is the adaptation factor, but then again Villeneuve adapted almost instantly, so who knows.

 

[Kuckoo]

Senna was no superhuman, he had his fair share of mistakes.

Every driver has his fair share of mistakes. No one said anything about a driver not making errors.