Bittersweet for Berger
Thirty years ago, Mclaren-honda’s Gerhard Berger left team-mate Ayrton Senna and everyone else well behind in the Canadian Grand Prix – but only got fourth place. Graham Keilloh looks back
The concept of a race is a simple one. Almost instinctive. You get to the end of the prescribed distance first, you win. Right? Well in motorsport, only usually. As, in motorsport, things aren’t necessarily so simple. In Formula 1 indeed on more than 10 separate occasions the first driver to the chequered flag was not in fact awarded victory.
There have been a variety of reasons for these. You will likely recall the most recent instance in the Canadian Grand Prix last year when Sebastian Vettel, first home, ceded the win officially to Lewis Hamilton just behind him thanks to a five-second penalty.
And there was another instance at the very same Montreal venue for
1990’s Canadian Grand Prix, 30 years ago today (Wednesday).
Gerhard Berger had moved to allconquering Mclaren-honda for that season, but his initiation was difficult. Being paired with the mighty Ayrton Senna is trying at the best of times, but to make matters worse for Berger, Mclaren also had somehow not built a cockpit of sufficient size for his lanky frame.
Rather doubled-up, his knees regularly hit the steering rack and by a race’s halfway point he’d be battered and exhausted.
For Canada, round five of the year, Mclaren had developed a revised seat for the Austrian. It wasn’t perfect, but Berger noted his comfort was now “90% right”.
And it appeared to have an immediate impact on his driving as throughout the first qualifying session he and Senna routinely swapped the top spot between them, with Senna just two-thirds of a tenth quicker in the final reckoning. And, in something we were used to then, the rest were nowhere near the Mclaren-hondas. Alain Prost’s Ferrari in third was more than four tenths away; the next best was barely within a second of the front.
Rain for the next qualifying session meant the grid was set. And Senna starting first was another thing we’d grown used to as with this, remarkably, he had taken 30 of the previous 37 poles. Still it looked at least like his stablemate would give him a race.
Sadly though Berger’s hopes were dashed before the race got underway. Literally. As with all lined-up poised for the starting signal, his Mclaren moved conspicuously before the red light went out.
A one-minute jump-start time penalty was the result. Adding insult, if Berger was doing the time he didn’t even benefit from the crime, as rather than gunning it he had checked his momentum before the green light came on. It meant he was still in second place following Senna as the race got underway. “I didn’t gain any advantage from the start,” Berger grimaced later, “but I did anticipate the green light…”
This age pre-dated the pitlane stop-go penalty and the like. Instead we had the surreal sight of Berger being physically there at the head of the race yet simultaneously not there, as 60 seconds was being added to his race time.
And again this race, on the road anyway, was a private Mclaren affair. Their closest challenger Alessandro Nannini in the Benetton hanging on gamely in third dropped out of contention due to, in a Montreal special, hitting a groundhog. By the race’s quarter-distance point the best non-mclaren already was half a minute behind, or rather half a minute ‘ahead’of Berger.
In a wet-but-drying affair Berger pitted for slick tyres a couple of laps earlier than Senna and, shortly after both had stopped, was beckoned past Senna for first place on the road.
And Berger then moved clear of his team-mate, driving with the elan and flair we had associated with him in his premclaren days. Without relent he tore chunks out of the deficit to the cars ahead on the watch, indeed he set the fastest lap, eight tenths of a second quicker than anything anyone else managed that day, on the last lap. And that let him pip Prost for an eventual fourth place. With another lap or two he likely would have got second.
And he ended up some 45 seconds clear of Senna on the road, giving us the further surreal sight of Berger being given the chequered flag first while the actual winner was still gingerly proceeding half a lap away. Coincidentally it also was 10 years on from the same thing happening at the same Montreal venue, as in the 1980 Canadian Grand Prix Didier Pironi’s Ligier was first home but, again due to a minute’s jump-start penalty, only third in the official results. Alan Jones’s Williams was the beneficiary then.
“I could have won that race,” Berger insisted afterwards. There was though no shortage of cynics wondering aloud how much more quickly Senna could have gone if he’d had to. Senna noted indeed that he had no need to rush.
“They radioed me very early, to say that Gerhard had been penalised a minute for jumping the start,” Senna noted. “That reduced the pressure on me, which was good, because it was very slippery in the first part of the race. I just concentrated on being smooth, and keeping a good average. Lapping people was bad, because off the line it was still very wet, so you had to be careful.”
Adding to Senna’s difficulties, he’d lost first gear at the time of his pitstop, his setup he reckoned was more ‘conservatively’ geared to wet conditions than Berger’s, and he thought too that his tyres might be underinflated as his car was bottoming.
Berger wasn’t entirely having that though. “Now I can drive the car a lot better,” he said, referencing his new seating position. “I think that sometimes maybe the press thinks Ayrton is better than he is. I think now that he can be beaten.” Berger had his own problems too, with fading brakes.
It would have been fun to find out what would have happened had Berger not been too itchy with the clutch at the start that day. Sadly though it became but the latest of motorsport’s many ‘what ifs’.