Split-second error proves an old adage

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 39

Split-second error proves an old adage

The Marlboro McLarenHonda team’s chances of making a clean sweep of this year’s world drivers’ championship fell apart at the recent Italian Grand Prix meeting at Monza. A Hollywood scriptwriter would have been hard pushed to pen a story equal to the emotional outcome of this twelfth round of the 16race series. Going into the penultimate lap of the race, the championship points leader, Ayrton Senna (Brazil), looked certain to maintain his team’s unbeaten record this season. A split-second ' error however, proved with cruel accuracy the old adage that to finish first, first one must finish. Disaster struck the seemingly invincible McLarenHonda organisation in the form of a French novice grand prix driver, Jean Louis Schlesser. Schlesser, who was deputising for an ill Nigel Mansell in the CanonWilliams team, spun off the circuit. Thinking the way was clear, he drove back on to the track and into the path of the flying Brazilian. Any chance Senna had of winning a record eight races in a season were temporarily shelved as the resulting collison sent his car spinning out in a cloud of tyre smoke and dust, thus adding his name to a growing list of retirements that already

included his French team mate and championship arch-rival, Alain Prost. Although the errant Frenchman apologised afterwards, his indiscretion gave the fiercely patriotic Italian crowd cause for wild jubilation. Senna’s demise handed first and second placings to the Ferrari cars of Austrian Gerhard Berger and local hero, Michele Alboreto. Schlesser, incidentally, is the nephew of the late Jo Schlesser, who died in a fiery crash in the early stages of the 1968 French Grand Prix at Rouen. Controversial circumstances surrounded the death of the popular French veteran, who was called into the Honda team at the eleventh hour to drive the new RA3O2E Formula One car.

The Japanese team’s regular driver, John Surtees (Britain), refused to drive the car, claiming the revolutionary designed machine, which featured a 120-degree, air-cooled V 8 engine suspended from a T-section extending from behind the driver’s seat, had not been sufficiently tested. Schlesser, however, was keen to perform well in front of his home crowd. But on the third lap of the race, he lost, control and crashed into an earth embankment. The car exploded in flames, and Schlesser became the third grand prix driver to die in almost as many months in what was a black year for motorsport. As a lasting tribute to the Frenchman, a compatriot and former driver, turned constructor, Guy Ligier uses Schlesser’s initials as a prefix to his chassis numbers.

It is perhaps ironic to think that 20 years after their ill-fated partnership, the names of Schlesser and Honda should be linked again in a Formula One upset. Following the events at Monza, it is worth mentioning that in spite of the McLaren-Honda team’s misfortune, it was pleasing to see the Ferrari team pay the ultimate tribute to their revered founder in the one race of the season that was, without doubt, the most fitting.