«If it is true that the great Enzo Ferrari he followed this race on TV like all the others, I hope he had fun and I hope he remembers me soon”. Ayrton Senna uttered these words on 3 June 1984, making his debut in Formula 1 and finishing second in the Monaco GP, giving a spectacle and the certainty to observers that a star was born, a world champion in the making. What for all drivers is a dream, often kept secret, for him is an ambition, a declaration of intent, he knows what it is worth and is certain that his path will sooner or later lead him to Maranello. In 1990 Ferrari had Prost and Mansell on the team, at the helm of the Gestion Sportiva Cesare Fiorio, who arrived in Formula 1 after his triumphs in rallies with Lancia. Fiorio always wants the best drivers at the wheel of his cars, there is no difference between rallies and Formula 1 and he knows perfectly well, like everyone who follows the Grands Prix, that the strongest driver around is Senna. The maneuvers are carried out over the summer, they are neither long nor difficult, Senna is happy to leave McLaren to move to a Ferrari which, moreover, is also very competitive at that moment. More complicated to define all the details of the agreement, a 30 million dollar market coup, a science fiction figure for those times, yet all the pieces of the mosaic had fallen into place and at the beginning of July the contract had been sent via fax to the pilot’s residence in Monte Carlo, all that remained was to add the signatures, a necessary formality, usually taken for granted, but not in this case, because those signatures never existed.
The story of the Senna-Prost-Ferrari behind the scenes
What happened in those days is not entirely clear even today and perhaps never will be, the parties involved report and defend their own version of events, which does not prevent a reconstruction with some solid foundations. According to Cesare Fiorio it was the then president Piero Fusaro to warn of what was happening Prostwho managed to obtain a private interview with Gianni Lambs leaving with the confirmation of his place at Ferrari. Recently Fusaro wanted to clarify things by denying Fiorio’s version (whom he claims to have wanted at the helm of the Gestion Sportiva), explaining that he was absolutely in favor of Senna’s hiring, an operation of which only the Ferrari board was aware. Prost was very skilled in weaving personal relationships, in maneuvering the right levers, it is possible that he simply learned that Ferrari was negotiating with Senna even just from rumors in Maranello and decided to aim for the top of the pyramid , addressing Agnelli directly. And, afterwards, who could ever go against the Lawyer’s wishes?
The 1990 World Cup and Prost’s story
History could then have taken a different path if in that season Prost had managed to win the world championship, a feat that was foiled due to an accident caused by Senna at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix (he later admitted that he had done it voluntarily) perhaps as revenge for the accident with Prost, again in Japan the year before, which had allowed the Frenchman to win the world championship. In a long interview in the summer of 1993, Prost confided to us: “If I had won the world championship in 1990, my history and that of Ferrari would have changed.” A story that instead had a not at all pleasant conclusion, first with the dismissal of Cessare Fiorio and then – coincidentally again at Suzuka – with the dismissal of Prost, guilty of having declared that «this Ferrari drives like a truck». Another opportunity to bring Senna to Ferrari occurred in 1993, but Ayrton wanted Ferrari already in 1994 and in Maranello they were not able to make room for him, the idea was to realize the project in 1995. But in 1994 Senna went to Williams …
