Ayrton Senna testing the McLaren MP4/8B Lamborghini at Estoril, 27-29 September 1993…
By Senna’s standards 1993 had not been a successful year. He won five races in his McLaren Ford as a customer Cosworth user, Schumacher’s Benetton with the more powerful factory Ford Cosworth engines only won a single event. Even worse, arch rival Alain Prost won the title for Williams Renault.
Scrambling to find an engine deal to keep its star driver happy and with the team for 1994, Ron Dennis signed a test contract with Chrysler who then owned Lamborghini.
McLaren modified one of its MP4/8 Ford chassis to take the jewel like little 3.5-litre V12.
The Mauro Forghieri designed Type 3512 Lambo V12 was first used in F1 in 1989. Larrousse, Lotus and Minardi used the engines in the following years. A new engine for 1993 was the smallest, lightest V12 ever, it gave circa 750bhp @ 14500rpm without pneumatic valves, more than the Cosworth V8 of the day.
Senna tested the car initially at Pembrey, at Silverstone twice, and later at Estoril. He wanted to race it in the three final races of the year at Portugal, Japan and in Australia but Dennis wouldn’t allow it given the contractual arrangements already, and in the process of being put in place with sponsors and the like.
Senna suggested to the engines designer, Ferrari legend Mauro Forghieri, that the V12 would be better with a less brutal top end and more mid range torque, these changes were made, the engine producing around 750bhp.
Mika Hakkinen was the team’s test driver that year, Senna’s race teammate was Michael Andretti until Mika took over the race seat from the Portuguese GP. Hakkinen was 1.5 seconds faster at Silverstone in the Lambo powered MP4/8B than the Ford engined MP4/8 had been during the ’93 British GP weekend.
Adrian Burgess was a member of McLaren’s test team in 1993 and was one of three mechanics who worked on the MP4/8B and spoke about his experiences to Which Car? magazine.
“I remember going to Estoril the day after the Grand Prix (it was a three day test, September 27-29, 1993 involving Senna and Hakkinen) Ayrton loved the engine. Within half a day we were 4.9 seconds quicker than the Larrousse LH93 was the day before with the same engine.” Philippe Alliot and Eric Comas were 10th and 11th in their Larrousse Lamborghinis in the race won by Michael Schumacher’s Benetton B193 Ford.
“The problem with it was that by the time it was warm it normally had hand-grenaded itself. I think the furthest we went was 19 laps before all of a sudden you could look down through the inlet trumpets and actually see out the bottom! It hand-grenaded itself in the most magnificent ways. It was like Scalextric car dragging con-rods down the front straight at Estoril. The thing just blew up.”
As the balance of the 1993 season played out, Prost resigned, Senna won the last two races in Australia and Japan in his MP4/8 Ford. McLaren did a deal with Peugeot and Senna went to Williams for 1994…and the rest as they say is history, a sad one at that.
Photo Credits…
Sutton Images, Autosprint
Tailpieces…
Finito…
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