Original subtitles

(suspenseful music)

(announcer speaking indistinctly)

- [Narrator] 70 years ago, something special started,

(car engine revving)

Formula One.

Man and machine in perfect unison,

pushing each other to their limits,

supported by teams

aiming for that top step.

- Well, the name of the game is winning.

- [Narrator] Seeking perfection.

(car engines revving)

The road hasn't always been smooth.

We've marveled at great moments,

had smiles brought to our faces,

(racer laughs)

cry with our heroes,

witnessed incredible bravery,

and terrible incidents,

moments never to be forgotten.

For 70 years,

this has been their Everest.

This is what makes them special.

This is the story of Formula One.

(gentle music)

(gentle music)

- [Commentator] From Italy, we have the Alfa team

almost certain winners,

indisputable first world champions of motor racing.

And in the hands of some of Europe's finest drivers,

they have swept home to victory after victory.

- All the '50s cars,

the Alfas and Maseratis of that period

were iconic for me.

And just the shape, I mean, we all had a Alfetta dinky toy,

and I just loved the cars from that era.

- Those early cars, they had no comprehension

of aerodynamics,

so they were very much mechanical devices.

And there were some strange rules.

I mean, they had...

You know, we have a minimum weight limit,

they had a maximum weight limit, which seems crazy.

- The people that drew those cars,

the draftsmen, if you like, that drew those cars

had a real empathy for shape.

You know, the grills weren't just openings

with some mesh in them, the grills are always interesting,

you know, and they fitted the rest of the car.

And the shape of the tail didn't really have to be like that

from an aerodynamic point of view.

So I find that period fascinating.

- I often think, with Italian Grand Prix cars,

they all have a bit of an owing

to Bernini, the sculptor.

Something about Italian Grand Prix cars,

they look different and they are different,

they are works of art in themselves.

- [Commentator] There is color, color everywhere

as the cars stand wheel to wheel

awaiting the warming up lap.

The red of Italy, blue of France,

yellow of Belgium, green of Britain.

Yes, they all blend beneath the fluttering flags

of competing nations to give an air of pageantry

unequal in any sport.

Having made the fastest time in practice,

the Alfa drivers were all in the front line.

- [Alain] It's remarkable bit of kit.

It ended up getting 420 horsepower out of 1 1/2 liters,

and there was nothing that would stop it.

(car engines roaring)

- [Commentator] Watch the drivers' techniques

and observe the obviously superior road holding

and acceleration of the Alfa cars,

as they four-wheel drift around this corner.

- Now, Farina seemed to have the knack of driving the car,

the Alfetta, quite smoothly. (car engines roaring)

- [Commentator] The race was a walk away

for the Alfa Romeos.

Farina, number 2, was first,

followed home by Fangioli, number 3.

The winner's average speed was 90.95 miles an hour,

a very fine driving feat, well worthy of the ralo.

He's English also rose to the occasion.

- I am very glad to have win the Grand Prix.

- The Alfetta took a whole nation's hopes

after World War II,

to the fruition of two world championships

in the same car,

by development and research.

- [Commentator] Fangio, destined to become

the 1951 champion driver of Europe,

refreshes himself with a well-armed drink.

(gentle suspenseful music)

- Because there were no challenges

to the Alfetta as a 159,

they decided for 1952

that the world championship will be run with Formula 2 cars.

The car was Ferrari 500, i.e. 500cc per cylinder,

four-cylinder engine, two liters, Formula 2 car.

And Ferrari was really in his element there

because that little four-cylinder engine of his

was completely bulletproof,

and he had Alberto Ascari, the late Antonio Ascari's son,

and the man just flew brilliantly in his Ferrari 500.

In fact, I think he won nine Grand Prix on the track.

- [Commentator] And to Alberto Ascari,

a further Grand Prix victory,

a victory which was to confirm him champion of the world

a second time.

- My inspiration was definitely Alberto Ascari

speaking even to, you know, the last couple of years,

you know, as late as a few years ago,

even to Stirling I was saying going back

and he knows, you know, that how important they've been

to my formative years.

- [Commentator] It was a duel all the way

between Ferraris and Maseratis.

But Alberto Ascari, number 5,

the 34-year-old Italian and world's champion driver

took the lead and held it in a Ferrari.

A terrific performance by a great driver.

- There is a magical thing about Ferrari.

Ask any amateur racer in the world

if they'd like to go and race a Ferrari somewhere

and the answer is immediately yes.

There's something about Ferrari.

It's probably the best brand name in the world,

must be in the top three, surely.

- [Commentator] From Germany, reborn,

the Mercedes-Benz reenter to continue with the legend

they wrote before the war.

- I think the beauty of Mercedes

is that they only get into all this motor racing

when they feel that they've got a product that can win,

they don't go there to come second or third,

if they can't help it, they like winning.

And that is really the only way

you can think about motor racing.

(gentle energetic music)

That 196 was a really beautifully thought out car.

Straight eight cylinder engine

which makes a nice, beautiful noise,

canted over to keep it nice and low

on the whole profile of the car.

Mercedes had always been a force to be reckoned with

in whatever they did,

they still are today, of course.

They chose Juan Manuel Fangio to be their number one driver

and the youngster, Stirling.

- I joined Mercedes which was fantastic.

I mean, anything you wanted, they do.

I mean, if you wanted slightly higher geared steering,

they'd do it.

If you wanted this, if you want a mirror up,

they'd do anything you like.

- [Commentator] Aintree, the RAC Grand Prix

in the hands of the British Automobile Racing Club.

There are six British cars in the entrance,

but as this is a world championship event,

the Germans are here as well.

So who is for the lead?

Moss distinctly hesitated to let Fangio first,

but the Argentine would have none of it,

and Stirling won his first Grand Prix, his own Grand Prix,

the ambition of a brilliant lifetime.

- Stirling knew from the outset,

he was never gonna have a better teacher

or a better professor than Fangio

and he was just gonna learn so much from him,

not least just by simply following him,

they did have a lot of one-twos in '55.

- [Commentator] Over 300 miles

of superlative driving behind them,

the Mercedes pair press on to victory.

- Fangio was a fantastic man.

He was a lovely man anyway,

and he would never, ever go off.

I mean, if you followed Jack Brabham for instance,

he'll go over the gravel, you'll get all the crap over you.

You see, Fangio wouldn't do that.

He'd let me sit there, and we were known as a chain.

And Neubauer came in to him and he said,

"You know, I don't like this idea."

He said, "What happens if Fangio goes off?"

I said, "Well, Fangio does not go off."

- [Commentator] At Monza too, Fangio wins,

and with it, his second world championship title.

(crowd cheering)

(gentle energetic music)

- There was no doubt that he was the best driver

of the '50s.

And when you start talking about old time,

you cannot compare what we had to put out with,

the challenges we had in the '50s compared with today.

I mean, in our time, the first component,

your first competitor was in fact the circuit.

If you spun the car,

you know, you are immediately in the lap of the gods,

because whether you finished up against a tree, or a curb,

or a brick wall would be outside of your hands.

- [Commentator] Flames reach up in the sky at Abbey curve,

where Brooks' BRM was overturned, throwing its driver clear.

(gentle music)

- [Commentator] Fangio went into the lead

to finish magnificently at an average of 98.65.

- Well, the Lancia D50 was a very brave program

that Lancia instigated.

It's a V8, 2 1/2 liter engine.

And the Ferrari version of that car, the D50A,

was a very well sorted car.

I've raced one of those.

It's a beauty.

It's a really, really lovely machine.

And I raced it at Goodwood two or three times.

- [Commentator] In 1956, Fangio demonstrates his mastery

of a young man's sport.

(car engines roaring)

There seems to be no way to stop Fangio winning major races.

When out in Cuba, not even being kidnapped

and held until too late to race

disturbed the calm serenity of Fangio,

now champion driver of the world for the fourth time.

- People talk about the Lotus 49 was the first time

you used the straight engine, blah, blah, blah,

but as we know, it wasn't,

because the D50 Lancia got there first.

And for me, that's the clever car.

- I drove the early one, which just has two exhaust pipes

coming out of four cylinders each side.

But the later car, the Ferrari version,

those four pipes went into two pipes with megaphones.

I had to put in two air plugs and push 'em

until they met in the middle of the trunk,

do something about it. (car engines roaring)

It's a great joy to drive those cars today

in more or less the same setup that they had

when they were new.

I sat in that Lancia D50A

and I thought, wow, this is exactly how Fangio had it.

The engine and the gearbox

had come out of Ferrari's junkyard down at Marinello.

They found about five engines

and I think six or seven gearboxes,

and they were going to be sold to the scrap man.

This was the most extraordinary thing of all.

Scrap man was coming that afternoon to take 'em all away.

- In my opinion, if Lancia had had the financial resource

that Mercedes had in 1954,

nobody would have seen where that thing went.

It would have been gone.

- [Commentator] Fanjio in second place,

he's guaranteed the world championship for the fourth time.

But this was Moss's finest hour

in a season's magnificent motor racing.

- Well, I had been racing quite a bit.

Now, what I wanted was to do was to find an English car

and there hadn't been an English car at all.

- Nobody thought or a lot of people didn't think

it was even impossible.

There was such an Italian stranglehold

on Formula One success,

and of course, you had Mercedes-Benz in there as well.

These people simply couldn't be beaten by a British car.

Tony Vandervell was a very aggressive guy

and his one abiding ambition, as he would put it,

was to beat those bloody red cars.

(upbeat music)

- [Commentator] The Vanwalls splendid

in their pretty racing green,

are maneuvered into there positions

comfortingly near the front of the red machines from Italy.

- When you look at the Vanwall team,

what you could say is it grew

out of Tony Vandervell's impatience

with the way the BRM project was going.

- And so he said, "Right, if they won't do it

"in a way I believe, I'll do it myself.

"I'm gonna build a car, I'm gonna do this."

So I really like that.

- By 1956, he employed this upcoming guy to do the chassis,

called Colin Chapman,

who would have quite a stellar career subsequently,

and Frank Costin to look after the aerodynamics.

- It was Colin then that suggested

that I should speak to Frank

and see if Frank would do aerodynamic body for him.

And of course, the Vanwall looked anything

but like any other Formula One car.

- Costin and Chapman worked together

to put the Norton engine that Vandervell had created

into this super streamlined car,

which we have an example of behind.

It was a beautiful car, completely redefined

the way that the cars of the time looked.

So by 1957, Stirling was part of the lineup

together with Tony Brooks,

and brilliant upcoming young driver

called Stuart Louis-Evans.

They complimented each other very, very well.

- It was only three weeks

after I'd had my accident at Le Mans

where I'd finished up trapped underneath the Aston Martin.

And I was less than fit.

And it was clear that I wouldn't have the stamina

to maintain a high enough speed to actually win the race.

So I agreed before the race

that if anything happened to Stirling's car or Stuart's car,

that I would bring mine in and they would take it over.

- [Commentator] Moss makes a hard stop at his pits

confirming our worst fears.

It's no good.

The Vanwalls are not finished yet,

and as Tony Brooks goes past,

the signal is out for him

to come in and hand over to Stirling

- And he came in, we changed over,

and for, you know,

I think it was pretty painful actually for him.

- [Commentator] Brooks can't leap out.

Tired and sore, he has to be helped gingerly

from the cockpit.

Then in a flash, Moss is off, no longer leading,

but in ninth place, with a long, hard road

of over 60 laps ahead of him.

Increasing his speed lap by lap,

he moves up through the field.

- I had to do with the car and managed to win.

So it was a wonderful thing for our team,

and for Tony, and myself.

- [Commentator] And Stirling takes it

to herald the first all British triumph

in a Grand Prix, since Segrave in 1924.

- Vandervell proved that with the right technology,

and that was the key thing, the right technology,

the right engine, the right drivers, the right tires,

not only could British cars be competitive,

but finally, they proved they could be reliable

and quick enough to win races.

So it was a major breakthrough.

- [Commentator] Well, there's a lot of wishful thinking

about and quite a few people who should know better

than saying one, two, three Vanwall old man,

that's what it'll be.

- By 1958, again, with the same three drivers,

they were perfectly poised

to challenge for the world championship.

And in 1958 as well, very important,

that was the first year

in which there was a world championship for constructors.

(car engines roaring)

- [Commentator] Moss, number 1,

produced all his verve and sparkling skill,

breaking the lap record

and driving the outstanding British Vanwall

to a handsome first place.

- The Vanwall won the title.

Therefore, one can't knock it because overall it was great,

but it was really a difficult car to drive.

It had a very difficult gearbox.

It was stable, but it didn't have the ease of driving.

It wasn't a friendly car.

- You know, going quickly in those cars would be...

You know, it was a very stirring experience anyway,

because of the whole sensation of the car.

I mean, the engines were not that smooth

and the suspension was not that smooth.

So you had the whole situation of noise

as to your sensation of speed.

It was a wonderful experience.

Of course, we were absolutely delighted

that we were able to win the championship,

you know, Stirling and I won three Grand Prix each,

which sort of fairly even out

the contribution that we'd each made

to the success of the team.

- [Commentator] Brooks is in command

and Mr. Vandervell is with him all away.

- I think what was most important

was that Tony Vandervell was very pleased

because he'd spent a fortune on motor racing,

you know, producing so many Vanwalls,

before he came up with the one

which was good enough in '58 to win the Grand Prix.

- If you look at the Vanwall legacy,

that legacy is to have broken the stranglehold

that the Italians and the Germans had on Formula One,

and to prove that the British

not only could field competitive cars

that raced honorably,

but that actually were successful

and won that title fair and square.

- [Commentator] Congratulations to Tony Vandervell,

whose enthusiasm and money has made this victory possible,

after so many heartbreaks and near misses,

which would have deterred lesser men.

- If you've got this list,

you got Vanwall and then you got Cooper,

because Cooper was sort of next in line.

- John and Charles Cooper took hold of a Fiat Topolino,

removed the front and the rear suspension,

grafted them on to a very simple

but fairly rigid space frame,

of single cylinder, JA Prestwich motorcycle

500cc engine in the back,

and anybody that was capable of fitting into this

could drive it.

- Almost by happen stance, they put the engine in the back.

A lot of people thought that was because of the success

of the Auto Union before the war.

It was more a matter of if you put the engine at the back,

you could drive it by chain on the rear axle,

therefore, we didn't need a gearbox,

very clever and absolutely typical

of the pragmatic engineering approach

that Charles and John brought

to the production of their cars.

And I think it's fair to say the Cooper 500cc cars,

they brought affordable motor racing to the masses,

if you like, after the Second World War,

and they had some luminaries of the future driving them

such as Ken Tyrrell and Bernie Eccleston,

and also a very quick upcoming guy called Stirling Moss.

Gradually, they began to evolve.

You know, they figured out that putting the engine

behind the driver had a lot of advantages

in terms of lightness, weight distribution,

handling balance.

They began with smaller Coventry Climax engines

and gradually got bigger and bigger,

to the point where they could have a 1.9 liter

and actually do a little Formula One car.

(gentle suspenseful music)

- And then the most extraordinary thing,

1958, so Cooper Type 43 is entered by Rob Walker

into the Argentine Grand Prix.

- Rob Walker is my patron,

and it meant he supplied the car and everything else,

and I supplied the talent to drive it,

and so it was a wonderful team.

- And he wins the Argentine Grand Prix in a rear engine car.

And everybody kind of looked

and everybody actually thought,

maybe there's more to this rear engine thing than we see.

- I went to see the Cooper Car company

when I got to England

and luckily, it went very well with John Cooper.

And finished up driving for him and working for him,

and it was a great era.

- [Commentator] Number 3 was the winner,

the Cooper driven by Jack Brabham.

A mighty good omen for British cars this season.

- It was really in 1959 with Jack Brabham,

where they really began to strike it.

Jack won that year's title,

so they won both the world championship for drivers,

first time for an Australian,

and the world championship for constructors,

the second year in a row that a British constructor had won.

- He was there at the very kind of beginning, in a sense,

when they started to move towards being real competitors

in Formula One.

And, you know, dad was in the workshop.

He would build the car.

- We had a big problem in those days,

of course, when we first started, there was no gearboxes

for rear engine cars.

So we had to make our own.

- They did a jolly good sort of blacksmith's job

and built this car.

And it really had...

It was very easy to drive.

It really was.

I mean, no vices.

- You could go along and driver a Cooper,

and you'd have the back hanging out,

which was the last thing you'd be doing with a Lotus.

So they did a very good job.

- What they did was to show the world

that the rear engine car was the way to go,

and they killed the front engine Formula One car.

That was pretty much a dead duck from 1960 onwards.

- [Commentator] He has a signature

for some lucky autograph hunter

who gets a world champion for his collection.

- I liked the idea myself,

and I certainly helped a lot with the development of it,

and it just became a success story.

And the fact that everybody's got a rear engine car now,

it must've been a right idea.

- It's amazing to see that this small outfit,

and they really were.

I mean, there was Ginger Devlin,

I mean, about three mechanics down there,

and John and Charles, you know, could build a car

that was actually gonna get the world championship.

- Very crucially, they carried on

what Tony Vandervell had started, British engineering talent

that we take for granted almost today

in so many areas in Formula One,

that is where it really was consolidated

by Charles and John Cooper.

- [Commentator] Another name that Britain may be proud of

and the man who made it so, John Cooper.

From 500cc racing for fun,

to the Formula One world championship.

The Cooper team has always embodied

the finest spirit of British racing.

- The variety of cars was enormous.

You know, type of cars, and particularly engines,

engines were a very strong aspect,

background and also some configurations.

And so yeah, they were pretty brave guys as well

that drove them.

- We had enormous pleasure.

We had enormous upsets.

We had bad times and good times.

It was a pretty good life, I can tell that.

Really, I can't think of any other life

that would compare actually.

- In the '50s, it was all about engine and driver.

Tires, everybody had the same sort of ties.

They had very crude suspension,

brakes that were awful, and the chassis were so crude.

Then you go into the '60s

and suddenly the chassis was everything in the '60s,

absolutely, chassis and driver.

And in the '70s, aero erupts.

Suddenly, aerodynamics becomes important.

So it varies, you know, and it's still varying,

and it's almost decade.

You can actually see the emphasis change.

(upbeat energetic music)

- The MP4/4 was very much

a sort of committee car,

which was primarily conceived by Steve Nichols,

Alan Jenkins, and supplemented

by time of Gordon Murray's thinking.

But I don't think anyone could claim

to be the exclusive designer of that car.

- The drivers, they think it's my car,

you know, I drive it.

And Ron would think, it's my car, I own it.

And the designers think, it's my car, I designed it.

And the mechanics think, it's my car,

I screwed it together.

- Ron Dennis was the very first of the team owners,

team managers to decide

or to see the importance of a good designer.

- My attitude towards things is always trying

to just make the best possible car.

Use the brainpower available, use the rules,

use all your resources and components

to just make the best possible car.

And so the starting point really was to talk to the drivers,

they were our sensors on the car

to really know what was happening

and to really know what was needed.

So I talked to the drivers and asked 'em,

"What do you need to go faster?

"What's slowing you down?"

And they came up with several factors.

I outlined maybe seven factors that they had mentioned

and tried to address each one of those factors

to make things a little better.

For example, they thought the car rolled

a little bit too much.

So we raised the roll center slightly to reduce the roll.

They didn't think the front felt completely connected

to the rear,

and some of the settings would sort of get lost

on their way from the front to the rear.

And so we made the monocoque much more stiff,

which helped that problem.

- I had just come from Brabham where I could see the benefit

of lowering the frontal area and the driver

at about a 40 degree, I think it was back angle

or 35 degrees, I think maybe even.

In the wind tunnel,

I think it was 7% more efficient,

which is unheard of even on those days on lift over drag,

and I could see it was a massive advantage.

I sat down with Steve and Neil

and put the drawings on the table,

and just said, "That's where we're going, basically."

It took some getting used to 'cause your head

was cranked up.

Your body was down and your head was cranked up.

Prost didn't like it.

He asked to be sat up.

So we built him a foam wedge and we sat him up,

and then he was 200 revs lower

than Ayrton in the straight

'cause helmet was blocking the air box.

So he laid down again.

- I had also a big problem with the comfort in the car.

A lot of air coming in the cockpit,

a lot of problems with my seat,

a lot of problem with the pedals,

and I tried to make a big effort,

and I spend a lot of time with the mechanics,

quite late in the evening for the last three days.

And at the end,

today the car was, I would say, 90% the way I like,

and it was much, much quicker, much better.

- So the net result of that, as it turned out,

was a car that was just very, very good in every department.

It just had no vices, really.

You know, it wasn't like it was a nine out of 10

in eight categories,

and then only two out of 10 in one category,

it was nine, 9.5, something like that in every category.

So the big secret of the MP4/4

was that there wasn't any secret.

It was just very good in every respect.

- Anything that gave somebody an advantage,

Ayrton never complained.

- I remember him saying to me

that he'd been working out in Brazil,

and I said to him, "That's nice,

"but maybe you could stop now," (laughs)

'cause he was getting a little too big for the car.

Inevitably, by today's standards,

the car looks quite simple.

But in period, it was,

you know, right up to date.

I wanted everything to be technically correct,

but I kind of wanted it to look nice as well.

We tried to make it flow, so to speak.

Like if you look at the nose of the car,

there's sorta two little shapes.

And the top blister or bubble goes back into the windscreen,

and then on purpose, flows back into the headrest

behind the driver, you know, that line flows through.

And I mean, above all,

you want the car to be quick, no compromise there.

But if you're going to look simple, and clean, and elegant,

I quite like understated elegance, I suppose.

Total technical staff at McLaren was 17 people,

and we had to do a hell of a lot of work there.

I remember one of the great guys working on the design team,

Huey Maraney,

he said he was driving past the factory one night

at one o'clock in the morning

and my light was still on. (laughs)

So, you know, it was a very intense period,

but ultimately very rewarding.

- At one point, I remember the head of production came

and said, "We're not gonna make the Imola test."

And I said, "Why?" and dah, dah, dah.

I said, "What about this?

"What about that?"

No, no, no, we can't.

And I put on a white coat, I went down to the build shop,

and I said, "I will participate in building it."

Within five hours,

they were saying,

"Go back to your office, we've got the message."

And it was a very interesting day

that went down in the history of McLaren.

You know, that I sort of said,

if you don't think the car is gonna get there,

I do, and this is what we have to do.

- They did a very good job of selling the car to Honda.

- This is really the result of many, many meetings,

obviously more intense set of meetings

over the last few months.

And we're very, very happy to be in this partnership

because we feel that their views and their strategy

is very consistent with our own,

which is to go to every race

with the intention of winning it.

- The team went into a different dimension,

and especially with Honda and with Ayrton,

it was a different attitude inside the team.

- I think it's great potential in there

with the new combination especially.

The team has great achievements in the past

and has everything even to be better in the future.

Therefore, I feel very confident about.

- Honda are very strong today.

I think they're gonna be strong, not only next year,

but all of years that they remain in Formula One.

And obviously, we're gonna have to do

a very good job for them with the car,

as we hope they'll do with the engine for us.

- I remember arriving late at night in the hotel in Imola

and there was some high-level official from Honda there.

And he said to me in the lobby,

"So tomorrow we find out about your wonder car."

And I thought, (laughs)

what's wrong?

What's he been selling here, you know?

So he'd been giving them a big sales pitch, I guess,

to get Honda and to get Senna onboard.

- Of course we arrive late,

and all of the teams pretty much,

and certainly for our big testing in two days.

And therefore, those set our lap time.

- Inevitably, I was nervous.

The car had been done by a limited number of people

in a limited amount of time, starting really in August

when we signed the contract with Honda,

and now it was ready to run early in 1988.

- Prost drove the car first

and on his first flying lap,

he was half a second off the fastest time

that Ferrari had set over the two days.

On the second flying lap, he had equaled it.

- And I said, it's a winning car. (chuckles)

That's a winning car.

For sure.

I knew Imola very well, I knew how it was.

No problem.

I was very happy.

- In the afternoon we put Senna in the car,

he went faster still,

did his first run, five laps or so, came in,

and he just sat there in the car stunned, really.

He didn't say anything for maybe 30 seconds.

It seemed like five minutes.

And then he said,

"This car is gonna be blankety-blank quick."

- By the end of the test,

we were at 1 1/2 seconds quicker than anybody else.

- Prost was saying, "Look, we got to keep a lid on this.

"You know, we do wanna let everybody know

"how good the car is,"

but the cat was out of the bag, so to speak.

It was fantastic really.

I mean, you've got the legendary Senna in this car

and he reckons it's brilliant.

You've got Prost saying

we're gonna win the world championship with this car.

It was just the most amazing thing.

- So of course, we get to the first Grand Prix,

for most teams either by necessity or belief,

decided to go for normally aspirated cars,

whereas Ferrari and ourselves

stayed with turbo-charged cars.

To try and create equivalence,

we were restricted on fuel tank capacity,

and we win the race.

- [Commentator] The Brazilian Grand Prix,

the first Grand Prix of 1988 has been won

by the brilliant Alain Prost

in the brand new McLaren MP4 of link four.

- And immediately we are protested.

In fact, we were protested every single race.

To tune accurately the fuel tank capacity,

we had nylon balls to make absolutely sure

that the tank capacity was correct.

So we became quite ritualistic, at the end of Grand Prix,

Charlie would come,

said, "I've gotta count your balls." (chuckles)

And we would systematically drain the car down,

meticulously count out the balls,

look around inside the fuel tank,

put the same number of balls in,

fill it up and establish that the car was legal.

And this happened right through the season.

- McLaren and Ron was the first to insist

that there is no deal between the drivers.

They are ready, willing, and able to race.

They both have two drops of water,

the cars were absolutely identical.

- To win against Ayrton, it's quite difficult

because you have to make a good start,

you have to push hard,

you have to be able to stay concentrated,

you have to push until the end because he never give up.

And that's part of the job, but it's quite difficult.

And racing now is every Sunday,

it's going to be very tiring.

- For Ayrton, Alain was the one that he wanted to beat

in the main course.

When we start driving and testing with him,

he was not interested in Piquet or Mansilla, just Prost.

What is battery going in Prost car?

What is the angle of this?

What is the pressure to use in the tires?

Everything that Alain was doing, he wants to do it.

- They weren't radically different in their setups.

Perhaps quite different in their driving technique,

but their setups weren't that far off.

And if they didn't get close to the same set up,

they were nervous about that

and they wondered why, you know.

They'd be more comfortable

if they were approaching the same setup

and they then know that the other one

didn't have some significant advantage about them.

(man shouting in foreign language)

(crowd cheering)

- It's been good for both of us this year

and that car has being good.

He has more points, I don't have,

but still a lot of race to come.

- I think he doesn't need to learn anything,

especially on being quick and qualifying

- As long we are in front,

we don't really bother about the others.

- And so the people went to see a race,

knowing that McLaren was gonna win,

but they didn't know who was going to win.

And they were gonna be able to watch

the best two drivers of the world battling each other

on equally identical cars.

- When got to Monza

two things happened.

- [Commentator] Alain Prost sadly retiring

from the Italian Grand Prix.

- [Commentator] Spin!

Senna!

Ayrton Senna spins.

What a fantastic situation!

- [Commentator] And that's all over for Ayrton Senna.

- His impatience.

He could not wait.

When he gets behind somebody like with Schlesser.

He was just about to double-hand Schlesser.

When he saw him in the mirror, he kind of made a mistake.

He brake too late, he got in the chicane, and he spun,

and he went out and collide Senna on the back.

He couldn't pass him there,

you should have wait it in the straight,

he pass it again.

But no, he couldn't.

As soon as he find people, he passed them all the time.

- We lost that race.

And of course, at the time,

we didn't realize that we've gotta win

all the subsequent races,

and that was the only one we wouldn't win.

- When he did make a mistake,

he punished himself so much

that not even Ron could tell him off.

- [Commentator] Aryton Senna stalled and virtually stopped.

- We didn't have a good start and he's sort of buried.

And then, you know, one by one,

picking them off and coming back through the field

and winning that championship.

- Trying to recover the lost ground.

But I didn't think I could make up the whole lost ground

to catch Alain.

- I was 12 seconds ahead of Ayrton,

and then I lost almost everything in two laps.

To Aryton, in this condition, he's a little bit quicker.

And that's it.

I mean, this, you have to be world champion,

to win this race and to be world champion.

- I like to thank McLaren-Honda for giving me this year,

for the first time in my career,

a real opportunity to win a championship.

It's been great.

- I was very fortunate to have been allowed

to design that car.

And then the following year,

to be able to be Senna's race engineer,

and engineer him to his first world championship.

So you design the car, and then you go race the car,

and you develop the car,

and you win the world championship

with a legend like Senna, you know.

I don't know.

For a race car designer,

I don't think it can get any better than that.

- Yeah, often I think great racing cars are inspiration

of an individual and the group of people

which are around them, and the drivers.

And the MP4 was an era of McLaren

where they had some great people there,

a great structure.

Ron was incredibly dynamic and motivated,

brilliant drivers,

and they managed to make all that chemistry work.

And the cars that came out of McLaren

in the main, in that area, were exceptional.

- [Steve] The MP4/4 went on to win 15 out of 16 races,

15 out of 16 pole positions,

10 one, two's through the season.

So the success of the car was phenomenal.

- So I look back on it, I've enjoyed every minute,

and I really, of course, enjoyed the period of domination

that the MP4/4 gave us.

- It was quite clear

that we were not going to be serious competitors

to Alain Prost and Senna with a Honda engine in the McLaren,

and we deliberately decided to focus on technology.

- The history of active suspension at Williams

started before my time.

So really, it was Frank Dernie

who was the champion of that project from the start.

- My objective with active

was to just keep the Arrow platform stable.

People thought if the bottom was flat,

there wouldn't be any ground effect.

But in actual fact with the flat bottom,

you just get ground effect which is massively variant,

depending on the height you have off the ground.

There's certainly a lot of conditions

there in a Formula One car,

where you cannot get the suspension ideal for all of them,

and active suspension is definitely the thing

to achieve that.

- Frank came to add I think some more flare, really,

to the company, someone whose role it was

to think about the car, and how it developed,

and the design of the car.

- Patrick at first thought it probably, you know,

from what we'd seen, wasn't worth doing.

But then we had a chap came along

who worked for...

What were they?

Lucas, I think, had made a system for an ambulance,

the idea being to make the ambulance

more comfortable and what have you,

and Patrick thought that might have some potential.

And so he gave it to me

and we made a prototype which ran on FW09.

We developed as from an automotive product system

that was developed 15 years or so ago,

and took one basic idea from that and developed it.

And so our system is probably more hydraulic

and less electronic.

- Frank Dernie employed me

for the active suspension project,

and they realized they needed more effort, more expertise.

They actually raised a system for one race

towards the end of '87, I think Monza.

- We did about four and a half thousand kilometers

from the beginning of the project to now.

And I think I've done most of these kilometers

and now everything is going all right.

- The car, it had blistered tires,

but he was not gonna be giving up.

He was gonna win that race.

And Nigel had not want it to run the active

'cause he wasn't at all impressed with the idea of active,

but once we'd won a race with it, he wanted one.

- We then did our best for the system we raced in 1988.

It really wasn't in the shape it should have been,

we really should have taken a year or two

before committing to race.

- We built it on the FW12 and had all sorts of problems.

It was still good, but we couldn't get it working.

And I think Silverstone, Patrick was so frustrated

with the whole thing he just said, "Right, that's it."

- So in our office, that was quite a gloomy day,

even though, in all honesty,

we realized that it was the right thing

and that actually we needed that space to come back

with a much better prepared system.

- It was also very clear to me

that we were not making progress aerodynamically.

And then I think at Leyton House,

Simon Keeble sacked Adrian Newey.

And so I gave Adrian a call and I said,

"Why don't you come and join us?"

And Adrian did.

So basically, if you look at the FW14,

it's external geometry, the body and everything,

was pure Leighton House from the year before,

but with better engineering systems on the car.

- There was a huge amount of skepticism

as to what were we doing?

You know, wasn't this all a bit of a waste of time?

I remember late into 1991, where we'd pretty much committed

to bringing it to the race car for '92,

still having arguments with race engineers

about what was the point

and whether it would really make the car quicker.

- The active car at first it felt a bit weird

because it did actually

maintain the ride height so well.

But it didn't feel that different.

What you were aware of within passive car

was the amount it rose up at when the load came off,

and you just got rid of that problem.

- In terms of systems, obviously, with the active ride

it had electronic power steering system

and it had, at various times,

anti-lock brakes and various traction control.

So it certainly had a lot of systems on it,

it was no way as a car, as complex as the cars are now.

- We were playing with really minute

ride height control adjustments to front and rear,

attitude control,

we had power steering was brought in,

we brought in ABS braking, power-assisted braking

to the point where we had a pedal

which didn't move at one point.

And then we had traction controllers.

I worked on the early traction control

and setting, playing with all that stuff,

it was great fun.

- You've got Adrian and Newey tiptoeing down the corridors

and Patrick Head, and you think...

And Patty Lowe, and from my position where my office was,

I'd often see them all getting together and all,

and I'd think, you know, these three guys,

I mean, this is gonna be a pretty good year for sure.

- The greatest moment that I recall

was a test at Paul Ricard in December '91,

where we had the active car

and we also brought along the first version

of traction control.

And at that particular test,

we really did start doing some stunning lap times

in an absolute sense.

- I think then we felt, wow, you know,

it's all about reliability now,

it's just about making this car finish.

- We needed to win the championship in '92

because we could have done in '91, but didn't.

- Ayrton and I, you know, we had the most incredible race

at the end of '91 at Australia when we had the typhoon,

and there was cars all down the street

and people having accidents every lap,

and they red flagged it and abandoned the race.

But I actually had hit the wall at about 165

on the left-hand side,

and it stunned me.

And I pulled the car over to the right

and just sat there, and it was bucketing down.

And I was thinking that hurt a bit too much.

It still hurts pretty much.

I went straight into a hospital to have all my foot x-rayed

and everything else,

and of course it was broken.

The last two toes were fractured and splintered,

some of the bones were splintered.

And they were gonna take me straight down to the OR

to have it operated on.

And I said, "Look, hang on a minute.

"I can taste, and I can smell,

"and touch the world championship.

"I'm not gonna put myself,

"you know, on the left field now for four months

"and not have an opportunity to go into '92."

- In terms of hopes, they're always dampened

by the attitude of Frank Williams,

whose attitude always is never be overconfident,

assume the opposition is gonna be bigger and worse

than you ever imagined.

- Unusually, McLaren, who were the team to beat,

they hadn't been to any of the shared team tests.

Testing in those days was a fully freestyle process.

McLaren had only tested privately.

So we didn't know how quick they were gonna be.

- The car, because of a lot of hard work

with many people at Williams, was pretty reliable,

as well as being quick.

- Williams employed the specialists that were needed.

They didn't wing it with what they had.

They put a team together that were really

incredibly methodical.

I mean, Patrick was a very methodical engineer.

Everything had to be done properly.

- It just the general logic of it all

and the way they were approaching it,

you got this feeling of confidence

of what was gonna happen if they could make it work.

And this time around, probably it would work.

- So Kyalami, the first race,

we weren't going in there with a huge...

We knew we had a good car

but we didn't know it was a winner.

As we went through each session, we were constantly quicker

than the McLaren, but I personally thought,

well, you know, they're sandbagging,

you know, when it gets to qualifying

they'll suddenly come out and turn it up.

- [Commentator] After a thrilling final qualifying session,

Nigel Mansell starts in pole position for the 18th time.

In fact, he was fastest in every practice session

and his pole lap was 7/10 faster than Senna,

who starts alongside Nigel on the front row.

- It was a great moment

because all that became clear,

you know, the story had started to unfold

that here we had an incredibly quick car,

and McLaren had nothing to match it.

- I'm under no illusion that we are going to win

first four races like we did last year.

I think that will be a lot more difficult this year.

- McLaren in those days were like the Romans,

you know, you were never gonna beat the Romans.

And here we had suddenly out qualified them

by a huge margin.

I remember standing on the grid with the car

waiting for the race to start

and just feeling sort of sick really with fear

because I knew all the things that could go wrong.

Here was all this stuff that we'd invented

but it had never actually been raced,

and this was the moment, and there were,

you know, hundreds of millions of people watching.

And so that could get quite ugly if it all went wrong.

- [Commentator] Well, he's done everything right today.

No mistakes from Nigel Mansell.

A marvelous driver.

It's been easy, but he's handled it perfectly,

professionally, tremendous win and a great start to 1992.

- [Commentator] And Mansell crosses the line,

waves to the crowd and he coasts across by his standard

to take the second flag before a delighted Frank William.

- Whatever he did, whether it was snooker,

whether it was playing dominoes,

he was just a winner in everything he did.

He never wanted to be second to anyone.

He got the best from that car.

And there aren't many drivers on the planet

who could have driven a 14B on the limit

as consistently as Nigel did,

because it was unknown territory,

the active car and the grip level,

and the sort of demands expected of the driver

were going into a totally new realm of performance.

And Nigel never hesitated, never blinked,

just went straight for it and understood it straightaway.

- [Commentator] They're breaking ranks!

The union jacks are waving

and Nigel Mansell wins the 1992 British Grand Prix

in terrific style.

And they're seeing now their hero come through.

If he gets back to the pitch through this lot,

I think he will be doing extremely well.

- I mean, what can you say?

I've never experienced that in my whole career

anywhere in the world.

And I mean, they're fantastic, aren't they?

It's just incredible.

- It was Silverstone.

It was the British Grand Prix,

and, you know, I'm smiling a lot as I speak

because, yeah, it's difficult to put into words, actually,

what it means to be a part of that.

- You know, the most legal drug

you can have in the world is adrenaline,

and Silverstone for me and the British Grand Prix,

no matter where it is,

I mean, it's just, I feel like I own it

- [Commentator] Three times he's finished second

in the world championship,

but today he could achieve his ambition to be number one.

And that's it.

Good start by Mansell on the inside.

Patrese is getting quicker.

Senna is up to third position ahead of Schumacher.

Berger goes round Schumacher up into third position.

So already, the McLarens are ahead

of the man who hopes to win the world championship here.

And that's Mansell up in the third place

past Gerhard Berger.

But in Hungary, the winner is Ayrton Senna,

and Mansell finishes and he's world champion.

- To be on the pit wall when that was happening,

it was one of the most amazing emotional things

I've ever been lucky enough to do.

- Best feeling in the world, I mean,

and what Ayrton said to me

and, you know, virtually had his arm around me,

we were hugging.

And then he said some incredible words in my ear.

He felt that he had to say something to me

to explain why he was such a difficult person at times.

You know, I don't know how many world champions there is,

but there's not that many more

that won all the world championships.

It's incredible.

It's a very select, private club.

- We are all racers and we love our activity.

We take chances, we take risks,

we go through pain, we sacrifice lots of things in life,

just for the pleasure to be P1.

And so I know what's the feeling like and I think

it's been a long time, long way for him,

and he finally got it,

and I think I know what's the feeling like.

- [Commentator] Mansell wins the Portuguese Grand Prix

and a record ninth win in one season.

- When I look back in '92,

because obviously the day after I got back

from Australia that year,

and it's there for everybody to see, where did I go?

I didn't go for celebration,

I went straight into hospital, had the foot operation,

got all the bones out and everything else,

and then was on crutches for months,

and actually went to the prize giving with crutches.

- I would say the 14B is the car

I look to most as my favorite car.

There are some other great candidates,

but the 14B obviously very special

because of a personal attachment to the technology within it

and to its success,

and to working with Nigel for his championship in 1992.

- It was a car that just cleaned up.

I mean, it was first actively suspended car

to win a championship.

- It should be not only considered a great racing car

because of how good it was in '92

and the engineering risks that were taken

and the engineering solutions that were made,

in that sense, it was a great, great racing car.

But also because it was way ahead of its time.

- I went back to Williams in 2017 to work.

And the first time I saw the 14B again in the workshop,

it was on stands in Dickie Stanford's museum workshop,

and I hadn't seen this car since 1992, in fact,

and just standing there, I burst into tears.

So that was completely unplanned and involuntary,

and perhaps a bit weak and weedy.

But anyway, that shows

that I guess it has got pretty special place

in my own history

and passion for Formula One.

- It's easy to say it was a great Grand Prix car.

How good was it in the history of the sport,

in the context of the history of the sport?

I think it would have to be

one of the top five Formula One cars

of all time. (car engine roaring)

(upbeat energetic music)

(car engine roaring)