- 08 Feb 11, 20:02#238463My thoughts on Senna that I've posted previously around the end of the season last year that I still think others should consider before trying to draw conclusions on his ability / performances:
I don't think it's particularly fair to single out Senna for poor performance this year. he's in a similar boat to the one Zanardi was in with Williams in that his race engineer is not very experienced. his engineer has previously been part of the Williams test team, and then Nakajima's race engineer. Chandhok / Klein / Yamamoto's race engineer on the other hand has been in F1 for years working with a number of drivers and a variety of back-of-the-grid teams such as Super Aguri and Arrows before coming to HRT.
A new team needs experienced engineers and for HRT, Senna's simply doesn't fit the bill. I strongly suspect that as a result of pairing a rookie driver with a not far off rookie engineer (certainly no experience of developing a terrible car) Senna has potentially lost half a second a race in performance to his team-mate each race, but has been making the difference up through his own driving.
If you give him a semi decent car and a team with reasonable experience, I suspect he will outperform most of the potential team-mates he could end up with.
To repeat, the difference between a good engineering team and a bad one can literally be worth as much as .5 to 1 second per lap at a race, which in F1 terms is a massive difference, and a massive loss if you're the one on the wrong side of it. I'm not joking when I say that he appears to be making up a lot of time through his driving compared to his team-mates to equalise the balance, at many times resulting in (necessary) overdriving and a spin or two. If you look at his whole season to date that has been the pattern.
The thing with the HRT was that with the incredible lack of downforce, it was a car that simply couldn't be driven aggressively. If you look at his team mates that didn't spin or crash, it was generally because during the races they were driving smoothly and conservatively. Senna on the other hand was often trying to push that heap of cr*p to the maximum which naturally took him off road on occassion as there's only so far you pan push a turd before it smears and falls apart... for want of a better term...
I still maintain that at a semi-decent team Senna will shine. It looks like he might miss out this time if Heidfeld is now being talked about, and I can't blame the team at all - many have pointed out that a team like that can't really be driving with two inexperienced top level racers. A shame, as I'd like to see Senna's detractors proven wrong...
Favourite racing series: F1, Indycar, NASCAR, GP2, F3, Formula E, Trophee Andros, DTM, WTCC, BTCC, World Endurance... etc. etc.
