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Paul Tracy was in pole position for a full-time drive with Team Penske for the 1993 Indycar season. But when he arrived for a test at Firebird International Raceway in December '92, he still didn't have the deal confirmed.
Just days earlier the legendary Rick Mears had announced his retirement from the cockpit at the Penske Christmas party, so Tracy, who had raced Mears's car on occasions in '92 as part of a schedule that took in 11 of the 16 events, was optimistic. Then two limousines arrived at Firebird, and out stepped Formula 1 world champion royalty.
"I was already in the car - the test had already started," says Tracy today. "I'm in the pits and I see these limos show up outside the track. They had to open the gate for them to come across, and I thought it was weird. Then out of the limos come Emerson Fittipaldi and Ayrton Senna.
"Senna had a helmet bag with him and I thought, 'Oh Jesus, here we go'. They had another car and pulled it out of the truck ready to run. I was on eggshells because I hadn't been told I was going to run the full season - I was the test driver doing a partial season. There were all these rumours that Senna was going to sign with Penske and I was waiting to find out if I was going to get the seat or not."
Senna spent that off-season disillusioned with F1, where his once-dominant McLaren team was becoming less competitive in the face of fierce competition from Williams as high-tech cars - in the Brazilian's eyes - took away from the level of skill required from the driver.
To make matters worse McLaren had lost Honda power for 1993, and would be using Ford engines that would be a step behind those supplied to the Blue Oval's works partner Benetton. Without a McLaren deal in place for '93 yet, and in the wake of world champion Nigel Mansell's shock move from F1 to Indycars with Newman/Haas Racing, Senna turned to countryman, friend and Penske driver Fittipaldi to arrange a test.
"Emerson called me and asked if Ayrton could have a ride and I said absolutely," says team boss Roger Penske, who adds that Senna "had some interest in running the Indy 500". Sound familiar? Penske acknowledges that "Michael Andretti is doing a great job taking on Fernando Alonso this year at the last minute", a decision his team didn't quite have to make following Senna's test.
"You saw these Formula 1 guys have an interest coming to the Indianapolis 500. They looked at it as another big race. Of course, today, when you think of the number of people [in attendance] it's the world's number-one race. To have some of these stars come over and participate makes the competition better and, if you win, an even better trophy to have."
While Mansell's Newman/Haas deal was already in place by December of 1992, the newly crowned F1 world champion hadn't driven an Indycar yet, so the Penske crew took great satisfaction in stirring the pot when word started to get out about Senna's run.
"The high point of the day was a call I got from Ed Nathman, who was running Newman/Haas at the time," says former Penske team manager Chuck Sprague. "The grapevine was in full swing. He heard Senna was out there. Mansell hadn't even been in a car and here was Senna driving for us with no warning from anybody that it was happening.
"Personally, I took a lot of glee out of this because there had been a whole lot of media attention to Mansell's coming, but Senna was going to be in one first. We knew it was going to set the fox among the hens when it came to the rumour mill."
While Penske took pride in keeping the test under wraps - much like the secrecy that would surround the famous Mercedes-badged Ilmor pushrod engine with which it would dominate the 1994 Indy 500 - Sprague did have to keep a lid on things when his crew found some suspicious cargo in one of their cars as they unpacked the trucks at Firebird.
"As the guys were unloading the new car they pulled the bag out of the cockpit that had all of Senna's [1992 McLaren F1] gear in it so the questions started to flow," he adds. "I informed them, just as I had been told, we were doing this as a favour to Ayrton and there was nothing definitive one way or another."
The primary purpose for Penske at the test was to see how its 1993 car compared to the '92 machine, and it was a version of the latter that was made available to Senna. Mears started life in retirement as a consultant and driver coach for the team, although he accepts that he didn't have to do much on that day.
"You could tell immediately he was ahead of the car, even though it was a car he had never been in," says Mears. "I remember watching him come onto the front straightaway in a semi-tight right-hander. He started hustling it and it stepped out on him. Usually, guys that are new to a car, when it steps out like that and they catch it, they overcorrect it and they have a 'tankslapper', they chase it for a few wobbles, straighten it out and go on.
"He did the 'good-driver' thing: it stepped out, he did what he needed to do to stop it, kept it in a nice, smooth drift and feathered it out on the exit like he had done it 100 times. Obviously, he didn't need to prove anything to me, but when you see that it reconfirms his talent.
"He was a nice guy, level-headed and quiet. It was all about business. I remember him talking about driving the car and [in F1] they were already into the active ride and paddle-shifting and he said, 'This is fun. I get to drive the car again.' That's what a driver wants to do.
"I thought it was him wanting to branch out a little bit. A driver wants to drive anything. It's like when I had my test in the Brabham F1 car [in 1980, before turning down a contract from then-team boss Bernie Ecclestone] - it satisfied the curiosity in my mind that if that was the direction I wanted to go we should be competitive. Ayrton wanted the opportunity to see what it felt like."
Even after one run of roughly 15 laps in the car, Senna's feedback suggested there was more to this than simply wanting to satisfy a curiosity about Indycars.
"The debrief was fascinating to me because he identified the strengths and weaknesses to me that we had been dealing with all season," says Sprague. "I remember some initial hesitation at turn-in before the car would react.
"He was very complimentary of the brakes and we had a really comprehensive brake programme to make sure we could put good brakes under Rick, because with his feet [Mears had badly injured them in a crash in 1984] there was a loss of strength and loss of sensitivity that made it tougher for him to modulate brakes, because those were heavy cars.
"It was good feedback. He enjoyed manual shifting and said that it was a well-balanced car overall. Immediately, Ayrton was comfortable and hooked-up in the car - just what you would expect from a guy with those credentials."
Then-Penske crew chief Rick Rinaman was another to be blown away by the level of feedback Senna could offer so quickly.
"The main thing that I remember is when he did his run he came in and was able to tell us when the aerodynamics of the car stopped performing, at what point, slowing down for a turn," Rinaman remembers. "It was pretty amazing, something that we hadn't heard too often.
"It wasn't where the wings gave up but he could tell you when the underwing stopped working. He could differentiate it from the [top-surface] wing downforce. That was amazing."
By this time, word was already getting out about the test, with Arie Luyendyk making an appearance "hanging on the fence", according to Sprague, trying to find out what Senna was up to with Penske. But even if the test itself was creating fanfare, the team was impressed by how understated Senna was throughout, even down to the fact that he arrived with "no entourage".
Rinaman had been tasked with getting Senna properly fitted into the car and, despite being prepared to make a series of adjustments once Fittipaldi had shaken the car down, he wasn't called into action to make any changes when swapping one Brazilian for another.
"Senna came out and we had to do a driver fit because Emerson was taller," he says. "I remember he sat down in that seat and I'm looking at the footwell and he is toeing to get to the throttle and the brake. He either needed the pedals moved back to him or the seat moved up. He said it was fine.
"He was flopping around in the seat and I thought we would get padding for him. He was, 'No, this will work'. He went out in that car in the same driver fit as Emerson and had to stretch his foot to get to the throttle.
"All the drivers I've ever worked with if they are an inch uncomfortable it's a major deal, like moving the seat back or cutting the steering down. He jumped in the thing and drove."
Senna ended the day with a best lap of 49.09 seconds, 0.61s faster than Fittipaldi managed on his shakedown run, while Fittipaldi's best time in the 1993 car was a 48.5s. He stayed with the team for a few days, including spectating as it carried out an oval test at Phoenix. Sprague tried to get him to "give it a whirl", but Senna declined, saying, "I want to watch a lot more before I try this."
Before he left, Senna personally thanked each member of the Penske crew for his Firebird test, and Sprague was touched a year later to receive a Christmas card from the three-time world champion, which he has kept to this day. "You could see an underlying intensity that makes a driver successful," he adds. "He was coming off a season that tried his patience at McLaren.
"Clearly, Ayrton was one of the very, very best. It was a treat to be able to work with him a bit and see him in action, particularly when you throw him in the deep end. To me that is the acid test: here is a track you've never seen, a car you've never been in - go!"
Nothing more came of the test (much to Tracy's relief), with Senna eventually agreeing to start the 1993 F1 season on a race-by-race deal with McLaren, where he did his best to take the fight to the superior Williams-Renaults, now led by his arch nemesis Alain Prost. Mansell took Indycars by storm, winning on his debut at Surfers Paradise and defeating Fittipaldi in the battle for the championship. But how close did Penske come to running two Brazilians that year?
"You never know - we had a lot of drivers at that point and it's not easy to click it on and off," says Penske, who had ordered Sprague to put together a basic one-page contract for the test, that allowed Senna to turn up "at his determination".
"To have Senna drive one of our cars was a special day," the legendary team boss adds. "He was up to speed right away and was a terrific young man. He had a great feel of the car - the feedback was good, and the test was a success.
"We were so happy to have him in our car when we did. It's just a shame he never got to drive for us."
