The great Ayrton Senna left McLaren at the end of 1993 after six seasons and three championships. It had been a very difficult season for the team and Senna, facing a more than formidable adversary with a great car but a customer Ford engine. The car was the highly sophisticated MP4/8, which was built as an answer to the dominant Williams FW14B that had broken McLaren's stronghold on Formula 1 a year earlier. It was equipped with a full range of electronic gizmos like fully active suspension, traction control and a paddle-shift gearbox. Unfortunately for the team, long-time partner Honda departed the sport at the end of 1992, leaving McLaren engineless. Desperate attempts to acquire Renault engines failed and eventually the team had to settle for Ford customer engines. Thanks to Senna's brilliance in difficult conditions, the MP4/8 nevertheless managed to win five races, against a single victory by the Ford works supported Benetton team. The most legendary of victories was at Donnington where Senna passed five cars in the opening lap and eventually won a lap ahead of almost the entire field. He also won his final two races for the team, scoring the only non-Williams pole of the season at the very last attempt.
In our feature car, Senna won his fifth consecutive Monaco Grand Prix; his sixth in total. This record is one of the few that has yet to be broken. We captured this privately owned machine earlier in the year at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it was driven up the hill by Ayrton's nephew and current Formula 1 driver, Bruno Senna. Our 12-shot gallery includes both action and detail photography.

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1993 McLaren MP4/8 Ford - Images, Specifications and Information