6. Ayrton Senna wins first title – 1988
1988 was an all conquering year for McLaren. The sport had never seen domination like it before, and hasn’t since. It was the year the British team went on to win all but one race.
It was evidently then, for a long time before the penultimate round of the championship in Japan, that the title was only ever going to be won by Alain Prost, or his younger team mate, Ayrton Senna.
After four consecutive wins in the middle of the season, it was Senna who went to Suzuka with the chance of winning his first ever World Championship. But he didn’t make it easy for himself. He’d qualified on pole, with Prost second, but the Brazilian made a truly awful start and had dropped to the mid-pack by the first corner.
Senna then put on a fightback, clawing his way back up the order, and with rain in the air, he was finally back on the tail of Prost. The Frenchman had been leading easily ever since Senna’s poor start, but despite his best defensive driving, was powerless to stop the Brazilian squeezing past.
The winning margin in the end was thirteen seconds, a result good enough to give Senna the first of his three titles.
