In the spirit of Gridwalker's post, I read an article somewhere a few years ago about Senna and Prost's time together at McLaren. Someone (might have been Prost or Senna, but can't remember) felt that Honda was subtly tuning the engines to give each driver an edge at certain tracks. I remember a quote from Prost about suddently beating Senna handily at the French GP.
Edit: found the article.
http://www.prostfan.com/senna2.htm
Excerpt:
Alain Prost
"For '89, though, I was worried about Honda. And I think my biggest problem was that I never had the relationship with them that Ayrton did. From the beginning, it was something I never felt I had under control. I wouldn't have cared very much if they'd simply preferred one driver in the team - but the way they handled the situation was very difficult for me, because Senna and I had very different driving styles."
"I never understood why Honda took his side so much. It wasn't that I thought it was a question of the Brazilian sales marked or the French market, or anything like that. It was more a human thing. I worked with Honda again last year - now as a team owner - and it struck me again: I think the Japanese just work differently. In a team, they always favour someone over the rest. I've heard it said about their motorcycle teams as well."
"Let me give you an example. At one point in '88, the last year we were allowed to run turbos, I asked for some specific changes to the engine to suit my driving style and we worked on it for two days at Paul Ricard. At the end of that test I was very happy - but at the next race, one week later, they never put that strategy on my engine."
"Then we went to the French Grand Prix - at Ricard - and suddenly the engine was just as I had wanted! You understand what I'm saying? Ayrton and I raced for two seasons together in the McLaren-Hondas, and at both the French Grands Prix I was on pole position and won the race. Everyone said, 'Oh look, it's Prost in front of his home crowd', and that sort of thing. It was nothing like that; it was just that at those races I had something which enabled me to fight..."
"Understand me, this is nothing against Ayrton, OK? Ayrton was very quick, and in qualifying he was much better than me - much more committed, just as I think I was when I was the younger driver in the team, against Niki (Lauda)."
"Anyway, before the 1989 season I had dinner at the golf club in Geneva with Honda's then chairman, Mr Kawamoto and four other people. And he admitted that I was right in believing that Honda was more for Ayrton than for me."
"He said, 'You want to know why we push Senna so much? Well, I can't be 100 per cent sure.' But one thing he did let me know was that the new generation of engineers working on the engines were in favour of Ayrton, because he was more the samurai, and I was more the computer."
"So, that was an explanation, and I was very happy afterwards, because then at least I knew very well that something was not correct. Part of my problem had been that Ayrton was so bloody quick, it wasn't easy to know how much was that, and how much was Honda helping him. So after this dinner with Mr Kawamoto, I thought, 'Well, at least I'm not stupid - something really was going on, and now I know the situation.'"
