The faces said it all. The temperature was marginally above freezing and a small group of McLaren team members were huddled around the timing desk on the pitwall shortly before lunch.
Each time the car flashed past, the mechanics would look up to savour the reaction on the face of Ayrton Senna’s Italian engineer, Giorgio Ascanelli, who looks rather like a junior Pavarotti. Each time he obliged them by opening his eyes wide and grinning, before instructing the pit signaller to put new figures on the pitboard.
