The underdog F1 squad that thrust Senna into the limelight

“Start small, think big,” runs a quote popularly attributed to technology entrepreneur Steve Jobs. In January 1984 Jobs, whose company had begun operating from a suburban garage in Los Altos, California, unveiled the first Mac computer in a revolutionary blaze of hype, setting Apple Computer Inc on the path to becoming one of the biggest companies in the world. Four months later and thousands of miles away, a group of unproven individuals destined for greatness in Formula 1 narrowly missed out on achieving one of the greatest upsets in the history of motor racing.

Monaco 1984 is F1’s great shoulda-woulda-coulda moment, an event still hotly debated. The narrative is stuffed with Hollywood tropes: a struggling, underdog team; a new car created by a who-are-you-anyway designer; a driver talented enough to have caught the eyes of top teams, but not so much that they wanted to employ him straight away; a surreal race flagged before the finish and the win awarded to a driver who had already been overtaken; and the long-tail intrigue of whether the car which crossed the line first, only to be denied a sensational victory, would have made it to the chequered flag if the race hadn’t been stopped early. And most of it is true.