Martin Brundle has admitted his infamous grid walks leave him terrified – but it pales in comparison to one experience as a driver.
The racer-turned-broadcaster regularly serves up car-crash television off the track with his sometimes awkward grid walks – but one incident in Australia hit a little too close to home.
During an exclusive interview with talkSPORT last year, Brundle’s former teammate Mark Blundell claimed he is underrated as a driver.
And so he proved to be at Adelaide’s street circuit in 1989 when F1 legend Aryton Senna, on the warpath, ran into the back of him.
In scenes described by legendary motorsport commentator Murray Walker as Senna ‘bearing down on him like Jaws’, Brundle still has nightmares about the ferocious collision over three decades later.
He told his Behind the Wheel podcast: “My most terrifying experience in motorsport is quite an easy one to decide on, actually, and that would be Adelaide 1989.
“I’m driving for Brabham on the Pirelli tyres, cars going well, and there were 39 cars in Formula One at that time, extraordinarily, and only 26 would start the race. That’s how popular it was and how competitive it was.
“But it rained on race day and we had a bit of extra practice. There’d been a lot of fuss because Senna and [Alain] Prost had tripped over each other in the race previous in Suzuka and Senna got disqualified.
“He was angry. Prost was effectively the new world champion at McLaren, but he was off to Ferrari.
“Senna was staying at McLaren. McLaren protested the result on the basis they’d lost a race victory on that day after Senna was disqualified and Nannini won for Benetton. And there we were then at the next and final race of the season and Senna was on a mission. He could still be the world champion, actually, if they won the appeal, probably wasn’t going to be.
“Prost didn’t want to start the race. I was keen to, along with other drivers too. It was chucking it down. A lot of discussion on the grid.
“[Former F1 CEO] Bernie Ecclestone walked along and said, get in the car. The race is starting. And we all did. Prost pulled in at the end of the first lap.
“Then there was a big shunt and it was red-flagged. Sorted all that out, [and] restarted. My little Brabham’s going really well, but the Pirelli tyres weren’t quite as good in the big puddles with the aquaplaning as the good years that the others were running. Or many of the others.
“But they were very good in other respects. So I’m going down the back straight, running well inside the top 10. I’m having a good race in top gear, flat out. There’s a little right-hand corner at the end of it.
The famous one where [Nigel] Mansell had the blowout in 1986 and lost the world championship there. And two-thirds of the way down the straight, my car got up.
“On top of the water, I’m flat out in top gear and start spinning around. Somehow I spun straight down the middle of the track.
“Didn’t hit either of the two walls. In a ball of spray, I knew there were a lot of Formula One cars behind me and I wanted to get going. To put it into first gear and start to drive away. And then I couldn’t work out because I didn’t know exactly how many times I’d gone round whether I was heading towards the Formula One cars or with them.
But I knew I had to keep going. So I kept up against the wall, grimacing in case something came at me head-on – and I’m still in the race. And then I saw the brake marker boards and the numbers were on my side.
“And then I knew I was going in the right direction. I accelerated away. Survived that one. Senna was on a mission.
“He’d already had a multiple spin and also stayed out of the wall just before the last corner of the lap. And he pulled away nine seconds on the first lap. The team were on to him, apparently saying, slow down, slow down. You’re winning by miles.
“Next time down the Brabham Strait, I’m in fifth gear because I didn’t go in sixth. I’m like half, three-quarters throttle, just trying to not aquaplane again and get through that phase of the race. And all of a sudden I felt this massive clout in the back. and then Senna came past me on three wheels.
“I’ll never forget it. I can picture it right now. Unfortunately, it broke my car as well. Took the rear wing off and damaged the right rear suspension on the Brabham.
“He was out of the race and so was I – and there was a camera on the back of my car and it was like jaws coming at me. So he clearly couldn’t see a thing, because my rear camera couldn’t see him until he hit me. And cameras tend to see better in those conditions than the human eye.
“That’s how on a mission Senna was now. Angry was that the race was taken away from him the previous race when him and and Prost had that scuffle into the final chicane in Suzuka.
“So that moment, when I hooked first gear and drove away, when I didn’t know if I was driving Formula One cars or with them, unquestionably is the scariest thing that ever happened to me.”
These days, 35 years on, Brundle still gets terrified every race weekend on the main straight – interviewing celebrities on the grid.
He told the Sun: “I’m one sentence away from the end of my career at all times, or being cancelled.
“I’m terrified of the whole thing because it’s live and it’s just pure car crash television.
“Machine Gun Kelly, Megan Thee Stallion, I don’t know, getting knocked about by security guards. They’re the ones that people like.
“And then I meet some really lovely, fascinating, world-class people, politicians and royalty and movie stars, and I’m very privileged with the people I meet on the grid.”
