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in him that would have suggested this. He only had eight points in the standings which was far less then Mansell who already had forty and though I knew he was world champion from the year before I could not figure out what made people praise him as they did. I at that point was willing to turn to another channel were a football match from the Italian "Serie A" was due to begin because even with what was my limited knowledge at that time I could see that Mansell was almost a sure thing to win that day.

In recalling this day the only reason I turned on this race was because I wanted to watch something before watching the "calcio" as we Italians call it and because I knew it took place on the streets of Monaco where I had once driven a car myself so it was with this in mind that I tuned in to this race but I will never forget that moment when I was about to turn the channel thinking it was over and perhaps if my old TV set had had a remote control I would have done so quicker. All I remember was a scream naturally in Spanish coming from the set "Ayrton Senna has taken first place", this statement making me freeze as I wondered how that was even possible but as my eyes turned back to the screen the image only confirmed what had been announced.

Senna was in first place because for some reason which I had not really been paying attention to which I would find out later; Mansell had gone in to pits because he had blown a tire that for some strange reason took his pit crew 39 seconds to fix (the norm being far less). This was all the break that Senna needed to take first place but taking first place was one thing holding on to it with Mansell and his Williams Renault which like many were saying was by far the best car in the world at that time was a different matter. True Senna had a nine second lead and it was not so much that I wanted to see him win but or that I wanted to see Mansell loose but I had had enough of watching a one man's domination so it was unwillingly in fact that I started pulling for Senna to win more because I wanted to watch somebody else win for a change.

Mansell was gaining as his engine was clearly stronger, despite his having only ten cylinders in comparison to Senna's twelve but in spite of this he was quickly getting closer to the point were he even gained an almost incredible five seconds in one single lap. The lead had been cut to under a second this putting Mansell so close to Senna's car to make one think that at any second he could overtake

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