A clinic in the delicate art of heel-and-toe
Most will probably already know this, but for those who don’t, Ayrton Senna was pretty heavily involved with the development of the original Honda NSX.
Thanks to McLaren’s partnership with Honda back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and all three of Senna’s championship winning cars being powered by Honda, the relationship between the driver and Japanese manufacturer was strong.
As a result, Senna was asked to help with the development process of the NSX and was instrumental in improving the cars chassis dynamics, with many crediting the Brazilian as the driving force behind convincing Honda to stiffen the NSXs chassis after an initial test run in the car at Japan’s Suzuka GP circuit.
Anyway, the footage seen in this video is Senna pedalling the then new NSX around Suzuka, and, how should we put this… he’s not hanging about.
By far the coolest bit about this whole video though is that he’s absolutely fanging it around this track, pulling off some of the fanciest footwork that foot well has probably ever seen, while wearing brown leather loafers and white socks! That’s a seriously cool move in our books.