History at auction
The famous auction house RM Sotheby’s will sell this coming 25 April in Monte Carlo the 1984 Toleman TG183B-05, car #19 with which the late Ayrton Senna made his absolute debut in Formula 1 on the occasion of his Brazilian Grand Prix. On the Jacarepaguà track, the debut was not particularly exciting for the future three-time world champion, forced to retire due to a turbo failure, but in the subsequent events of that championship he had the opportunity to impress with a single-seater not up to the level of the top teams.
Read more Zero podiums in the first three GPs as champion: Norris like Hamilton in 2009. And not only…
A memorable debut
After the 6° place in South Africa which earned him his first career point, immediately replicated in Belgium, the Brazilian obtained an incredible second position under the violent downpour of Monte Carlo, where he had the concrete possibility of winning the race if it hadn’t been for the red flag shown just as he was close to Alain Prost. An episode that gave life to one of the greatest rivalries (if not the greatest) in the history of F1. The other two podiums of that season were in England and Portugal (in both cases in 3° place), sufficient for Lotus to decide to focus on him in 1985.
Read more F1 on the sofa: the longest breaks between one GP and the next
The valuation
The price of Senna’s famous single-seater is estimated between 2.800.000 and 3.800.000 euros, but during the auction the Toleman will not be the only focus of collectors’ attention: among the Ferraris, for example, there will be the 1991 642 of Jean Alesi and Alain Prost, or a 1978 312 T3, driven that year by the duo Carlos Reutemann and Gilles Villeneuve.
