All of this took place in May 1992, with the race car on display at the Nicosia International State Fair
It sounds utterly surreal. And the truth is, it was—since for some of us, it felt more like a dream than reality. And then, that dream opened a door for me that I never imagined I’d walk through
With Ayrton Senna’s iconic McLaren MP4-6 recently coming back to life on the streets of Athens, with the honored Mika Häkkinen behind the wheel, it brought back an old memory of when that very same car was in Cyprus.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
It still feels like a dream, but once upon a time, many years ago here in Cyprus—back when there were so few Formula 1 fans in our country that they all knew each other (!)— one of McLaren’s sponsors at the time decided to bring the legendary Senna’s MP4-6 to our island: the car in which he had won his last championship, just one year earlier.
All of this took place in May 1992, with the car on display—for an entire week—at the Nicosia International State Fair, where it seemed as though the whole of Cyprus was gathering at the time.
With Formula 1 “fever” running through my veins, I put my college studies on hold and was there every night, standing right in front of Senna’s McLaren. Until the booth managers, seeing that I wouldn’t budge from right next to it, were forced to… hire me—for free, of course—to talk to visitors about my passion.
People gathered around the race car more out of curiosity than awe. For most, it was something unfamiliar, almost unnatural. They would lean in, examine it, dig their fingernails into its strange slick tires, and every time I saw them do it, I felt a slight shiver of sacrilege run through me. Some even thought the lightweight single-seater was a fake, since it had no engine and you could easily push it with your hands, but its secret lay in carbon fiber—a term unknown to most people at the time.
“How fast does this little racer go—about eighty?” I remember someone asking me. “That’s just in first gear! And then, in the blink of an eye, it climbs all the way to 320!” I replied, and from the way he looked at me, I could tell he thought I was pulling his leg.
And as the days went by, I felt that my time spent next to my idol’s McLaren was becoming more and more special. I didn’t know, however, that the best was saved for last.
On the last night, the company that had brought the McLaren to Cyprus decided to give me a gift that, for a 21-year-old who lived and breathed Formula 1, was utterly mind-blowing, filling me with such awe that even today I struggle to describe it: to sink into the cockpit of the race car driven by the legend of legends.
So, after all the visitors had left, I put on my suit, gloves, and helmet from the Pan-Cyprian Karting Championship races, carefully wiped my boots so as not to desecrate the sacred space, crossed myself, and prepared for the ritual.
How do you get into a Formula 1 car? Especially a car from that era, when the cockpits were inhumanly narrow and claustrophobic? The first thought is that you CAN’T!
Imagine a chair that’s so close to the table that you can’t pull it back to sit down. First you have to remove the steering wheel, then look down deep into the cockpit, beneath the instrument panel, until you spot an extremely narrow horizontal opening through which your legs must fit. To do this, you have to bend your knees almost backward and… slide in, as if the car were swallowing you whole.
Although the seat—tailored to Senna’s body—was missing, the cockpit was still hopelessly narrow, even for a half-portion guy like me. My shoulders, arms, and legs were pressed against the right and left walls of the cockpit, while my knees were pressed together.
And that’s when you realize the unimaginable. How is it possible that Senna, crammed into this fetal, inhospitable position, can see, aim, and scrape against barriers and walls with laser-like precision at 300 km/h?
The mere thought that, back then, the “Philosopher of Speed” was still among us, alive, writing on the Formula 1 tracks the legend that was destined to make him immortal, still sends shivers down my spine to this day.
Our story, however, didn’t end at the State Fair…
Shortly afterward, the McLaren MP4-6 was transported to a gas station in the capital, where it was placed in a prominent spot as an exhibit. My friends and I were there again, right next to it, for as many hours as we could, and I remember there was also a young woman there working as a model.
At one point, a priest—wearing white sneakers under his cassock—who was filling up his car with gas, gave us a sly look and said: “What are you up to, you rascals? Did you come to check out the model’s legs?” “No!” we replied. “We came on a pilgrimage.”
More in my book *Ode to Speed*—Dimitris Giokkas
