During the 1980s, Ayrton Senna discovered that racing in wet conditions allowed him to feel minute changes in tire grip through steering feedback that dry conditions obscured, so he would intentionally request wetter qualifying sessions to build confidence in a car’s handling characteristics before races, giving him a psychological and tactical advantage that competitors attributed to supernatural wet-weather talent rather than understanding it was partly self-engineered through track condition selection.
Car Fact #50 — August 5, 2026
