In 2014, the author of the Song of Ice and Fire series of books-turned-TV megaseries, George RR Martin, sketched the Iron Throne as “wrenched from the hands of dead men or yielded up by defeated foes… a symbol of conquest… This Iron Throne is scary. And not at all a comfortable seat…”
F1’s equivalent altar was deserted after 1993, as was the slate that had enabled the then pre-eminent Williams-Renault team to dominate the two previous seasons. Of those crown-bearing drivers, Nigel Mansell was by then an IndyCar champion, while Alain Prost had hung up his helmet and was replaced by Ayrton Senna for 1994.
In-race refuelling returned, but driver aids would be outlawed from 1994, alleged to have been lobbied against by a hapless-on-track but politically persuasive Ferrari. These included active suspension, ABS, traction control (TC) and launch control, weaponised in particular by the Williams team in 1992 and 1993. The conflation of such
