1990 Brazilian F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Brazilian Grand Prix
Track: Autodromo Interlagos
Weather: sunny, hot, dry
Alain Prost won his 40th F1 World Championship race at the 1990 Brazilian F1 GP. The Ferrari driver started from the third row and won on the Interlagos circuit for the first time. It was also his 1st win of the season and the 98th win for the Ferrari F1 team.
Interlagos reborn
Bernie Ecclestone had terminated the contract with the Rio circuit at Jacarepaguá after the 1989 race, the municipality could not afford the renovations the autodrome needed, and São Paulo, Ayrton Senna's home city, picked it up. The deal returned the Brazilian Grand Prix to the old Interlagos that had hosted it from 1972 to 1980. The race route was cut from eight kilometres to four; the lap kept its left-hand bias and the punishing camber changes; Shell and Chevrolet had financed nearly all of the $20 million spent on the rebuild. The bitumen drainage was already a concern after winter rain, and the Subida do Lago corner had been moved disconcertingly close to a concrete wall, but the paddock was happy. So, in particular, was Senna, who had never won his home grand prix and arrived from a holiday at Andra dos Reis with Gerhard Berger, the new McLaren partnership cemented by fishing trips and water-skiing.
The country was harder to enjoy. President Fernando Collor de Mello had just frozen every bank account in Brazil to fight 2000% annual inflation; cruzeiros could not be moved abroad; team credit cards stopped working at the hotel reception desk; the FOCA's prize-money payment from organisers was locked in for eighteen months. Ecclestone met Collor and got nothing.
The political tension between McLaren and Ferrari had also resumed. Ron Dennis accused Cesare Fiorio of buying Steve Nichols away from Woking with a two-million-dollar contract "partly paid in kickbacks." He called Prost's decision not to take a sabbatical bad judgement. He spent two hours of paddock walks talking to Jean Alesi, asking the Frenchman not to sign a contract anywhere without speaking to McLaren first. Tyrrell was supposedly his closest FOCA ally against Ecclestone; the rumour that Senna had met Fiorio in secret over the winter had Dennis insuring himself against every possible 1991 line-up.
Senna's 43rd pole, Ferrari's quiet weekend
Senna took his 43rd career pole in 1m17.277s, six-tenths ahead of Berger, with the McLarens once again untouchable in qualifying. The Williams-Renaults of Boutsen and Patrese took the second row, almost a second slower. Mansell and Prost qualified fifth and sixth, the Ferrari 641 still failing to find a fast lap from its single-shot qualifying tyres. Alesi was a brilliant seventh in the Tyrrell-Pirelli, again the fastest Cosworth runner. Pierluigi Martini eighth in the Minardi, Andrea de Cesaris ninth in the Dallara, Philippe Alliot a brilliant tenth in the new Ligier-Ford.
Sunday was warm and dry. Prost topped the warm-up, the first really positive sign all weekend for Ferrari, ahead of Senna and Boutsen. Goodyear's race-C compound was Senna's choice and Prost's; Pirelli ran two different specs for its Tyrrell and Brabham customers. From the lights Senna held the lead from Berger, with Boutsen up to third past Prost. By lap eight, however, Boutsen's tyres were already going off and he was caught and passed by both Prost and Berger. On lap seventeen Prost overtook Berger down the long back straight for second, the first Ferrari-McLaren on-track pass of the new partnership. By lap twenty-five Prost was within five seconds of Senna. The race was getting real.
Senna's home-race curse, Nakajima at the apex
Senna's pit stop on lap thirty-two cycled him back to first when Berger stopped on lap thirty-five, and by lap forty Senna led Prost by twelve seconds with the race apparently under McLaren control. Then on lap forty-one at the Cotovelo corner, lapping the Tyrrell of Satoru Nakajima, the same Nakajima who had finished sixth at Phoenix, Senna chose the inside line. Nakajima eased outwards. As Senna swept past, the Tyrrell's tyres ran over a clump of rubber debris on the offline; the car snapped right; Nakajima's left-front clipped the McLaren's right-front and tore Senna's nose off. Senna limped to the pits for a replacement nose, lost twenty-six seconds, and rejoined third, a position from which he would never recover the lead.
Prost set fastest lap on lap forty-five and again on lap forty-seven and pulled away from Berger at his leisure for the rest of the race. The Ferrari V12, slightly under-powered against the Honda V10 in pure straight-line terms, was nevertheless balanced and forgiving enough to make Berger's life behind it look unrewarding. Berger had stomach cramps for the last twenty laps. Senna closed thirty-something seconds back. By the line Prost crossed for his 40th career grand prix victory, and his first for Ferrari, on his second start for the Scuderia, in front of Ayrton Senna and a Brazilian crowd which now had a French villain back in the role originally played by Lauda. Berger took second, Senna a furious third, Mansell a quiet fourth, Boutsen fifth, Piquet sixth (he passed Alesi on the final lap in a fading Tyrrell whose Pirellis had gone over-the-edge).
Tears and counter-tears
"We have lost, but we are not beaten!" Ron Dennis grandly told the McLaren motorhome. Prost, in Cesare Fiorio's arms in the Ferrari garage, was openly weeping. "It's nervous emotion," he explained. "After the polemics of these last days, this victory could not have given me more pleasure. Dennis chose to apply another coat over the state of our relations, which I thought were restored to the right path. I wonder which of us has the thicker skin." It was his fortieth grand prix win, the gift he had brought to Maranello on arrival, and on this hot Sunday in São Paulo it had also delivered the closest thing he would get to a personal answer to his rival.
Senna was inconsolable. "He has won so many races over the past two years on overtaking, he can accept losing one because of overtaking," Prost said to a friendly Italian journalist. But Senna was close to tears himself: his home race jinx had now reached its fifth year, this one cast by a piece of marbles and a Japanese ex-McLaren teammate. Nakajima, smaller than ever, hung around the McLaren pit to apologise. "I slid the moment Ayrton was passing. Tell him I'm sorry; it wasn't deliberate." Senna gave a small, weary nod. He didn't blame him. He blamed the universe. And on the way home in the Air France cabin shared by Balestre, Dennis and Ecclestone, the plane sat for four hours on a Rio runway under a bomb-threat alert that turned out to be false. "A Senna fanatic," Balestre joked. "That man is dangerous," Ecclestone said dryly. Three weeks to Imola.
Classification 1990 Brazilian F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:19.899 min by Gerhard Berger (McLaren MP4-5) in lap 55
✅ Check out 1990 F1 Championship Standings
✅ Check out 1990 F1 Teams & Drivers
✅ Check out All Time F1 Drivers Rankings
✅ Check out All Time F1 Driver Records
✅ Check out All Time F1 Teams Rankings
Last F1 Fan Comment
Jere Jyrälä on Alpine Seals 2027 Driver Lineup With Colapinto Announcement48 minutes ago
All F1 Fan Comments