1990 Canadian F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Canadian Grand Prix
Track: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Weather: wet at start, drying
Ayrton Senna won his 23rd F1 World Championship race at the 1990 Canadian F1 GP. The McLaren driver started from pole and won on the Montreal circuit for the first time. It was also his 3rd win of the season and the 83rd win for the McLaren F1 team.
A Quebec weekend on the brink
The Canadian Grand Prix arrived in Montreal under several clouds. FISA had been demanding circuit improvements at Île Notre-Dame for two years; the Gilles-Villeneuve asphalt was in deteriorated condition. Bernie Ecclestone had met Normand Legault and Montreal mayor Jean Doré on 6 June to threaten cancellation; both promised a complete repave for 1991. A bitter labour dispute had taken out the Club-Auto Québec's experienced marshals, replaced for the weekend by amateurs recruited by newspaper advert, and Alain Prost spent his Friday afternoon raging at the combination. "It's a circuit unworthy of the world championship!" the French champion protested. "I admire its layout but cannot accept such a filthy surface." Behind the politics, the FIA's Gilles-Villeneuve weekend was already shadowed by Peter Monteverdi's plan to relocate Onyx to Switzerland under the pressure of British court judgements over Mike Earle's and Alan Jenkins' contract terminations, and by Walter Brun's last-minute substitution of Claudio Langes (unpaid, only required to put in two installation laps as a contractual formality) in Eurobrun.
Senna meanwhile had reopened his Honda V10 grievance. After both Imola and Monaco he and Berger had complained of mid-race power loss; the blocks had been shipped back to Japan; Eric Silbermann, Honda's press attaché, told the paddock that "the suspected Monaco power loss was not there in the data." Senna's reaction was direct: "I have enough experience to know when my engine has a problem. And it had one at Monaco." He warned McLaren publicly: "I'm looking for the best car for 1991." He was waiting, in particular, for the Honda V12, which Osamu Goto confirmed was in development for next year but would not arrive in time to save him from a Renault V10 that was now arguably already faster.
Senna's 46th pole, Berger's launch error
Senna took the 46th pole position of his career on Friday with a 66-thousandth margin over Berger; Saturday's rain meant Friday's grid stood. Prost qualified third in the Ferrari 641, four-tenths back, with a clean qualifying run that finally rewarded Maranello's persistence. Nannini and Piquet locked out the third row in the Benettons; Boutsen sixth, Mansell seventh after a flat tyre, Alesi eighth in the Tyrrell with a Ford V8 down on power on the long Île Notre-Dame straights. Patrese qualified ninth on an erroneous tyre choice; Modena was tenth in the Brabham. Sunday was wet at the start but drying as soon as the formation lap began.
Berger, in a McLaren set up for a faster-drying track than his teammate's, broke before the lights went green, felt it, braked, by which time the lights had gone. Senna's launch was clean; Berger held on to second behind him through the opening corners. Alesi vaulted Prost on the first lap. Senna led Berger, Nannini, Alesi, Piquet and Prost. Race direction watched the start-line replay twice and issued Berger a one-minute time penalty on lap eight. The Austrian was now racing for fourth at best, and effectively for no money at all in a championship where Honda telemetry had stopped being his ally.
Senna on slicks, a marmot, and Alesi's big crash
The pit stops between laps ten and fifteen handed slicks to a drying track. Berger pitted first on lap ten, Senna on lap twelve. The Brazilian rejoined behind both Ferraris on the road but ahead in race position. By lap seventeen Nannini was new on-track leader; behind him Senna ran officially first, Berger ran second on road but penalised, with Prost, Piquet and Mansell in a tight pack. On lap sixteen Nannini ran over a marmot on the start-finish straight, damaged his nose and a tyre, and pitted for repairs, a uniquely Canadian retirement story.
Then on lap twenty Boutsen tried to overtake Prost on the inside of the pont de la Concorde braking zone, ran over a piece of damp track, and slid into Larini at high speed. Williams race over; left-front bent. On lap twenty-three Nannini, lapping his way back through the field, aquaplaned on the same damp patch and hit the tyre wall hard. He climbed out unhurt, but the Benetton was left sitting beyond the gravel trap with no marshal available to retrieve it because the substitute crew was busy elsewhere on the track. On lap twenty-seven Alesi arrived around the same corner at full speed, lapping Andrea de Cesaris's wandering Dallara, hit the same damp marker, slid sideways at unpoliced speed, and rammed Nannini's stranded Benetton back-first. The Tyrrell was launched and lodged against the tyre wall. Alesi climbed out, took his helmet off slowly, looked at the cars beneath him and walked away. It was the largest single accident of the 1990 season and would in retrospect mark the day on which the FIA started having more serious conversations with the Quebec organisers about the wisdom of running F1 there.
Senna wins, Berger pinned to fourth
The race played out with little change at the front. Senna led by thirty seconds over a Prost being slowly hunted down by Piquet and Mansell, with Berger running second on track but classified fifth-ish under his penalty. Prost's brakes had overheated from lap twenty onwards, the McLaren-style pit-stop sticker covering his brake cooling ducts had not been removed at his slicks stop, and by lap fifty Piquet had passed him for second, with Mansell taking third one lap later. Berger reduced his cooling problems and brought himself back into fourth on the last lap, taking it from Prost by exactly one second.
Senna crossed the line for his 23rd career grand prix victory, his first ever at Montreal, his third of 1990 and McLaren's 83rd. Piquet took second for Benetton, his first podium since Hungary 1989, and Mansell third for Ferrari to general applause from the Quebec crowd that traditionally adored him. Berger fourth, Prost a frustrated fifth ("Ferrari has to learn to win again"), Warwick a single point for the Lotus-Lamborghini in sixth.
"Tu vois Nelson, l'âge ne fait rien à l'affaire," Jackie Stewart told Piquet with a small smile. The 38-year-old triple world champion, who had spent two miserable Lotus seasons looking finished, was visibly reborn in the Benetton-Ford. He had just turned down an $8 million Mercedes endurance offer for 1991; Flavio Briatore was already drawing up the next contract. The championship now read Senna 31, Berger 19, Prost 14, Alesi 13, Piquet 12, a five-driver season at one-third distance, with the McLaren-Honda comfortably the constructors' leader on fifty points but with neither the dominance of 1989 nor the political tranquillity of any of the seasons that had come before it.
Classification 1990 Canadian F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:22.077 min by Gerhard Berger (McLaren MP4-5B) in lap 70
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