1987 German F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: German Grand Prix
Track: Hockenheimring
Weather: hot, sunny, dry
Nelson Piquet won his 18th F1 World Championship race at the 1987 German F1 GP. The Williams driver started from fourth and won on the Hockenheim circuit for the first time. It was also his 1st win of the season and the 35th win for the Williams F1 team.
McLaren and Honda, in secret
The week before the German Grand Prix, McLaren formally announced that Alain Prost had renewed his contract through 1989. The newsworthy part was not the renewal, Prost's options had narrowed after the Ferrari talks collapsed in June, but the source of his unusual calm. "I have signed with Ron Dennis because I have the assurance of a first-rate engine," he said. The French journalist Jose Rosinski decoded the line for his readers: "Alain is so cheerful that this engine can only be a Honda." It was. The McLaren-Honda deal had been quietly struck over July; Frank Williams had not been told formally yet; Mansour Ojjeh, who paid TAG's Porsche bills, had agreed because he was also the principal McLaren shareholder. Honda had decided. The decisive piece would be Senna, Ron Dennis had opened a parallel approach to the Brazilian, knowing that Senna had concluded after Paul Ricard and Silverstone that he would never become world champion in a Lotus. Piquet, meanwhile, had asked Williams for first-driver status and a salary increase; Frank Williams had countered by offering him a third less. The 1988 driver market was Honda's to draw.
Ten days before the race itself, Senna had crashed heavily in a private Hockenheim test after a tyre exploded; he was unhurt but his relationship with Peter Warr was now broken; they had stopped speaking. John Barnard gave a rare press conference, denied any rift with Alboreto, and confirmed he was building a 1988 Ferrari from his Guildford office. Gerhard Berger crashed in qualifying after a left-front suspension failure that the Italian press blamed on a British subcontractor; Marco Piccinini and Harvey Postlethwaite suppressed the story.
Mansell on pole, Prost in front of him
Friday's session was decisive; Saturday rain washed the times out. Mansell took his sixth pole of the season, and the tenth of his career, by two tenths from Senna, with Prost third in a McLaren visibly returning to form thanks to Bosch software revisions on the TAG-Porsche. Piquet was fourth in the spare Williams after his race car threw a turbo. Alboreto was fifth on a Ferrari at last in the same postal code as the leaders.
Sunday opened at thirty-plus degrees. Mansell's getaway was poor; Senna led the opening lap, Prost was past at the Onkokurve, Mansell repassed Senna on the back straight, and by lap five the order was Mansell, Prost, Piquet, Senna with Boutsen, Alboreto and Johansson queuing behind. Prost out-thought Mansell on lap eight, drafting past on the first straight to take a lead he would hold until the tyre stops. Piquet ran in third all the way to lap nineteen managing his fuel; Senna ran fourth with a wonky boost-pressure regulator.
Prost's race, Prost's belt
The pit-stop sequence on laps 19-24 ran cleanly. Prost's stop took six seconds before a tyre warming hose tangled in the wheel; he came back out in third. Mansell's stop on lap 22 went smoothly and he took the lead at 9.1s. Mansell then set the race's fastest lap on lap 24 at 1m 45.716s as he climbed back ahead of Prost, only for the Williams Honda V6 to seize coming into the Stadium on lap 26. Mansell parked it on the grass; Prost was the lead again. The retirements behind were already remarkable: Patrese, de Cesaris, Berger, Warwick, Boutsen, Nannini, Alboreto and Cheever had all retired by the half-distance mark. By the time Mansell stopped there were only ten cars still running.
Prost led by thirty-five seconds at lap thirty-five. On lap forty he coasted to a halt at the Ostkurve. The same alternator belt failure that had cost him the San Marino race had returned. He climbed out and sat down on the grass and watched Piquet drive past him for the lead. Piquet inherited the win, and during the slowing-down lap he gave Prost a lift on his sidepod. The Williams was now eleven points clear in the championship table.
Johansson on three wheels, Senna on his floor
The closing laps were a small parade of damaged cars staying together by force of will. Stefan Johansson's right-front tyre deflated entering the first chicane on lap forty-four, the last lap, and exploded across the Stadium kerbs; he wrestled the McLaren home in second place on three wheels and a wheel rim. Senna, having lost the hydraulic fluid from his active suspension, drove the closing fifteen laps with the Lotus slumped on its bump-stops; he was third, classified a lap down. Philippe Streiff and Jonathan Palmer brought both Tyrrell-Cosworths home fourth and fifth and one-twoed the Jim Clark Trophy class for the day. Philippe Alliot drove the Larrousse Lola to sixth, the team's first ever championship point, the result that secured FOCA travel privileges for 1988. Martin Brundle dragged a Zakspeed home but ten laps adrift; he was not classified. Only seven cars finished a German Grand Prix that had registered seventeen retirements.
"I've had enough bad luck this year, in France and at Silverstone, to appreciate this gift," Piquet said. The points table now read Piquet 39, Senna 35, Mansell 30, Prost 26. With seven rounds left, the championship was Piquet's to lose. With Honda's loyalty quietly migrating to McLaren for 1988, the entire balance of the 1988 grid was about to shift around him. Three days later, in a Trouville restaurant called Les Vapeurs, Alliot was being persuaded by Patrick Tambay to try the Paris-Dakar, and politely declining. "I know what I need to do. Continue." He had inscribed Larrousse's name on the championship table, and that one point would, over time, do more than any of the wins ahead of him.
Classification 1987 German F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:45.716 min by Nigel Mansell (Williams FW11B) in lap 24
✅ Check out 1987 F1 Championship Standings
✅ Check out 1987 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
Shroppyfly on Lawson close to new Racing Bulls deal before Las Vegas5 hours ago
All F1 Fan Comments