1986 San Marino F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: San Marino Grand Prix
Track: Autodromo Imola
Weather: overcast, cool, dry
Alain Prost won his 22nd F1 World Championship race at the 1986 San Marino F1 GP. The McLaren driver started from fourth and won on the Imola circuit for the second time. It was also his 1st win of the season and the 49th win for the McLaren F1 team.
Fuel mileage as the third driver
Imola in 1984 and 1985 had ended in fuel-tank pantomime, cars wheezing to a halt in sight of the line, computers lying to drivers, mechanics standing on pit walls with jerrycans they were not allowed to use. The 195-litre regulation introduced for 1986 was supposed to clean that up. Instead it turned the third round of the season into the most cynical race the championship had run in years. "An ordinary driver could lap here in 1m 30s," Alain Prost said before the start, "but he'll have to do 1m 34s if he wants to see the chequered flag. We are taking off with a brake in our heads." The McLaren-TAG-Porsche driver was the bookmakers' favourite anyway, twice the winner at Imola, even if the 1985 victory had been struck from the record for an underweight car.
The grid was familiar by now. Senna stuck his Lotus-Renault on pole for the fourth race in a row, the tenth of his career, with a lap fast enough that journalists at the Acque Minerali apex queried the sparks pouring from the side of the 98T's underbody, Williams's Argentine suspension engineer Enrique Scalabroni was sent to monitor the Lotus all weekend. The FISA investigation found nothing illegal: Gerard Ducarouge had simply bolted anti-wear skid blocks ahead of the rear wheels and was running an old Brabham BT49-style hydraulic ride-height corrector to scrape the chassis along the track. Behind Senna sat the Williams pair of Piquet and Mansell; Prost was fourth, Alboreto fifth, the home Ferrari already bowing to the obvious.
Bearings and bad luck for the front-runners
Piquet led Senna into Tamburello on lap one and was through into Villeneuve. By lap four Senna had complained of vibrations, slowed, and been mugged by both McLarens; on lap twelve a right-rear wheel bearing surrendered and the Lotus crawled into the pit lane for good. The wheel sparked and dragged along the floor in the very style critics had warned would one day cost a driver his life. Mansell, his Williams misfiring from the formation lap, finished his afternoon at the second pit stop on lap twelve when the Honda flatly refused to run.
That left a clean Williams-McLaren contest at the front: Piquet from Rosberg from Prost, the trio inside two seconds and the Englishman Alboreto another ten back in a Ferrari that for once looked properly screwed together. The pit-stop window swallowed it. Piquet's stop cost him thirteen and a half seconds and the lead. Prost's was clean at 8.6s. Rosberg's was a disaster, a miscommunication with Ron Dennis at the rear left, the Finn taking his foot off the brake before the wheelnut was tight, fourteen seconds standing still and a hand-over of the race lead to his own team-mate. From lap thirty-three Prost ran in front of his Finnish colleague, looking after the engine, looking after the fuel, and lapping in the high-1m 31s when the McLaren told him to.
The longest closing stint of Prost's career
By lap fifty the Frenchman was twenty-three seconds clear of Rosberg, thirty-seven seconds clear of Piquet and untroubled by Alboreto, who was running fourth in front of the tifosi until his Ferrari's left-hand turbine blades surrendered to a leaned-out mixture on lap fifty-seven. Piquet now inherited third, then second when Rosberg's engine began coughing in Tamburello on lap fifty-nine. The Finn pulled into the gravel after Tosa, his fifth place noted but his fuel tank empty. Riccardo Patrese ran dry in the same lap. Berger, hauling the Benetton-BMW around with no clutch, was suddenly on the verge of a podium.
The final lap belonged to Prost, or, more accurately, to the few centilitres of pump-fuel left in his McLaren. The TAG-Porsche stuttered out of Rivazza, fired back into life, stuttered again. Prost rocked the car from side to side through the last chicane to feed the pickup; he crossed the line at no more than 100 km/h, his car silent the moment he reached parc ferme. Behind him, an unlapped Berger braked deliberately to stay in third and avoid running another lap. Piquet, second, had been pushing flat out in the closing tour but came up seven seconds short.
A regulation under attack
"I had the race well in hand, I was sure of it," Prost said. "I trusted my computer all the way, I was sure I'd finish with fuel, and I run dry. The moment I felt the engine cut, I switched off the ignition to coast and scrape the bottom of the tank. Fuel pump, ignition back on, in gear, but I didn't believe in it at all." He had built a twenty-second buffer when ten would have done; Rosberg, with a thirstier right foot and less luck, was the casualty. The press laid into the 195-litre rule. "If we carry on like this, Formula 1 is heading for the wall," warned Guy Ligier. Jean-Marie Balestre's televised retort, that forty drivers were queueing to take Prost's place, landed badly, but behind it the FISA president and Bernie Ecclestone were already drafting a more intelligent set of reforms aimed at the boost levels themselves. Berger's third place gave Benetton its first podium as a constructor, Stefan Johansson's fourth gave Ferrari its first points of the season. McLaren claimed its forty-ninth victory and TAG-Porsche its nineteenth, both engraved on a trophy that nearly never arrived.
Classification 1986 San Marino F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:28.667 min by Nelson Piquet (Williams FW11) in lap 57
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