1987 Brazilian F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results

Event: Brazilian Grand Prix
Track: Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet

Weather: hot, sunny, humid

Alain Prost won his 26th F1 World Championship race at the 1987 Brazilian F1 GP. The McLaren driver started from fifth and won on the Jacarepagua circuit for the first time. It was also his 1st win of the season and the 53rd win for the McLaren F1 team.

A new formula opens for business

Formula 1 came to Jacarepagua on 12 April 1987 with a new set of regulations and a new political settlement. The turbos that had brought the sport to a thousand horsepower were now obliged to run a calibrated pop-off valve from the American firm Qued, set to release at four bar of boost pressure; the FISA distributed the valves by lottery. Power was meant to fall back to 900-950 horsepower. Alongside the turbo cars, a separate normally-aspirated class had been admitted at 3.5 litres maximum and 500 kilograms minimum, with Ford-Cosworth supplying its venerable V8, now called the DFZ at 575 horsepower, as the only available engine. Their own championships were on offer: the Jim Clark Trophy for drivers, the Colin Chapman Trophy for constructors. The era of the turbo had begun a slow, scheduled retreat.

The Concorde Agreement II had been signed three weeks earlier, ratifying Bernie Ecclestone's promotion of himself from FOCA chairman to vice-president of the FIA and creator of a new Formula One Promotions and Administration vehicle that would now take 23% of all television rights. The teams had been kept out of those negotiations. The drivers, meanwhile, found themselves obliged to pay a new sliding-scale super-licence fee from FISA, 5,000 francs base plus 1,000 francs per championship point scored, and on arrival in Rio rebelled. Alain Prost was elected president of a revived GPDA and led negotiations that threatened to boycott the opening round; an agreement to cap the fee at CEE inflation was reached on Thursday evening. The season, having nearly not started, started.

Williams's pole, the pop-off lottery

The Williams-Hondas dominated the timing screens. Nigel Mansell took pole in 1m 26.128s, running without qualifying tyres on race-trim boost, six tenths slower than Senna's 1986 mark and several seconds clear of the rest. Piquet was second, livid that he had been beaten on home ground; Senna third in a Lotus-Honda whose new active suspension was visibly absorbing the bumps better than any other chassis on the grid. Prost qualified fifth on a McLaren that was running its TAG-Porsche at 3.4 bar, well inside the pop-off's setting, while Honda, Ferrari, Ford and BMW were all set at 4.2 bar and relying on the new valve to bleed them down to four. Thierry Boutsen complained that his Benetton was being pulled all the way down to 3.3 bar, losing him perhaps 200 horsepower; Gabriele Cadringher of the FISA replied that teams were welcome to learn how to use the valve properly.

The race began under Rio heat strong enough to glaze Goodyear's monopoly compound. The papers that the Brazilian crowd traditionally threw at the grid did not help, debris quickly choked the side-pod intakes of both Williams cars. By lap seven Piquet's water temperature was through 120 degrees; he pitted on lap eight for a tyre change and a radiator clean, dropping to twelfth. Senna inherited the lead.

Prost reads the rubber

Prost had qualified fifth and had committed before the start to a two-stop race against a field he expected to need three. He picked off Boutsen on lap three, Fabi on lap eleven, Mansell on lap eleven again, and Senna himself on lap thirteen, the Lotus rider unable to live with his rear-tyre wear. By lap fourteen Prost led, five seconds clear of Boutsen and ten clear of a Berger Ferrari already on a hot lap. Around him the leaders cycled in and out of the pits, Mansell's first stop on lap twelve, Piquet's stops on laps eight and twenty-one, Senna's on lap thirteen, but Prost held his McLaren in mid-1m 33s laps for a stint long enough that the second pit-cycle moved him decisively to the front of the road.

His first stop on lap seventeen cost him ten seconds and dropped him to fourth, but the Boutsen-led order reshuffled when the Belgian himself stopped on lap twenty and Piquet's third stop on lap twenty-one cost him another ten. Prost emerged from his second and final stop on lap thirty-eight in front and stayed there, running comfortably ahead of a Piquet who was driving as well as anyone but stopping more often than the schedule allowed. The Brazilian's three-stop strategy could not catch a Frenchman who had executed two.

A Ferrari debut, a Tyrrell breakthrough

At the back end of the points there were two stories worth noticing. Gerhard Berger, in his first grand prix for Ferrari, finished fourth at Jacarepagua on a car whose underfloor was disintegrating around him; the team-mate he was meant to be supporting, Michele Alboreto, had picked a fight with Prost and Berger both, refusing to obey the pit board to come in for tyres and finally spinning his Ferrari into the gravel on lap sixty in a fit of pique. Boutsen took fifth for Benetton, Mansell a fortunate sixth point for Williams after losing two laps to debris in his sidepods. And in the new atmospheric class, Jonathan Palmer brought the Tyrrell home in seventh overall, the first ever winner of the Jim Clark Trophy, with team-mate Philippe Streiff right behind him to take the Colin Chapman Trophy for Tyrrell-Ford in its first race.

Prost crossed the line forty seconds ahead of Piquet for his twenty-sixth career grand prix victory, one short of Jackie Stewart's all-time record. "Before the race I was worried that Goodyear's monopoly would favour the Williams," he said. "It hasn't. During warm-up we chose to run very little downforce, as on a fast circuit. Ideal for top speed, but the risk of destroying the tyres was real. It was up to me to drive so as to preserve them. I succeeded." His fastest race lap was two seconds slower than Piquet's; the win had been built on calculation, not speed. The 1987 championship had opened exactly as the previous one had closed: with the McLaren driver in front of the better Williams car, having out-thought everyone in the paddock.

Classification 1987 Brazilian F1 GP

Pos	#	Driver	Team	Time	Laps	Grid	Pts
1	1	Alain Prost	McLaren	1:39:45.141	61	5	9
2	6	Nelson Piquet	Williams	1:40:25.688	61	2	6
3	2	Stefan Johansson	McLaren	1:40:41.899	61	10	4
4	28	Gerhard Berger	Ferrari	1:41:24.376	61	7	3
5	20	Thierry Boutsen	Benetton	+1 lap	60	6	2
6	5	Nigel Mansell	Williams	+1 lap	60	1	1
7	11	Satoru Nakajima	Team Lotus	+2 laps	59	12	0
8	27	Michele Alboreto	Ferrari	Spun Off	58	9	0
9	10	Christian Danner	Zakspeed	+3 laps	58	17	0
10	3	Jonathan Palmer	Tyrrell	+3 laps	58	18	0
11	4	Philippe Streiff	Tyrrell	+4 laps	57	20	0
12	14	Pascal Fabre	AGS	+6 laps	55	22	0
DNF	18	Eddie Cheever	Arrows	Overheating	52	14	0
DNF	12	Ayrton Senna	Team Lotus	Engine	50	3	0
DNF	7	Riccardo Patrese	Brabham	Electrical	48	11	0
DNF	8	Andrea de Cesaris	Brabham	Differential	21	13	0
DNF	17	Derek Warwick	Arrows	Engine	20	8	0
DNF	21	Alex Caffi	Osella	Withdrew	20	21	0
DNF	24	Alessandro Nannini	Minardi	Suspension	17	15	0
DNF	9	Martin Brundle	Zakspeed	Turbo	15	19	0
DNF	19	Teo Fabi	Benetton	Turbo	9	4	0
DSQ	23	Adrián Campos	Minardi	Disqualified	3	16	0
DNS	16	Ivan Capelli	March	Non Starter	0	23	0

Fastest lap: 1:33.861 min by Nelson Piquet (Williams FW11B) in lap 42

✅ 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

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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