1987 Mexican F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Mexican Grand Prix
Track: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez
Weather: hot, dry, sunny
Nigel Mansell won his 13th F1 World Championship race at the 1987 Mexican F1 GP. The Williams driver started from pole and won on the Mexico City circuit for the first time. It was also his 6th win of the season and the 40th win for the Williams F1 team.
A circuit nobody fixed
The Mexicans had promised to resurface the autodrome between 1986 and 1987 and had not done it. By the time Formula 1 arrived in mid-October the asphalt of the Hermanos Rodriguez was worse than it had been twelve months earlier, bumpy enough to break suspensions, dusty enough to send cars off line into walls, and bad enough at the high-speed entry to Peraltada that even Gerhard Berger, the defending winner, called the circuit dangerous. Jean-Marie Balestre, treated as a head of state by the organisers, lectured the drivers for grumbling. When the Mexicans put out a press release attributing words of praise to Jonathan Palmer that he had never spoken, Palmer marched into the press centre and grabbed the press officer by the collar. Then Balestre announced, off the cuff, that active suspension would be banned. Gerard Ducarouge tracked him down, came back to the paddock, and reported that Balestre had reversed himself.
Mansell qualified on pole after taking the Williams flat through Peraltada on Friday morning, sliding wide, climbing the kerb and sliding sideways for the entire length of the pit straight before crashing the FW11B nose-first into the wall at 200 km/h. He climbed out bruised. He came back on Saturday and took the twelfth pole of his career, his fifteenth consecutive front-row start, breaking a record Alberto Ascari had held since 1953. Berger qualified second for Ferrari, Piquet third in a Williams without the active suspension (Williams had left both systems at home to save shipping costs), Boutsen fourth for Benetton, Prost fifth, Fabi sixth, Senna seventh. Senna had a separate adventure of his own, a vicious Saturday-afternoon crash at Peraltada that left him with a stiff neck and a long minute slumped over his cockpit before he passed out in the medical centre.
A first-corner spin, a Berger lead
Mansell's launch was poor, he was on the dusty side, and Boutsen, Berger, Piquet and Prost all swept past him into the first turn. On the run to the Esses, Piquet braked unexpectedly hard in the dust; Prost, behind him, had nowhere to go and the McLaren clipped the Williams. Piquet spun, Prost's suspension twisted. The McLaren was out on lap one; Piquet rejoined dead last with help from the marshals and started a forty-lap recovery. Boutsen briefly took the lead from Berger on lap two, the Belgian's first ever in Formula 1, before the Benetton's V6 Ford developed an electrical misfire and faded. By lap sixteen Boutsen was in the pits for good with a dead engine. Berger took the lead by twenty seconds over Mansell with Senna third and de Cesaris stalking him.
The Ferrari led for five laps and then exploded. A piston gave up on lap 21 with no warning. Berger pitted, climbed out and aimed a kick at a rear wheel. The race fell to Mansell, who held twenty seconds over Senna, with Patrese fourth in a Brabham that the Italian was driving with disciplined patience.
Warwick at Peraltada, the red flag
The bigger drama came on lap thirty-one. Derek Warwick's Arrows snapped at the exit of Peraltada, likely a suspension fracture dating from his lap-two contact with the launching Nakajima, and the car climbed the kerb at 200 km/h and slammed into the Armco. The impact was severe enough to scatter used Goodyears across the racing surface. Warwick climbed out shaken, swearing about Nakajima. The race director red-flagged with the Arrows stranded and tyre debris everywhere.
Race control resolved the situation in the format that had been used in Britain in 1986: the race would resume for a second manche running from lap thirty-one to lap sixty-three (a five-lap reduction from the original distance) and the result would be aggregated. Fourteen cars formed up on the new grid. All of them changed tyres, ruining the no-stop strategy that Piquet had been quietly planning. Senna's Lotus had qualified for the second manche on the same chassis. Arnoux's Ligier did not restart.
Piquet attacks, Mansell holds the gap
The second start went Piquet's way. He launched between Senna and Mansell, dived inside his team-mate into the first corner, and took the on-track lead. Mansell, knowing the aggregate gap remained in his favour, did not have to chase, but he did anyway, parking himself in Piquet's mirrors. The two raced each other to within tyre-rubbing distance through the closing thirty laps. Piquet set the fastest lap of the race three times. Mansell stayed close enough that Piquet could not pull out the 45 seconds he needed on aggregate.
Senna lost his last hopes of a championship on lap 55 when he spun at the Ese del Lago and the marshals, slowly and reluctantly, pushed him in the wrong direction long enough that the Lotus stalled. He climbed out of his cockpit and grabbed the nearest marshal by the collar, an incident a television camera caught for which the FISA would later fine him $1,500. The fight ahead of him resolved as the regulations decreed: Piquet crossed the line first on the road by 19 seconds, but Mansell won on aggregate by 26 seconds. Patrese took his first podium in three years for Brabham; Cheever held off Fabi for fourth; Philippe Alliot took the atmospheric-class win and a sixth-place point for Larrousse.
The championship comes back to twelve points
The podium handshakes were perfunctory. Mansell, irritated by Piquet's defensive moves at the second start, told the cameras: "I didn't appreciate Piquet, twice, slamming the door in my face. He's really not a very professional driver. He has no right to act like that." Piquet exploded: "That's bull. I'm a professional. If I want to put someone out, I know how to do it." The Brazilian's points lead, which had looked decisive on the surface, was now only twelve, and with the dropped-score system actively penalising Piquet's six second places, the real margin was six. Two races remained: Japan (a circuit nobody on this grid had ever raced) and Australia. Mansell had to win both with Piquet finishing no higher than third in each. Mathematically alive. Practically, his career was about to take its third blow of the year.
Classification 1987 Mexican F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:19.132 min by Nelson Piquet (Williams FW11B) in lap 57
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