1989 Belgian F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Belgian Grand Prix
Track: Spa-Francorchamps Circuit
Weather: torrential rain, drying, cool
Ayrton Senna won his 19th F1 World Championship race at the 1989 Belgian F1 GP. The McLaren driver started from pole and won on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit for the third time. It was also his 5th win of the season and the 78th win for the McLaren F1 team.
Camel to Lamborghini, Piquet to Benetton
The week before Spa, Reynolds Tobacco confirmed its 1990 plans in London: Camel would remain at Lotus but the team would be entirely restructured and equipped with the Lamborghini V12. Duncan Lee had accepted Mauro Forghieri's offer to finance the V12's development at Hockenheim, Forghieri was a longstanding friend of Tony Rudd, and Frank Dernie had already started adapting his future 102 to the problematic engine. Nelson Piquet, marking his 37th birthday on the Friday at the Auberge de l'Eau Rouge with 149 Camel guests, swept aside every retirement rumour ("What I love about F1 is above all what it gives me!") and his manager Alberto Lommi closed a Benetton deal with Flavio Briatore and Michael Kranefuss. The contract was structured to address what Briatore politely called Piquet's "motivational eclipses": a guaranteed million dollars, then payment-by-point. At Williams, Patrick Head's promised FW13 was now slipping again, from Spa to Monza. Boutsen, marking his 100th grand prix, made no effort to hide his belief that Patrese would get it first.
Behind the headlines a more decisive deal was almost done. Prost-to-Ferrari, brokered by Philip Morris, was within a fortnight of its Monza announcement; Ron Dennis was working through every back-channel he had to keep the Frenchman on a sabbatical that would allow him back to McLaren in 1991. At Brabham, owner Joachim Lüthi had been formally jailed in Switzerland on charges relating to a $100 million fraud, borrowing money at 20% interest from private investors. Herbie Blash was hunting a buyer. And at Lotus the catastrophe came on Saturday afternoon: Piquet wrecked his car at Pouhon after a Grouillard moving chicane, climbed into the spare, and the Judd V8 promptly died. Nakajima qualified slower still. For the first time in Team Lotus's existence both cars failed to qualify. Chief mechanic Bob Dance and Piquet famously toasted the occasion in champagne.
Senna's 37th pole, McLaren's 50th
Senna took the 37th pole position of his career, the 50th in McLaren's, on the Saturday afternoon in 1m50.867s, five-tenths clear of Prost. The Ferraris (Berger 3rd, Mansell 6th) gave a second and a half a lap to the Honda V10s on raw straight-line speed; the Williams-Renaults of Boutsen (4th) and Patrese (5th) similarly so. Honda's new "Spec 5" V10 was softer and more powerful than its predecessor and Spa was its perfect showcase. Nannini's Benetton was four seconds off Senna in qualifying, the team's set-up confusion deepening as Briatore looked over Rory Byrne's shoulder. Stefano Modena was the qualifying surprise, eighth in the Brabham on Pirellis, far ahead of his teammate Brundle (20th).
Sunday morning brought rain to the Ardennes and a Pirelli stroke of genius: hand-cut soft slicks with grooves carved by knife. Pierluigi Martini topped the warm-up by three seconds in those bespoke tyres. Briefly, Pirelli's engineers grabbed every Opinel they could find and started cutting. The afternoon deluge ended that fairytale. Standard wets went on; Martini's Minardi went back to the second half of the grid; and the McLarens started to look very strong indeed.
Delayed start, Berger's crash, Cheever's roadblock
A torrential cloudburst at 14:30 caught both Brabhams as they crawled around the grid lap; Brundle bent his left rear, Modena his right. Roland Bruynseraede delayed the start by thirty minutes while sweepers, drainage ditches and a softening sky did what they could. Inside the cockpit, Prost, who had pulled in at Silverstone 1988 rather than race in similar conditions, told Ron Dennis he would run a few laps and decide. From the lights Senna led Prost, Berger and a flying Mansell, who placed two wheels on the grass at La Source to vault past both Williams-Renaults. The Ferraris hung on for three laps then dropped back. On lap ten Berger's Ferrari aquaplaned at Les Combes and pitched into the barriers at low speed, another retirement for the Austrian. Modena's repaired Brabham, undriveable in the wet, was parked the same lap.
The race's villain that afternoon was Eddie Cheever, who held up Senna at La Source on lap 13, then Prost for two laps from fourteen, then Mansell for what Mansell's onboard radio swore was nineteen seconds before the American moved over on lap twenty. Ron Dennis and Cesare Fiorio both demanded a black flag; Bruynseraede settled for a black-and-white warning. Cheever's blockade let Mansell back onto the McLarens' coat-tails and into a race-long Ferrari-McLaren battle. Patrese and Boutsen tangled in Pouhon on lap twenty-one after Alboreto stepped aside for Boutsen but missed Patrese arriving on the other side, both Italians out, both unhurt.
Mansell's charge, Senna's masterclass
The race's last twenty laps belonged to Nigel Mansell. The Ferrari's wet behaviour was now markedly superior to the McLaren's; Mansell set the fastest lap (2m13.524s) on lap twenty-nine and again on each subsequent lap, slicing chunks out of Prost's lead. By lap thirty-eight he was in Prost's exhaust and looking for the gap. He never found one. The McLaren's Honda V10 kept stretching its legs out of every slow corner just long enough; Prost held the Ferrari off with what Murray Walker, left to commentate the entire grand prix solo because the missing James Hunt had been caught up in what he later cheerfully called "amorous distraction", called "the calmest defensive driving I've ever seen in the wet." Senna meanwhile drove a private masterclass at the front, ignoring his front-tyre warmers' failure, refusing to attack his own car in the conditions. "In a context like this it is always dangerous to attack too hard," he said afterwards. "Confidence makes you want to add more, but the key is to rein in your natural instincts and stay below the limits of yourself and your car. You have to use force on yourself."
Senna crossed the line less than two seconds clear of Prost for his 19th win, his 5th of 1989, McLaren's 78th constructor victory, and the 50th win for Honda. Mansell took third, Boutsen a quiet home-race fourth for Williams on his 100th grand prix, Nannini fifth, and Warwick, celebrating his 35th birthday with another single point for Arrows, was sixth. With the championship now reading Prost 62, Senna 51, Mansell 38 going into Monza, Prost's mood was darkening. He would soon have to drop two scores under the best-eleven-counts-from-sixteen rule while Senna would not. And as Senna pointed out, with his finest passing-shot smile of the season: "They tell me Mansell gave Prost a hard time today. That's an appearance. They'll be together at Ferrari in 1990..."
Classification 1989 Belgian F1 GP
Fastest lap: 2:11.571 min by Alain Prost (McLaren MP4-5) in lap 44
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