How Hungary's tortoise and hare grand prix was won

'They shall not pass'. The choice of headline on Autosport's report of the 1990 Hungarian Grand Prix was entirely apt, for Thierry Boutsen had led every single lap in his Williams-Renault and held off a train of faster cars at various stages headed by Gerhard Berger, Alessandro Nannini and Ayrton Senna.

In some ways, it was a typical Formula 1 race at the Hungaroring. At a track where passing was notoriously difficult, Boutsen had done half of the job by qualifying on pole for the first and only time in his F1 career. However, the other key element required to carry off the win - to deliberately drive slowly, conserving his equipment from lap one in order to avoid making a pitstop - would be anathema to most grand prix drivers.

Yet for a man who regarded self-control as one of his key strengths, having been a regular in Group C endurance racing since 1983 - when he and co-driver Bob Wollek beat the factory-run Porsche 956s with their privately-entered Joest car in the opening round of that year's World Sportscar Championship at Monza - this came more naturally to the Belgian than many of his contemporaries.

"The other 50% came from the strategy that I had," he tells Autosport. "Not stopping for tyres was the key element of this victory.

"I knew it was possible, it was very marginal. I had to run very carefully, not wearing the tyres too much but, by doing so, not making any mistakes, I could manage to stay in the lead.

"I drove as slowly as possible, that's why the gap was never big. I was watching behind, seeing who was behind and what speed they were going and I was just matching that speed to stay in the lead.

"Finishing 24-hour races, we ended up sometimes with a car that nobody would want to drive. But if you're calm enough and you take it easy, then you can manage to get to the end and do a good result. That's a little bit how I saw the race in Hungary.

"For me it was kind of an endurance race. The car had to last until the last lap with the tyre-wear, with the brake-wear, so it was a different race than any other race I've done in Formula 1, similar to races I'd done in endurance in the past."

Boutsen already had two F1 wins under his belt, both in the rain, at the 1989 Canadian and Australian Grands Prix. The former came when Senna's Honda engine gave up the ghost three laps from home, while the latter arrived after Senna had crashed on lap 13, leaving Boutsen to hold off Nannini's Benetton.

Yet some, Autosport's Nigel Roebuck included, felt his lack of a win in the dry meant he still had a point to prove. Boutsen counters: "You cannot blame me for winning a race when [Senna] had an accident, trying too hard in bad conditions is sometimes not the thing to do."

"I drove very carefully the whole way. I think I missed one gear in the whole race and that was it. Otherwise for me it was a perfect race" Thierry Boutsen

"In racing you have some good days and you have some bad days," he says, pointing out that he had led the 1987 Mexican Grand Prix for Benetton before an electrical fault on the dashboard forced him out.

"Things go right, things can go wrong at some moments, you have to take it as it comes and if I take the lead three laps before the end because of a mechanical problem, that's life."

Those had been the only wins of the season for Williams in the first year of its relationship with Renault - although Riccardo Patrese had only been denied by a holed radiator at the Hungaroring in 1989 after taking pole and leading for 52 laps - that would go on to yield four world championships in 1992, '93, '96 and '97. Design genius Adrian Newey joined midway through the 1990 season from Leyton House, but the impact of his arrival on the aerodynamics and subsequent improvement in tyre life wouldn't be felt until 1991's FW14.

That meant Boutsen and team-mate Patrese had to make the best of an FW13B that was highly inconsistent and more regularly seen in combat with Benetton for best-of-the-rest honours than challenging McLaren and Ferrari at the sharp end.

"We could not always understand why the car was good in some places and not good at all in some other places," Boutsen says. "When the FW13 was born [in 1989], we qualified 21st in Jerez and three races later I won the race in Adelaide in the same car.

"Sometimes the car was really good, sometimes it was really bad but was not possible for us drivers and for the engineers to understand why, so we had to take some opportunities."

One of those had come at Imola in 1990. Boutsen took the lead when a stone lodged in the brake caliper of Senna's McLaren deflated a tyre and caused him to spin off, only for a missed gear to buzz Boutsen's engine and put him out 14 laps later. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow as Patrese went on to score his first win in seven years, overcoming a power-sapped Berger to avenge the memory of his crash while leading at Imola in '83.

"The car was just fantastic there," Boutsen sighs. "Missing Imola went very deep in my heart, I had a loose gear-lever and I was mixing the gears because I could not always choose the right one, being under pressure and wanting to win the race.

"I tried to go as quick as possible but it was just a mistake waiting to happen and it happened early in the race, I retired.

"The next opportunity was Hungary and then I drove very carefully the whole way. I think I missed one gear in the whole race and that was it. Otherwise for me it was a perfect race."

In a clear deviation from the form book, qualifying at the Hungaroring produced an all-Williams front row, Boutsen ahead of Patrese, with Berger beating Senna to third and 1989 Hungary winner Nigel Mansell only fifth fastest. As Roebuck surmised, "it was all profoundly odd. We had a Williams front row after a run of races when the car looked ordinary". The secret was an upgraded V10 engine from Renault.

"We had development engines all the time, we kept improving the engine and we had evolutions almost every race," Boutsen says. "Sometimes [it was] a bit more torque, sometimes a little bit more power and the engine they produced for Hungary was really good, a lot of torque coming out of the corners.

"I knew I had absolutely no competitors coming close to me. So as long as I was coming out of the corners doing the right thing and not making a mistake, then nobody would be able to pass me - even the strongest Ferrari or Honda was staying behind."

Berger got the jump on Patrese at the start, but crucially Boutsen held his ground at Turn 1 and established himself in front.

"I could have worn the tyres out much quicker if I wanted to, but I just drove as slowly as possible in order to go to the end," he says. "The car was well-balanced, that's for sure, but it was not a proper winning car where I could disappear off into the distance.

"The competitors were a bit faster at some stages in the race, but it would have been very difficult to pass me. I had a big, big rear wing!"

"Nannini was a heavy smoker, and after 30-45 minutes of the race his condition was going down and I knew that he was going to make mistakes. If I had to keep him behind, he would have spun off or made a mistake anyway" Thierry Boutsen

As the race progressed, the brakes and tyres started to deteriorate - "the pedal was spongy and the tyres were sliding more and more," Boutsen recalls - but pitting wasn't an option for fear of overshooting his pitbox, as he had done at the Brazilian Grand Prix with the result of a broken front wing. But today, Boutsen reveals that there was another factor at play in his decision to stay out.

"We had absolutely no training at Williams on the tyre changes," he says. "I knew that if I had to come in for a tyre change, I would have lost four or five seconds on the competitors. For me, it was a no-go."

It may have been unorthodox, but the ploy worked. Berger was never able to get close enough exiting the long final corner to attempt a move into Turn 1 and eventually peeled in for a new set of tyres on lap 48.

That promoted Patrese to a short-lived second place ahead of Mansell, whose chances of a repeat victory took a blow on lap 53 when he lost two places in quick succession to Nannini and Senna, the former having made an early stop to replace a punctured Goodyear on lap 21.

On tyres that were in even worse condition than Boutsen's due to the time spent running in dirty air, Patrese played the role of dutiful rear-gunner for eight laps before pitting on lap 56, putting Nannini into second from Senna. Boutsen acknowledges that Nannini's Benetton "was better than mine, that's for sure", but maintains that he "was not worried about him".

"Nannini was a heavy smoker, and after 30-45 minutes of the race his condition was going down and I knew that he was going to make mistakes," says Boutsen. "If I had to keep him behind, he would have spun off or made a mistake anyway.

"I was much more worried about Senna, Mansell, Berger and these guys who were very strong behind me."

Nannini was taken care of on lap 64 when Senna grew frustrated and lunged him at the chicane, Roebuck observed, "in a move which had no place in the repertoire of Formula 1's fastest driver". Berger repeated the same move on Mansell on lap 72, putting both cars out, which meant Boutsen only had Senna left to worry about.

The Brazilian made one attempt at Turn 1 on the penultimate lap, but Boutsen held him off and brought it home with his tyres down to the tread and brakes that were worn through. Indeed, Boutsen still has one of the front brake discs from his victorious FW13B in his office and on closer inspection, you can see straight through it in several places. When he says "there is no way I could have done one more lap, it would have exploded", he isn't joking.

"It was the same for the tyres, there was no rubber left," he says. "There was about 5-10cm without any rubber on both rear tyres, so it was a bit marginal!"

So unexpected had the performance been that it compelled Roebuck - who had been disparaging about Boutsen's drive to third in '89 on a day Patrese had shone - to make an apology in the introduction of his report.

"Forgive me, Thierry, I was wrong," he wrote. "I had my doubts you could ever win a race like this, from the front, in the dry, under pressure. You were pressed unrelentingly for going on two hours, by Berger and Mansell, by Nannini and Patrese, most of all - inevitably - by Senna. Bravo!"

Boutsen would outscore and outqualify Patrese over the remainder of the season, but it wasn't enough to keep hold of his Williams drive. Already by Hungary his position in the team was under threat from Mansell who, despite announcing his retirement after a Ferrari gearbox failure at Silverstone, was being lined up for a return to the team with which he had come close to the world championship in 1986 and '87.

If Boutsen wasn't already aware that he wasn't in the team's plans moving forward, he certainly was after the race. When he returned from the podium ceremony, he found both the Williams senior partners had left - a point confirmed by team manager Michael Cane.

"It was not ideal to have Thierry Boutsen winning a race when they wanted to get rid of him and replace him with somebody else" Thierry Boutsen

History tells us that Williams did of course sign Mansell for '91 and also retained Patrese. That left Boutsen to take refuge at Ligier, where he saw out two difficult years before bringing his F1 career to a close after a part-season with Jordan in '93, although he continued to race sportscars competitively until a serious accident at Le Mans in 1999.

Boutsen describes racing for Williams as "kind of emotionless", and says he was "only half-surprised that nobody was there when I got back to the pits". Asked whether it put a downer on his most famous win, Boutsen pauses.

"It was not ideal to have Thierry Boutsen winning a race when they wanted to get rid of him and replace him with somebody else," he replies. "I had to keep my emotions for myself.

"Maybe Patrick liked Riccardo better than me and his driving style better than mine. I heard so many different stories about why they chose Riccardo instead of me, but I could not comment on that. It was a difficult moment, but it made me stronger for the rest of my career."

Today, F1 drivers are still managing wear on tyres, suspension and brakes - just see the Mercedes drivers in the Austrian Grand Prix - but arguably not to the same extremes as Hungary 1990. Boutsen says he cannot answer whether it is better or worse today, but concedes if he had his time again that "I'm not sure if I would enjoy it today like I did in the past".

"When I started with Arrows with 1200 horsepower with a big, big turbo, that was a big hammer in the back when you were accelerating," he says. "There was no electronic control on the car, it was very different, absolutely not comparable to today. It is different, but is it better or worse? I couldn't answer that.

"In general when I look back now I'm very happy about the whole career that I had. I was successful in Formula 1, GT, Group C, touring cars and every category that I took part in, I enjoyed it very much."

Additional reporting by Gary Watkins