Nigel Roebuck's 1986 season review

Finishing the 68th lap of the Spanish Grand Prix, with four to go, Alain Prost saw Nigel Mansell in his mirrors and put his boost up for the pit straight. It prevented Mansell from getting by at that point, but soon he was through.

Thereafter the Williams swiftly hauled in Ayrton Senna's leading Lotus, failing to catch it by just 0.014s. It was the closest grand prix finish of all time, and afterward Prost apologised to Mansell for delaying him. He had thought Senna too far ahead to be caught, he said. If he had known, he would have let Mansell through.

That was April, and only the second round of the Formula 1 World Championship. By late October Prost had cause to rejoice that he had whopped up the boost that day in Jerez. If he had not, Mansell would almost certainly have caught Senna, passed him, won the race - and the title. You could say, if you wished, that Mansell lost the crown by 0.014s of a second.

If, if, if. In the end, a grand prix season always comes down to that. Remarkable, is it not, that in a championship trail involving 16 races, 1044 laps and 2970 miles, a title can be decided by a little incident here, a bodged tyre stop there, a row in a motorhome.

Consider: Mansell might have won if he had not tried it on with Senna on the first lap in Brazil; if he had caught him in Spain; if he had not had brake problems at Detroit; if he had used the same diff as his team-mate in Hungary, or the same wing in Italy; if he had been properly in gear on the grid in Mexico; if he had made a tyre change in Adelaide.

As Keke Rosberg is fond of saying: "If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle."

Not all is in a driver's control, of course. You could also say that Mansell would have won it if his team-mate Nelson Piquet had not spun and Senna run out of fuel in Portugal, letting Monsieur Prost in for six points. You can say all kinds of things when you discuss the whys and wherefores of an F1 season. You cannot deny that Mansell deserved the world championship this year. But nor can you reasonably dispute that it went in the end to the greatest driver in the world.

Season Review

This year, 1986, was supposed to mark the beginning of the all-turbo era. At the end of 1985 Jean-Marie Balestre and FISA dispensed with normally-aspirated engines and equivalency formulae, consigned them to the dustbin, history. From now on it was going to be turbos only; everything else was banned.

Before the season was very old, however, JMB and the rest of the Swiss Navy were getting very panicky: these cars were too quick! What more could they do? Had they not restricted their fuel capacity, first to 220 litres and now to 195? How were they to know a few more million yen, marks and francs would have the cars going even faster?

Well, for one thing, they could have reckoned on grand prix racing's perennial genius for overcoming the rules imposed on it by its governing body. And, for another, they could have listened. The people within F1 have been warning them long enough, just as some of them did about ground effect a few years ago.

And, while they took steps, not to slow the cars down over a lap, but simply to ensure that some of them ran out of fuel before the finish of the race (making the sport look absurd to the outside world), they did nothing whatever about slowing them in qualifying trim. This is totally unverifiable, but someone at Benetton who should know, said off-the-record that the BMW in Gerhard Berger's car was pumping out close to 1400bhp when it began its final run at the Osterreichring. Merde alors (as they say in Paris).

Throughout the year FISA made itself look ridiculous by announcing a succession of forthcoming rule changes, then within weeks coming up with something entirely different. At one point their intended solution to the dangers of qualifying was a pre-race race as part of a ludicrously complicated formula to settle the grid for the grand prix. That the drivers stamped on and it was good they did.

Unpopular as the fuel limit regulations have been, especially with the drivers, they have been imposed, in large part, for want of any other means of restricting speeds. The only relative unanimity which appears to exist between the team owners is in their choice of road cars (nearly all take advantage of the exclusive Merc-on-a-perk arrangement, F1's equivalent of Soap-on-a-Rope). That apart, their interests are vested in different directions. When FISA suggested a CART-style pop-off valve to restrict power, those using four-cylinder engines raised their arms in horror; a similar proposal to introduce air restrictors was shouted down by the six-cylinder brigade. And so on.

In the end, sense prevailed, and a new normally-aspirated formula was announced for 1989. The wildly expensive turbo exercise will then be laid to rest, but in the meantime we face two very dodgy seasons where both types of engine are permitted, and there will be a wide discrepancy between the two.

Ironically, this unique all-turbo grand prix season was the best I can remember, the racing astonishingly vibrant and competitive. Only at a single event (Monaco) did one driver (Prost) take pole position, victory and fastest lap. The championship was in the balance until the last lap of the last race, and you can ask no more than that, although Mansell might reasonably take issue.

The lowest point, of course, was that Wednesday after Monaco, when news came through of Elio de Angelis' accident at Paul Ricard. I can still recall the weary note of resignation in Alan Jones's voice as he related the sequence of events. It reminded him, he said, of Roger Williamson's fatal accident at Zandvoort in 1973. No lessons - at Ricard, anyway - appear to have been learned.

De Angelis's life was tossed away. Despite the massive violence involved in such a high-speed accident, the strength of the Brabham BT55's monocoque was such that his only physical injury was a fractured collarbone. The back of the car caught fire - always a major hazard with turbo engines, the turbocharger itself generating such colossal temperatures - and the marshals close at hand, who were not wearing fireproof clothing, could not right the inverted car. Nor did they have the equipment quickly to deal with the fire. Some of the small extinguishers present were rusted beyond use. Although the flames barely reached the cockpit, they consumed the oxygen around it. Eight minutes passed before de Angelis could be freed, and the following afternoon he died, taking with him the most elegant driving style of the day, manners and values from another time.

The Circuit Paul Ricard should have lost the French Grand Prix as a consequence. Instead, it was decided to shoot the messenger, cut out the corner at which the Brabham had crashed and chop the circuit in half.

Less than two months later the race was run, and one might have hoped - expected - that lessons would have been painfully learned. Not a bit of it. When Philippe Streiff's Tyrrell pulled off, ablaze, we saw only hesitation and crass ineptitude from the marshals. It was a scandalous end to a poor joke of a weekend, and it should have spelled the end of Ricard as a grand prix circuit.

But it was France, where the only alternative circuit is the superior one at Dijon. Ah, but we can't go there any more. Political problems...

This was the one truly discordant note in a quite enthralling world championship season, one in which F1 ventured for the first time behind the Iron Curtain, discovering in Hungary a remarkable degree of enthusiasm and a crowd of staggering size. This was doubly welcome, for it came at a time when spectator attendances were generally on the wane. Grand prix racing must never price itself out of the market, a fact of which it was joltingly reminded at season's end with the announcements by Pirelli and Goodyear, the cornerstones of the business.

McLaren: Warning: Genius at work

An early season joke, which enjoyed much currency among team managers, journalists and mechanics: six blokes are standing in a bar. "My IQ's 155," says one of them. "And I've always had a problem finding someone on my own level to talk to." "That's amazing!" chimes up his neighbour. "Mine's 152, and it's always been the same for me." And soon they are busily discussing the splitting of the atom, going on to the plot of the The Singing Detective.

Further along the bar another man is similarly rueful: "I've an IQ of 140, and I don't find most conversation very stimulating, I'm afraid." The guy next to him rates 142, and another instant friendship is formed. They start talking about Etruscan vases.

At the end are two more chaps: "Errrrr, my IQ's 39" one says. "And I don't seem to be on most people's wavelength."

"Shake on it!" replies the other. "Mine's 41. What shall we talk about?"

Pause.

"Errrrr, what's your best time on the Ricard short circuit?"

Just a joke, fellas. And I should perhaps add that by the end of the season, Rosberg was telling me the same one - with a 'journalistic' punchline.

Jeeves was always a great advocate of eating fish. Very good for the grey cells, he gravely advised Bertie Wooster, and perhaps there is something in it. Prost eats a lot of fish, and when it comes to using grey cells in a grand prix, he stands alone. "People say he's lucky," John Barnard remarked. "But that's not the case. He has a lot going on between his ears."

After the Australian Grand Prix one reporter suggested to Prost that he had Jackie Stewart's head and Gilles Villeneuve's right foot, and one could see what he meant. For some years many have thought him the best, and it constantly maddened some that 'the paddock' in general denied him his due. Now, at last, there seems to be general acceptance of his status, summed up by his 1986 team-mate, Rosberg: "How do I rate the drivers? There's Prost and then the rest. He is absolutely the best driver I've known, head and shoulders above anyone else. No weaknesses at all, brilliant in every department."

The season indeed showed the true mettle of the man. Barnard always envisaged the MP4/2 as "a three-year car," and this was its third. Outwardly it was little changed, but the reduction in fuel tankage permitted a lower driving position, and also new for 1986 - finally - was a six-speed gearbox. There was also a heavily revised and even more complex Bosch Motronic engine management system.

In 1984 the MP4/2 dominated to an extraordinary degree, Prost and Lauda winning 12 of the 16 races, and the following year it remained generally the class of the field. But through 1986 many were the times when Alain was simply clinging on to the tail of the Williams Hondas, and I venture to suggest that no other driver would have come close to this year's title in a McLaren.

As an out-and-out qualifying car, it has never been any great shakes, the TAG V6 simply not accepting the kind of boost pushed through a Renault or BMW. Its strongest suit had always been its fuel efficiency, but this year Honda set new standards. In 1986 the TAG could compete with Honda neither on horsepower, consumption - nor reliability. Prost reckoned that only six of his races were without any kind of engine problem, and usually at fault was the new, as yet inevitably imperfect, management system.

And yet the man won the world championship. In Austria he nursed home a car whose engine repeatedly cut out as soon as the power was off. Several times he came past at the approach to the Hella-Licht chicane in silence, getting the engine alive again by dropping the clutch in a lower gear. The same problem eliminated Rosberg, but Prost kept it going to win.

In Mexico he was on five cylinders for much of the race, dared not to come in for fear of stalling, and so got through the race on only two sets of tyres. On the rough surface, Piquet's otherwise healthy Williams needed four. Prost took six points from the day, Piquet three.

At Estoril he hung back from the battle between Piquet and Senna, focusing on his fuel read-out. After Piquet had obligingly spun, then Senna ran out on the last lap, in came Prost for six more points. Only through this kind of discipline was he able to go to Adelaide with a shout at the title.

Imola brought Prost his first win of the year, and here the grey cells did the job. While others veered uncertainly between cruising and charging, he drove on his instruments, running dry as he took the flag.

But it was Monaco, one of the few races where fuel consumption was not a consideration, that we saw the victory of the season, a day when Prost made his rivals look clumsy and flat-footed. You noted he was using minimal revs, changing up early, keeping away from the kerbs, and you began to believe you could do it yourself. It was the lesser men, bouncing from one apex to the next, who put Prost's art into true perspective.

At Spa Prost believes he would have won without problem, had he not been delayed by a first corner accident started by Senna who, as usual, came out unscathed. While the Brazilian raced away to an eventual second place, Prost crawled, tyre flat, round Spa's long lap to the pits. After the car had been checked over he rejoined in 23rd place; almost a lap back.

A touch of opposite lock next time through indicated we were in for something special, and by the finish he was up to sixth, having driven the fastest race of the afternoon.

"When he came in," Barnard said. "We were satisfied the car was safe, but it certainly wasn't in A1 condition - we knew that when we found the bent engine mountings afterwards. The thing was like a banana!"

Prost, it transpired, had needed an eighth of a turn of lock in a straight line.

"What's more," Barnard added, "he never touched the boost, although the temptation must have been tremendous." This the team knew positively, from the tachograph in the Bosch system.

After Spa, Prost pointed out that maybe that single point would be crucial by the end of the season. "I lost the title in 1984 by half a point," he murmured. "And something like that makes a big impression on you."

It was typical of the man that he made no sort of scene after the race and did not waste angry words on Senna. Instead, Senna was to learn his lesson at Montreal, two weeks later.

In the early laps the black Lotus was holding up a bunch led by Prost, and the Frenchman got by with what had to be the passing manoeuvre of the season. Through the flat right-left-right swerves after the pits the McLaren drew alongside, then chopped across the nose of the Lotus to claim the line. It was a fair pass, yet ruthless. 'Don't fool with me', it said.

Virtually everywhere we saw something outstanding from Prost: at Monza it was a mesmeric drive from the pitlane up to sixth in 19 laps - and then the black flag for switching too late to the T-car. This was a typical slice of quick thinking by FISA officials: in only a little over half an hour they remembered their own rules, and acted on them. Not surprisingly, Prost gave forth with a few well-chosen words - his relationship with Balestre has never been a close one - and later he was fined.

At mid-season JMB had announced that, henceforth, any remarks derogatory to FISA - in other words, suggestive of the governing body's fallibility - would be punished. Perfectly okay for a driver to trail oil all round the circuit to the pits, but criticism of FISA... never! Fortunately, sense later prevailed, and the fine was rescinded.

At Adelaide Prost was able to drive like a spring lamb. His fuel read-out was minus five litres (to make the finish) from half distance on, and ordinarily his iron will would have made him cut his revs, put the boost to minimum. But here any points fewer than nine were of no use to him, so he simply went for it, hoping the read-out was wrong. It was - as it had been at Hockenheim, where he thought he had plenty of gas, yet finished up pushing the car towards the line.

Prost won only four races in 1986 against five the year before, and a remarkable seven in 1984. But this time he was fighting a rearguard action against superior equipment, and his achievement was incomparably greater. It was also far and away the most competitive season by a reigning world champion in a generation.

McLaren International was not perfect in 1986 - tyre changes, for example, were too often botched, and were never on a par with Williams or Ferrari or Lotus. It seems extraordinary, too, that still the drivers had no radio link with the pits. But Ron Dennis's organisational genius is complemented by an ability to motivate his team. Through the year his relationship with Barnard - a thorny one, at best - disintegrated to the point that the latter left when four races were still to be run.

It says everything about the team, as Prost pointed out, that they were able to carry on to the world championship. Race engineers Steve Nichols and Tim Wright are a remarkable asset.

"Typical Dennis," a mechanic said at an airport one day. "All the McLaren lads have to have identical luggage - which is fine until it comes along the carousel, and they have to check every bloody case to see if it's theirs."

Well, yes, you could see his point. But it's also easy to believe Rosberg when he says what a happy team it is. You sense at McLaren that the goal is a common one - winning.

It says much for Prost and McLaren that Rosberg was prepared to sacrifice the last race of his life - and one that he utterly wanted to win - to help his team-mate win the title. Rather different from, say, the situation at Williams five years ago, when Jones had no interest in assisting Carlos Reutemann.

Rosberg was fantastic in Adelaide, leading easily for most of the way. There was no storybook finale, but a reminder of just how much grand prix racing loses by his retirement. It was timely, too, for it came at the end of a highly disappointing season.

Rosberg surely went to McLaren in the belief that the fastest driver would now be in the fastest car, but it was not long before he came to appreciate that neither was the case. Rosberg, the very physical driver who thrived in Williams chassis designed with him in mind, was far less in his element with a McLaren requiring the silkness of a Prost to give of its best.

Barnard became immensely frustrated by Rosberg's inability to change his style to suit the car, and the Finn felt the same way about the designer's intransigence in allowing him to go his own way on set-up. To keep Prost in sight, therefore, he more than once abused his tyres and got through too much fuel too soon.

By mid-season, though, there were signs of a compromise between driver and designer, and it was only a series of silly mechanical problems that kept Rosberg from a chunk of points from then on. At Hockenheim, where he announced his retirement, Rosberg was wonderful, battling vigorously with Piquet's far swifter Williams, but usually he was in the shadow of his team-mate.

In some teams this situation could have degenerated into acrimony, but the mutual respect between the McLaren drivers increased as the year progressed. It seemed as though Keke had accepted something previously unthinkable: he was in a team with a better driver than he - the best, as he said, he had ever known. And this he admitted with grace and good humour.

After Barnard's departure, he had carte blanche with his car, and at Adelaide - a circuit where deftness is all - we saw again the familiar darty style as he left the championship contenders breathless. It was his last race and he wanted to remember it well. From eighth on the grid, he was up to third in the first mile, into the lead by lap seven. Prost, who had a fine view, described his opening lap as "unbelievable". The last of the wildcards will be much missed.

Williams: Almost unbeatable

Over the winter everything looked to be going the way of Williams. They had finished 1985 as very much the team on the rise, Mansell taking two of the last three races, Rosberg the other. The latter's decision to leave for McLaren had seemed like sense when he made it, at mid-season. Now, as he won his final race for Williams, you had to feel almost sorry for him.

Coming in was a further reduction in fuel capacity, from 220 to 195 litres, this FISA's latest 'safety' ploy to reduce speeds. Nonsense, the constructors quietly said; the cars will still be much quicker than in 1985. And, of course, they were right.

Honda did extraordinary work in preparing for the 195-litre limit, providing Williams with an unmatched power-to-consumption ratio. Thus, Mansell and new team-mate Piquet found themselves with an advantage such as Prost and Niki Lauda enjoyed at McLaren in 1984, when fuel limits were first introduced.

Brands Hatch put it most clearly into focus, the two Williams-Hondas vanishing into a race of their own, battling furiously the whole way, finishing more than a lap ahead of the third car - Prost's McLaren - which had run minimum boost all afternoon simply to be sure of going the 196 miles.

After that race Prost said he now saw the world championship as a fight between Mansell and Piquet. With a demonstrably superior power to consumption ratio, he said, you can choose your advantage and tailor it to the circuit of the moment. You can run the same wing as the rest and paralyse them in a straight line. Or, at a downforce track like Brands, you can run more wing, taking your advantage whenever the road turns. And, if the occasion demands, you can play with your boost switch in the reasonable certainty that you have enough fuel to make the finish.

At Hockenheim, where Piquet won with almost laughable ease, the two McLarens - on minimum boost all the way - ran dry in the last lap. Piquet pulled into the scrutineering area and proceeded to rev his engine hard for a few seconds before shutting it down. No fuel problems there.

It was by no means all Honda though. Patrick Head's FW11, an evolutionary design derived from the FW10, was slightly longer than its predecessor, but very much lower - especially at the rear, which allowed a cleaner airflow to the rear wing. The FW11 never looked a wayward car, nor was it. Mansell, uniquely able to compare it directly to the FW10, raved about it from the beginning.

Consider then, what Williams had going as the new season approached: superb chassis, the best engine in the business, a very tidy budget, Goodyear tyres and two front-running drivers. In a journalists' poll conducted in January, the vast majority chose Piquet as the likely world champion of 1986.

Then, on holiday before the season began, one learned of Frank Williams' dreadful accident. There were but three weeks to the first race, and the real quality of everything he had built up at Williams Grand Prix Engineering beamed out at Rio, where Piquet emphatically won.

As Piquet and Mansell raced on to further success, Williams bravely joked that the team seemed to function better without him. As his condition improved and strength began to return, he was able to play an increasingly active role, but his absence from pitlane was perhaps more crucial than has generally been acknowledged.

By the end of the season Williams-Honda had 141 points in the constructors' championship, only three short of a record. This was a title clinched long before Adelaide, yet Piquet would say a few hours after the final race that only the constructors paid any heed to that: what mattered was the world championship for drivers. And that Williams somehow lost.

Soichiro Honda, present at a grand prix for the first time in 20 years, had two chances in three of watching his engine push a man to the title, yet had to smile inscrutably and shake the hand of Prost.

There are pitfalls in running a genuine two-car team - one with a pair of number one drivers. Back in 1973 Ronnie Peterson and Emerson Fittipaldi swept Lotus to the constructors' cup, but could not keep the genius of Stewart from the world championship. Jones and Reutemann - the other pair of Williams drivers who never got along - did the same five years ago, but the title that mattered was nicked by Piquet at the last race.

For an equal two-car team to function at its best, you need discipline and integrity from everyone involved, as Prost, Lauda and McLaren International demonstrated to perfection for two seasons. Team orders were superfluous in that context because both drivers were mature individuals, able to reason that pooling their information would work to their mutual advantage.

So there we were at the start of the season, all tipping Piquet for the 1986 world championship. I based my forecast on the conviction that the Williams-Honda FW11 was going to be the best car, and a belief that Piquet - with Prost and Senna committed elsewhere - would be the best driver to get his hands on the car.

Thrown into the calculation too was the thought that Piquet, frustrated after a couple of virtually wasted seasons at Brabham, would be like a man reborn, keen to show that world that only poor equipment had kept him from the limelight in the recent past. And Rio, a straightforward victory if ever there was one, seemed to prove us smugly right.

Although Mansell had won twice at the end of 1985, there can be no doubt that Piquet came to Williams in the belief that he would sweep the uncomplicated Englishman aside, swiftly asserting himself as undisputed number one. Winning in Rio - where Mansell crashed during the first minute - served to reinforce his confidence.

As well as that, Piquet had won at home and had beaten Senna - Brazil's new hero. In his own mind, he was back.

But that was rather too complacent. Seven years at Brabham had left Piquet a little spoiled. There he never had a team-mate capable of hustling him - nor a yardstick for his own performances. Everyone had doted on him and smiled indulgently at his schoolboy behaviour. He had been sheltered, in other words, from the realities of a world beyond Brabham. He didn't care for PR work, and so he didn't do it.

"In seven years with Parmalat," Bernie Ecclestone said, "the only time he spoke to them was 15 conversations in three days when we were thinking of Senna for the second car."

For all that, it began to bother Piquet that Prost was earning so much more, and through 1985 he decided he needed a sizeable rise. Ecclestone, gambling that Piquet was too comfortable at Brabham to make a move, declined to accommodate him. In a car park at the Osterreichring, therefore, Piquet signed his Williams contract, in exchange for $63,461 a week, plus another 10,000 per point. 'Poor old Nelson - if only he had a McLaren or Williams.' There would be no more of that.

Perhaps winning in Brazil worked against him, strange as that may sound, for he was anything but distinguished - with one or two exceptions - though the next seven races. True, he drove beautifully at Spa and should have won, but at Montreal and Ricard he was lacklustre at best, and at Detroit simply dropped it. And quite why he even bothered to get out of bed for the Monaco Grand Prix remains a mystery.

While Piquet flagged, Mansell thrived, even he a little stunned at the way victories were coming. He, unlike Piquet, was doing justice to the best car in the business. And interested parties were beginning to ask why they were paying all this gelt for a superstar when the other fellow was winning all the races. After Ricard Mansell had three on the board and Rio seemed like a long time ago.

At Brands Hatch he looked more like the Piquet of old, taking a comfortable pole position. But in the race Mansell squarely beat him, and the Brazilian petulantly declined to shake his hand afterwards. After his tyre change Mansell came out just in front of Piquet, who had stopped a couple of laps earlier. Piquet, understandably hellbent on getting past before Mansell was up to speed, went for the inside line at Surtees - and found the door quite legitimately shut in his face. Any grand prix driver worth his name would have done that - including Piquet - but afterwards he raged about it. When he passed Mansell for the lead at Monza, he flicked the wheel, forcing his team-mate out wide, afterwards claiming that as retribution for the wrong done him at Brands.

Through the second half of the Williams season, it seemed often that here were two teams which happened to operate out of the same pit. Briefings - in the McLaren sense of the word - ceased to be. After Brands Piquet came on strong, winning consecutively at Hockenheim, and then two weeks later at the Hungaroring. Here, of course, Piquet - with the benefit of a T-car - tried a different diff during practice, found it markedly improved the traction and 'driveability' of the Williams on the slick surface, and used it in the race, having somehow forgotten to tell Mansell about it. That did a lot for team spirit.

At Monza, Piquet, outpaced by Mansell during qualifying, took a 'flyer' for the race by opting for a wing setting which had not been tried in practice - and it worked. During the closing laps he passed Mansell to win the race, and on the slowing down lap the Englishman drew alongside him and applauded!" "Were you congratulating him?" he was asked. "Or were you doing the very last thing he would expect...?" Mansell, himself becoming adept at the psyching game, just grinned.

That was the second Williams-Honda one-two of the season. Prost had scored nothing that day and his earlier forecast - that Mansell and Piquet alone would dispute the title - looked to be coming true. After Estoril, where Mansell flattened everyone, it seemed as good as settled - but in Mexico everything went awry. Mansell's first gear did not engage properly and he was left at the start. And Piquet, who led the first half of the race, threw away another bundle of points by making riotous use of his tyres. He needed four sets in that race, where Prost made do with two. Prost, nursing a sick car, was allowed to finish second, and those six points - like the half dozen scored in Portugal, spun away by Piquet - meant that the world champion was still in the game when they headed off to Australia.

The tyre explosion on Mansell's car at Adelaide will remain - together with Diego Maradona's volleyball goal against England in the World Cup - as the sporting moment of 1986. Cruising easily towards the world championship became, in that brutal split-second, fighting for survival. For nearly a quarter of a minute we watched Mansell wrestle that car down to a halt, saw the left rear wheel twitch as the engine finally died.

Useless to say, now, that it was rotten luck and all that sort of thing. It was more than that. Mansell had won more races than anyone, and only one, in Belgium, had come with any measure of luck. Needing only to finish third in Australia, he had driven precisely the race required.

Afterwards team personnel said they had been on the point of calling him in for tyres, this immediately after learning of Rosberg's similar problem.

You will recall that Prost, having punctured a tyre, had come in for a new set after 32 of the 80 laps (and that, in any case, he had been intending to change at the halfway point). When Prost came back out, in fourth place, he was more than 20s adrift of the Williams pair, yet quickly began carving pieces out of their lead. As his new tyres were obviously making so much difference, why, you wondered, did Williams not bring Mansell and Piquet in at that point? By the time of the tyre explosion, Mansell had already been passed by Prost, and Piquet was on the hook.

So it was all gone. Williams-Honda won more than half the races, yet finished the year without a world champion, and one was left with the thought that, against Prost, you simply cannot afford any mistakes. Mansell and Piquet had at their disposal the fastest car in the business, and one of amazing reliability. The preparation was as superb as ever and Williams tyre stops were consistently the best in the business - far better, for example, than those of McLaren.

When Prost won at Hockenheim in the T-car two years ago, having switched immediately before the start, we cited this as an example of real quality in a team. At the British Grand Prix Mansell did the same. In all matters technical, it was difficult to find fault with Williams in 1986.

But the situation that arose between the drivers should not have been tolerated by the team management. Piquet kept quiet about the trick diff in Budapest and won the race. Had he retired for any reason, the victory would have gone not to his team mate's Williams, but to Senna's Lotus.

You could feel nothing but intense sympathy for Mansell at Adelaide. Piquet outqualified him in eight of the 16 grands prix, but in the races Mansell was solidly the better of the two. Piquet would not have been a worthy World Champion in 1986.

Had Piquet, in the words of one team manager, been "found out" since his move to Williams? Had he never been quite the ace we all imagined? Or had he simply got lazy and found out that moving to a new team with an absolutely competitive team-mate was a shock to his system? When Williams signed Piquet, he described him as "the best driver in the world," but that he most assuredly was not in 1986. Simply, there were too many mistakes.

Mansell, by contrast, continued to surprise us. For years only a small legion believed Nigel very quick and very brave, but not a man to become a regular grand prix winner. It is pleasing that so many were wrong. The victories at Montreal, Ricard and Brands were from the top drawer, but for the highlight of his season was that amazing drive in Portugal. He had seen his championship lead whittled down, and the psychological momentum move Piquet's way. There were three races left, three other men who wanted the title, and he just drive away from them. In 1986 Mansell did himself - and his team - proud.

Lotus: Duet for one

"Hmmm," Prost quietly said as he surveyed the grid for the championship decider in Adelaide. "Mansell, Piquet, Senna, then me. Three people ahead of me on the grid - and they all hate each other. I will have a very quiet first lap, I think." You could hardly fault his logic, particularly as you watched that first lap, among the most tempestuous ever seen. Mansell and Piquet, we know, were anything but cosy team-mates - and each had had his differences with Senna. Mansell remembered Senna barging him off the road at Adelaide in 1985, then the contretemps on the first lap at Rio this year. And Piquet and Senna have never been matey, the former continually referring to his fellow countryman as "the Sao Paulo taxi driver".

Senna, for his part, has never forgiven Piquet for standing between him and the second Brabham drive in 1984. They go back quite a way, these two, and there is also, of course, the matter of Brazilian pride. Some of their battles through the years had an unusual degree of 'edge'.

Just as Piquet declined to have Senna as a team-mate, so Senna refused, at the beginning of the year, to allow Derek Warwick into Lotus. He had created a new controversy, therefore, before the season so much as started. And he defended his stance with a candour which must have made his team wince.

"In my opinion Warwick is not a number two, and I wanted a second driver in the team. In some teams you can have two competitive drivers, but at Lotus the best solution is a firm number one. Why? Because in my first season I realised they could not run two competitive cars at the same time."

Nothing like tact, is there? But Senna saw it - like his decision to leave Toleman for Lotus - in black and white terms. He is a driven man, and nothing can be allowed to stand between him and his world championship. In 1986 he doubted that he was going to win it with a Renault engine. What he knew beyond a doubt was that he wasn't going to lose it because the team had another front-runner to think about.

Senna always maintained there was nothing personal in his attitude, and I don't doubt him. Warwick, digesting the fact that he wasn't going to be a Lotus driver was, however, a little stunned to find in his mail a Christmas card: 'Best wishes, Ayrton Senna.' By New Year he was virtually coherent again.

Thus it was that Johnny Dumfries joined Team Lotus, a driver acceptable both to Senna and the title sponsor. And it seemed to me his position was an invidious one, although it was undeniable that his year in F3000 had scarcely justified his promotion to a team such as Lotus.

Renault, now free of trying to operate an F1 team of its own, made a considerable breakthrough with their pneumatique V6, which did away with valve springs, instead using a compressed air system to perform the same function. This markedly improved the engine's reliability, and also gave another thousand revs or so. At Rio, the first race, Senna was the only man to have one, and initially he was very enthusiastic.

In Brazil he took pole, as he was to do in exactly half the grands prix run this year, but within five minutes of the green light he knew what he was up against in 1986. Piquet's Williams-Honda went by with nonchalant ease - and rubbed salt in Senna's pride by doing it in front of the main grandstand. If Piquet could run that much boost without worrying about it, Senna ragingly acknowledged, Lotus-Renault were in for a difficult season.

He was quite right. Despite the introduction, later in the year, of new cylinder heads, which improved consumption, the Renault V6's fuel efficiency was never on a par with Honda, nor even with TAG.

This took its toll in other ways, too. Renault became obsessive in its desire to solve the problem, constantly trying new tweaks to make the gas go a little further. This involved Senna in an extraordinary amount of engine testing, which necessarily reduced the time that Gerard Ducarouge could devote to chassis work. Although the 98T, derived from the 97T, was fundamentally a better car, Senna said, it was never honed to the same degree as its predecessor. Simply, there wasn't time. And by mid-season, he had informed Peter Warr that if Renault was to stay with Lotus for 1987, he wouldn't. By July a deal with Honda had been struck.

As in 1985, there were only two victories for Senna and Lotus, and some of those who had unhesitatingly rated him the best in the world began to back-pedal. Rubbish. He was even more impressive this year than last. That degree of single-mindedness is still a little spooky, and there is some of Reagan's 'Teflon Man' in his ability to emerge without hurt from two accidents, but what truly marked him out this season was high fighting quality. Most weekends he would go into a race knowing that, all things being equal, he had little chance of winning, yet never did this compromise his effort. The very personal duels he fought with Piquet in Hungary and Portugal were unforgettable, rather reminiscent of the way Villeneuve used to hold off Jones' Williams, knowing it was ultimately futile but never acknowledging it. You couldn't, he said, if you were a grand prix driver and the suspicion is that Senna thinks the same way.

The victory at Jerez over Mansell was the closest on record, and will doubtless remain so. Senna drove a very physical race that day, especially in his off-circuit attempts to take the lead back from Mansell at three-quarters distance, but it remains a classic win. In the late stages the Lotus' tyres were completely shot, yet Senna kept the car pointing forwards and did just enough to take the nine points.

Detroit, though, he won by imperious command. As with Prost at Monaco, he could put fuel consumption out of his mind at this street race, and even a puncture in the early stages was but a temporary inconvenience. Depressed by Brazil's exit from the World Cup the day before, he rejoiced that his country's papers would have something to celebrate on Monday morning. And doubtless the fact that Piquet hit the wall, while trying to catch him, must have further sweetened the moment.

After June there were no more wins, but not until Estoril, where he ran out of fuel on the last lap, was he finally ruled out of the world championship equation. It was a mighty gallant season by a great driver.

Eight pole positions. Frequently Senna's banzai qualifying laps were shrouded in sparks, suggesting - as one team manager put it - "negative ground clearance". Senna himself would say that, yes, the car had been good, but that the ride height had been set too low, and it would be much better tomorrow.

Rivals muttered darkly that in this configuration, the car was illegal. Gabriele Cadringher of FISA examined it and declared otherwise. Still the mumblings continued, to the point that in Mexico the team issued a press release saying, in effect, 'put up or shut up'. Even more astonishing was one issued immediately by another team: 'Wasn't me, teacher' was its tone, which was a surprise in light of some of the remarks various of its members had made through the season.

Senna's insistence on Honda engines for 1987 meant that Satoru Nakajima came in the same package - and that, in turn, meant the door for Dumfries. It was disappointing for the Scot, but he took the news philosophically, no one more aware than he of the circumstances which had led to his joining Lotus in the first place.

On occasion Dumfries did look out of his depth - or rather seemed to be trying a little too hard. At Jerez he looked constantly to be on the verge of an accident, for example, and at Monte Carlo failed to qualify after a shunt while learning the circuit on the first day. At Imola Senna might have needed his car in the final session, with the result that Dumfries was allowed out to set a time with only five minutes left. These are not ideal circumstances in which to learn about F1.

The Brands Hatch testing days were unbelievable. Here was a circuit he knew well, and a chunk of testing would have done his confidence enormous good. As it was, though, he had to stand around and watch Senna. Away from the races, Lotus allowed him ludicrously little time in the car.

For all that, he kept his composure and his friendly disposition. The mechanics thought the world of him. And through the second half of the season he progressed well, netting a really fine fifth place at the slippery Hungaroring. But it is difficult to see where he will find an F1 drive for next year.

Benetton: From rag trade to riches

If logic plays any part in F1 then Benetton were always going to be a factor in 1986. Consider that it had the sport's most unheralded genius, Rory Byrne, to design; it had Peter Collins, an effective team owner and sponsor who was enough of a realist to know that in F1 as in everything else, there are no overnight miracles.

An impressive list, that, lacking perhaps only a Goodyear contract. Although Benetton quickly asserted itself as the Pirelli team, the Italian company was generally a pace or two behind the American, especially on smooth circuits.

Byrne's B186 bore a strong family resemblance to the elegant Toleman TG185. It never had quite the poise of the earlier car, but then it had to deal with BMW horsepower, which is immense and arrives like a thunderbolt. At tight circuits like Detroit the package was anything but easy to drive. On the quick tracks, however, it thrived. Berger took points from each of the first three races, but it was at Spa that he truly emerged, qualifying second to Piquet with a lap that would have taken the pole had not the engine cut out a couple of times. Into the first corner, of course, he got involved in that wheel-banging session with Senna, then went into a comeback drive which was shaded only by a shattering similar performance from Prost.

As the season grew older Berger became a man in demand, Ferrari and McLaren just two of the teams interested in signing him. In Austria he led conclusively on a circuit which might have been purpose-built for the Benetton-BMW, but battery failure delayed him. At Monza, too, he was in front for a while.

For all his laid back manner, however, you suspect there is a degree of calculation in the man not superficially apparent. Benetton was sorry to lose him, but there was those who felt, to some extent, that they had been used. Yes, he had led the early laps at Monza - but how much boost had he used to do it? Late in the race the green car was stumbling around, very low on fuel.

Was it a lack of maturity? Or did Berger take a calculated gamble, wanting to look good on the TV screen in the old farmhouse in Fiorano, hoping to impress one particular viewer?

At Estoril he got into a scrap with Stefan Johansson - the man whose job he would take - and it ended with both cars off the road, Berger having gone for a gap inside the Ferrari that was not as wide as the Benetton. A foolish move? Or did it have Enzo Ferrari chuckling with delight? The following day Berger's name was on a Ferrari contract, and he now has the opportunity before him to be with them at the start of a new era, just as his countryman Lauda did in 1974.

With the pressure off, he went to Mexico, and there - thanks in partto the Pirellis' astonishing durability on the rough surface - took his first grand prix victory. It was nothing less than he and the entire Benetton team deserved.

Berger is not a man who makes the job look easy. When he is on a hot lap, you have the impression that every sinew - in car and driver - is working. The sight of the Benetton bucking through the Eau Rouge swerves at Spa was a highlight of the season.

Teo Fabi, by contrast, is ultra smooth, but in 1986 found himself rather swamped by Berger, who won the qualifying battle 13-3. The little Italian - who not only looks like a monk, but appears also to have taken a vow of silence - has always been most at his ease on truly fast circuits, and at both the Osterreichring and Monza started from the pole. But in Austria he over-revved early in the race, and in Italy contrived to stall his BMW before the final parade lap.

Although Fabi is sometimes flashingly impressive, it is not at all obvious why he is rated so highly. Certainly he is a fine test driver, but there seem to be superior race drivers currently out of work.

A fine season then for Benetton, whose reliability should noticeably improve with the Ford engine in 1987. I can envisage Byrne coming up with a chassis just perfect for the neat little V6. Keith Duckworth and his men must now find some horsepower.

Ferrari: Stumbling horse

Ferrari had a very poor season, its third such on the trot. For the first time since 1980, there was not a single victory for Maranello, despite the fact that F186 was a very much better car than its predecessor, the 156/85. Yes, the team made some progress, but it was starting from a long way back. And others made more.

On the engine front, there were definite signs of improvement. Towards the end of 1985, when the team was in a complete shambles, the celebrated V6 was both grossly unreliable and embarrassingly short of horsepower. Part of the problem was that Michele Alboreto and Johansson found it necessary to run barn door wings in an attempt to keep the back wheels on the road which, of course took its toll on the straights.

At Kyalami in 1985 a trip Ferrari pit found what amounted to a wake. Antonio Tommaini and the others were studying speed trap figures from the final qualifying session. Slowest were Huub Rothengatter's Osella and Pierluigi Martini's Minardi, immediately above them were numbers 27 and 28.

Over the winter though, good work was done in the engine department. Major changes to combustion chambers and cylinder heads produced a worthwhile increase in power, and Ferrari reverted to iron, rather than aluminium, for the casting of the blocks. In 1986 the engines accepted more qualifying boost a good deal more readily than before and on fuel efficiency too they were impressive. So that much was good. Alboreto and Johanssonn were always to the fore on speed trap times, often at the top of the list. They ran into trouble, Alboreto pointed out, only when the road turned.

On initial turn-in, the F186 wallowed into understeer. Then, according to Johansson, there was a spell of neutrality before it snapped into oversteer - further accentuated by the inferior throttle response which came with Garrett turbos, to which Ferrari switched before half-season.

As well as that, the red cars were quite diabolical over bumps, and had poor traction out of slow corners. Since Patrick Tambay was illogically sacked at the end of 1983 Maranello has been in dire need of a first-rate test driver, but this is not, and never has been, a team where logic comes first. We were reminded of that early in the season when, after a financial disagreement with Brembo, Ferrari ran home-made brakes for a while, with catastrophic results: Johansson had accidents after failures at Rio and Jerez and both drivers were becoming understandably nervous. Thereafter Ferrari reverted to Brembo.

When Barnard went to work on the MP4/2, he gave the Porsche engineers a precise indication of what he had in mind for the design of the chassis, where the turbos and intercoolers had to go and so on. The engine had to fit his car. More than once this year Harvey Postlethwaite had cause ruefully to remark that the layout of the Ferrari V6 and its ancillaries imposed considerable restrictions on any chassis in which it was to be installed (Barnard now finds himself in the same position, of course, although Ferrari has a new and much smaller 90-degree V6 power unit to work around for 1987).

The best card held by Alboreto and Johansson this season past should have been reliability, and on occasion - such as in Austria, where they finished second and third - this alone had them looking good on the results sheet. But that was not typical. Alboreto retired from nine of the 16 races and long before the end of the year was speaking freely of his disenchantment. After the final session in Hungary, where his car shed a front wheel as he attempted to improve on his 15th grid position, he angrily spoke of leaving on the spot.

Through 1985 the Italian was Prost's chief opposition for the world championship, but this year his determination seemed to wilt and in the races he was generally no match for Johansson. His best showing by far was at Monza, where he stayed right with the Williams pair for the first third of the race before spinning his chances away.

"The handling and grip were fantastic today," he said afterwards. "The best I can ever remember." But why? After all, he had qualified only ninth. "I don't know," he smiled, and that rather summed up the Ferrari season.

At the post-race press conference in Belgium, Mansell and Senna - first and second - spoke of understeer problems throughout the race. Johansson took a fine third for Ferrari. Had the car suddenly come good, someone asked? "No," he replied succinctly. "I notice Nigel and Ayrton said they had understeer today, and that definitely helped us because we always have it."

The Swede had a poor shake in his two seasons at Ferrari and was always treated very much as the second driver. If Alboreto had need of Johansson's car, he got it, and times without number the Swede was messed around in qualifying.

It was poor grid positions, Signore Ferrari suggested, which led to his being dropped at the end of the year. If that be the case, the Old Man was rather overlooking the important end of the grand prix weekend, for on Sundays Johansson solidly outdrove Alboreto all season, and routinely flattered what he had been given to drive. Ferrari has made some curious decisions over the years, and that to sack Johansson is close to the top of the pile.

At Spa, late in the race, Johansson caught and passed Alboreto for third place, ignoring team orders ("Signal? What signal?") as he did so, but the suggestions that this contributed to his departure is palpable nonsense. As Villeneuve used to say, nothing makes the Old Man rub his hands in glee like the sight of his number two hustling the team leader.

Johansson was far too much of a free spirit to survive long in a team run by Marco Piccinini. Keeping quiet has never been the strongest part of his game, and the old adage is as strong today as ever: Ferrari cars win races, Ferrari drivers lose them.

Johansson will be in a McLaren next year, in which case Ferrari and Piccinini may have done him a favour.

Ligier: Gallic fits and starts

Michel Tetu's JS27 was the most competitive Ligier since the Ducarouge days of 1980. Essentially it was a logical, rather more svelte, derivation of the hideous, but sometimes surprisingly effective, JS25. And at the beginning of the season its pace was something of an eye-opener. At Rio, Jacques Laffite and Rene Arnoux finished third and fourth. More remarkable in its own way though, was that Laffite had qualified fifth, for the French veteran is very much known as a Sunday driver - in the sense that he has little interest in Fridays and Saturdays.

Running Mecachrome-prepared Renault V6 engines and Pirelli tyres again, the JS27 was usually seen to best advantage on twisty circuits. For 11 laps at the Detroit Grand Prix, indeed, there was something close to Gallic ecstasy as the blue cars ran at the head of the field. It was a fine thing, in particular, to see Jack Lafferty leading a race for the first time since Long Beach in 1983. Eventually he finished second after picking off Prost's McLaren in the last few laps.

At Brands Hatch, though, came the accident which was to put him between the sheets for several months. Thierry Boutsen's Arrows hurtled into the guardrail, bouncing back into the pack and dragging with it an advertising banner, which swirled towards Johansson. The Ferrari driver instinctively swerved right, and Laffite was left with nowhere to go.

In the aftermath of any serious accident the drivers are inevitably subdued, but at Brands the news that it was Jacques who had been hurt rocked them. He was F1's senior citizen, and also the most well-liked man in the business. At a later race we all scribbled messages on a 'get well' card for him. It was eight feet long and space was at a premium.

Thankfully, Laffite went on to recover well, never losing his resolve to come back to F1. In his absence, Philippe Alliot was brought in to partner Arnoux, his speed rather surprising everyone. Regularly he was almost on a par with his team-mate, although there was some evidence that he asked a lot of his car.

Arnoux, of course, was back into grand prix racing after a year's sabbatical, following his still unexplained firing by Ferrari in early 1985. His rumoured health problems were clearly behind him and from the first race it was obvious that the enforced absence had done nothing to hamper his natural pace - or improve his prehensile track manners. Many remain convinced that he believes cockpit mirrors are there only for checking his hair, whose style and colour appears to change with every passing race.

He remains, with the inevitable Andrea de Cesaris, the most inconsiderate driver in grand prix racing, completely oblivious of anyone else on track. Regularly after a practice session or race, you will find others raging incoherently about his antics. "There is a bone in his head!" spluttered Tambay after an incident in Hungary. "No point talking to him about it. The only thing he would understand is a punch in the mouth."

Asked to comment, Arnoux made a gesture of an anatomical nature, a description of which shall be foisted upon you in this festive season. Suffice to say that it was, well, primitive.

The pity of it is that Arnoux can drive brilliantly and has no need to behave in this fashion. He is no stylist, true, he regards a kerb as something to be driven over and is very hard on tyres and brakes; but in the right circumstances he remains among the very fastest of grand prix drivers, and 14 points were less than his due in 1986. Little good luck came his way.

Who knows what the future holds for Ligier? Few would envy the task of developing and racing Alfa Romeo's four-cylinder turbo engine, and Gerard Larrouse, who has brought some cohesion and calm to the team in the past two years, has left. According to Guy Ligier, what is more, he is not to be replaced. Which means, presumably, that the unpredictable Frenchman intends taking on the job himself.

Brabham: Turmoil at the white house

One of the saddest aspects of the season was the continuing decline of Brabham. Since the high-octane charge to Piquet's world championship in 1983, Bernie Ecclestone's cars have won only three races, and there were no victories in sight in 1986, a year which yielded precisely two points. Before the end of it, indeed, the unthinkable had happened: Gordon Murray, a Brabham man before Bernie, had emptied his desk and moved to McLaren.

Sparked by Californian gearbox man Pete Weismann, Murray had conceived the BT55, which positively hummed with innovation. It was this aspect of Brabham's plans which so intrigued Niki Lauda in 1985 and gave him brief cause to reconsider retirement. He must rejoice that he kept to his original plan.

The BT55, positively the lowest F1 car anyone could remember, called for a massive investment by BMW, for the design required the engine to be mounted on its side. To all intents and purposes, therefore, you were talking about a new engine. BMW went along.

Mated to the 'laydown' Bee Em was a seven-speed gearbox from Weismann, and in the beginning this was very troublesome. "No point in seven gears," Elio de Angelis glumly said during practice at Jerez, "if you can't find any of them."

All year long Brabham was a team in turmoil. The 'laydown' engine, for one thing, was never a match for its upright brother in either horsepower or reliability, and persistent failures inevitably militated against chassis development. From the start BT55 drivers complained of the car's tardiness out of slow corners, and initially the gearbox was thought to be the culprit. After that had been exonerated, BMW modified the exhaust system, which only partly alleviated the problem. Eventually it was generally accepted that poor oil scavenge was at the root of it, but right to the end the car's initial acceleration was pathetic.

Quality control problems with the gearbox were another bugbear, but these were substantially reduced as more and more bits were manufactured in Germany, rather than the USA. When it was working well, the drivers avowed, it was sensational.

At the very top end, the BT55's ultra-low frontal area came into play, and then the thing was like a missile. But there are few long straights any more - and a great many slow corners.

Handling, too, remained largely a matter of mystery. Occasionally, as at Monza, Derek Warwick would rave about it, but there he had the unique experience of a practice day without a single engine failure, and could actually run a sequence of laps, get back into the flow of grand prix driving again. He qualified seventh that day, able for once to do justice to himself.

Warwick joined the team, of course, only after de Angelis had lost his life at Ricard. Although he had driven but four races for Brabham, the Italian's style and courtesy had made their mark, and everyone was shattered at his loss. Murray, another of this sport's all too few gentlemen, was particularly affected, and missed Spa, the next race.

I was among those astonished, at the end of 1985, by Ecclestone's decision to bring Riccardo Patrese back to his team after two years away. But Bernie was adamant in his affirmation that he was "the most underrated driver in the business," and team personnel lost no time in suggesting that this Patrese was a very different man from the one who had partnered Piquet in 1982-83.

He very clearly was. Freed of the shadow of Piquet, Patrese's confidence bloomed. This was his 10th season of grand prix racing, and - results apart - by far his best. Throughout the year he drove superbly, somehow never losing heart as one failure after another dumped him by the trackside. By Brands Hatch, indeed, the team was in such desperation that, following a raid on the Donington Museum, an old BT54 was built for Patrese to use. But that car had been off the pace a year earlier, and Brands - unsurprisingly - proved it had gained little with bottle age.

From Patrese, there remained occasional signs of brain fade - as in Mexico, where he lost fifth place by unaccountably running into Boutsen near the end - but generally this was a fine, mature, season from the Italian.

Despite the tragic circumstances which brought him back to F1, Warwick approached his Brabham drive in a positive frame of mind. In 1984, we should recall, Warwick was the man we looked to as Britain's next world champion, and it is nothing short of tragic that he has not been near a worthwhile car since then.

Away from the circuits, he remains the most affable and down to earth man in the business, but he is also one of intense competitiveness, and when thing go wrong - as they have for him in the last couple of years - his frustrations tend to boil over. Only rarely was his true worth apparent in a BT55. I hope somewhere there is a team manager smart enough to realise it.

An era, then, is over at Brabham. Murray and Piquet, central to the team for so long, are gone. It remains to be seen what Bernie can do to bring back the great days.

Lola: Damp squib fades away

Team Haas USA arrived in F1 with a bang, and departed with a whimper. At the beginning there was all the razzamatazz in the world, a mammoth budget from Beatrice and an impressive new factory, a list of personnel 'poached' from elsewhere (which, it has to be said, made the team less than popular with its fellows before the first car had so much as been drawn. Other teams got quite sniffy about 'effix' and so on, which seemed oddly naive. They have, after all, made F into a branch of big business, in which head-hunting is taken for granted.)

First of all, Carl Haas made strenuous efforts to persuade Mansour Ojjeh to sell him TAG engines, but that was knocked on the head by Ron Dennis, who understandably wanted to keep them all for McLaren International. At a very high level, therefore, a deal was worked out between Beatrice and Ford for the exclusive supply of the Cosworth -designed V6, together with an interim arrangement with Brian Hart. So far, so good.

Teddy Mayer was to run the show, Jones and Tambay - both previously with Haas in Can-Am - to drive. Murray had rejected an offer to become the team's designer and several superstars, including Rosberg and Piquet, turned down highly-lucrative cockpit work. On balance, it looked like a journeyman team, with too many cooks, too many compromises. And so it turned out to be - if not 'Team Farce USA', as some predicted.

Early in the season, what the team had going for it were Neil Oatley's fine chassis, good reliability from the Ford V6 and a positive attitude from Tambay. The flip side was a state of war between Mayer and Jones (who might have been put on this earth not to get along with each other), a cool relationship between the drivers and a devastating lack of top end horsepower from the engine. This last was immediately apparent; Jones Tambay both commenting that the Hart four-cylinder, while lacking the superbly progressive response of the Ford V6, at least had some worthwhile steam. The Lola-Ford came off the corners well enough, but then simply ran out of puff. On any long straight its speed trap figures were embarrassing.

Initially, though, it looked promising enough. Tambay consistently qualified well during the early races: in the final session at Spa he was fastest of all through the tiptoe swerves of Eau Rouge, which confirmed the poise of the chassis. At the same time he pointed out that, with so little power available, his car was easier than most to manage through the corners like that: "Remember we have no qualifying engine - not even a bit of qualifying boost! This is exactly what we'll race tomorrow."

At this stage of the season both drivers were reasonably encouraged. What got them down thereafter was lack of progress - that, and a succession of maddening, trifling, problems in the races which were the consequence of lack of attention to detail and, in some cases, poor preparation.

Tambay also went through a disquieting sequence of accidents. At Monte Carlo he found the door positively slammed in his face by Martin Brundle, and was launched into a barrel roll which could - had the car gone over the barrier - have put future Monaco Grands Prix in jeopardy. As it was, he was able to step out unaided, having first had the presence of mind to radio his pit to say he was okay!

After qualifying well at Spa, he was turfed out in the multiple shunt at the first corner, and then came a massive accident through the top gear swerves at Montreal during the warm-up. Afterwards he suggested that a steering arm had broken.

Injuries to Tambay's feet meant that Eddie Cheever subbed for him at Detroit, and the American predictably tackled the job with straightforward enthusiasm. "The chassis is a jewel," he said. "The best I've ever driven." Ford, growing tired of what they saw as petulance from the two regulars, were highly impressed with his attitude. And his driving. But both cars retired with... broken rear wheel drive pegs.

Jones, with his resolute absence of tact, remained the best source of one-liners in the paddock: "That was a nice Group C race," he remarked bitterly, after finishing fourth in Austria. Still, someone said, you've got your first points of the season. Jones looked at him with incredulity: "I was lapped twice, for Christ's sake! The thing could hardly make it up the hill."

That summed Jones up, as it would have done at any stage of his career. He is not Laffite or Clay Regazzoni: it is not enough just to be a grand prix driver. Approaching 40, he did not come back simply for the pleasure of driving an F1 car. The money was one thing, certainly, but so also was the competition. Without a doubt, his racing spirit remains: you had only to watch the red car weaving left and right, picking up places, in the first seconds of a race to be sure of that. And on the rare occasion when the Lola-Ford was genuinely competitive - letting the dog see the rabbit - we had the Alan Jones of five years ago. In Hungary, for example, he was fabulous - for 10 laps, until he came in with a leaking brake calliper.

For the last few races of the year the entire team seemed to be in a holding pattern. The Beatrice money was gone, the Ford connection looked to be at an end, and there were rumours that Haas was selling out to Ecclestone. Immediately after the Australian Grand Prix they all knew they were out of work.

As a general rule, it has always seemed to me that the success of a marriage is inversely proportional to the size and ballyhoo of the wedding. In racing, too, that appears often to hold true.

Tyrrell: Not out of the woods

There were no fireworks from the Tyrrell team this season - and none expected. If Senna's Ducarouge-penned Lotus-Renault 98T had a hard time keeping in touch with Williams-Honda and McLaren-TAG, there was little chance for Brundle and Philippe Streiff in Maurice Philippe's similarly-powered 015, which arrived in time for the first European race.

Lighter and trimmer than its unwieldy predecessor, the car was a marked improvement, but its career began with a series of unhappy accidents, Brundle having to fall back on old 014 after pre-race shunts in both Jerez and Imola. At Monaco he had a shunt with Tambay, and during Brands Hatch testing Streiff wrote off another brand new chassis. All of this did little to assist progress and development.

There were some plus points to the season, however. After a long financially hazardous period without substantial backing, Ken Tyrrell found a major sponsor in Data General, which appears to be one of those companies which looks at Formula 1 rationally, and does not expect an instant return for its cash. This is preferable by far to the antics of corporations such as Beatrice, who arrive like shooting stars, and last about as long.

The next Tyrrell is to be designed by Brian Lisles, a man to whom the task should perhaps have passed some time ago, and he will have the assistance of highly sophisticated Data General equipment, which has recently been installed. No such gear was available when 015 was being conceived, and it was inevitably agricultural compared with such as Williams and McLaren.

Brundle and Streiff were also stuck with the relatively poor fuel efficiency of the Renault EF15 engine. Nor did the Meccachrome-mintained units display much in the way of reliability. On occasion Brundle's quite understandable frustration came close to boiling point.

His time will come, I am sure, but perhaps not as quickly as he would wish. He has now put in three years in F1, learned his trade. There is a lot of natural ability there, and Brundle in a race car is as hard as they come - a little too hard, according to some of those who have tried to lap the Tyrrell this season. And they say the same, only more so, of the highly self-confident Streiff.

The Frenchman stays at Tyrrell next year, and so, perhaps, will Brundle. Reverting to Cosworth engines may seem like a backward step, but in reality there could be more satisfaction to be gained - especially at places like Detroit and Monaco - from a good normally-aspirated car than a middling turbo-charged one.

Arrows: Blunted by age

No two ways about it. Arrows had a lousy time in 1986. For virtually the entire season they had to rely on the old A8, for Dave Wass's A9, originally scheduled to make its debut at Spa, was delayed by a strike at British Aerospace (where the carbon fibre monocoque was being manufactured) and by the financial problems which have long dogged Jackie Oliver's team. When the new car did appear finally, at Hockenheim, team leader Boutsen was some 3s slower than the A8 of Christian Danner. The A9 featured an expensive new inboard gearbox, which was a disaster from the start, and was later replaced by a conventional unit.

More was wrong than the gearbox, however. After trying the A9 briefly during practice in Hungary, Boutsen preferred to revert to the A8, and the hapless Danner took over the new one. By Monza it had been forgotten, scrapped, and both drivers were back to the A8s. Wass had been shown the door.

The A9's major shortcoming was its lack of stiffness, Boutsen saying he had never encountered a car so insensitive to set-up changes. Whatever you did, he went on, the car was the same: terminal understeer lurching into violent oversteer.

The best cards in the Arrows pack were the team's traditionally high standard of preparation and the grunt of their Mader-maintained BMW engines - although poor traction prevented a lot of this from going down on the road.

As in seasons past, Boutsen consistently flattered his equipment, the lumpy A8 frequently much higher up the grids than it had any right to expect. Yet the very talented Belgian finished the year without a single championship point, and snapped up an offer from Benetton which should enable his F1 career to thrive at last.

Danner, likeable and enthusiastic, moved to Arrows after Marc Surer's appalling rally accident. Having started the season with Osella, he showed a useful journeyman's ability, but is unlikely to be retained for 1987. He did, however, score Arrows' solitary point by finishing sixth in Austria.

Zakspeed: Big effort, small reward

NASCAR is heavily into awards for all kinds of things, including remaining cheerful in the face of adversity. If such a prize were up for grabs in F1, my vote would unhesitatingly go to Jonathan Palmer, a champion in F3 and F2, yet a man who has still to score his first world championship point after three years of trying.

For two years he has quietly and uncomplainingly worked away with the little Zakspeed team with no real point of reference apart from Goodyear tyres. No other team uses the Zakspeed four-cylinder engine, and at no stage of his F1 career - save very briefly at Williams - has Palmer been partnered by an established star from whom he could learn. It has all, therefore, been down to his own intuition and growing experience.

He should have scored that first point in Mexico, and would have done, had not the car run out of fuel towards the end.

From Palmer's point of view, too, it would have been better if the team had concentrated on him, as in 1985. After the first couple of races, however, financial considerations brought Huub Rothengatter - yet again somehow plucking sponsorship from a top hat - in as number two. For some time Palmer was then without a T-car, which scarcely helped with on-track development. All told, though, he did extremely well by his team once more, and now thoroughly deserves a big step.

Making up the numbers...

We must thank Minardi this year for bringing into F1 Alessandro Nannini, for me the newcomer of the season. This fellow is a racer from a time past, with no trace of the typically haunted grand prix novice. He seemed quite determined to enjoy F1, and approached his first season with a refreshingly casual attitude. Already the Italians call him 'the Regazzoni of the eighties', and that is quite a reference to carry with you.

Nannini knew hardly any of the grand prix circuits at the beginning of the year, yet out-qualified his vastly more experienced team mate de Cesaris more often than not - this despite the fact that the latter always had first pick of the cars and Motori Moderni engines at Minardi's disposal. In the races he was consistently impressive and rarely had accidents. Before the end of the season Brabham and Benetton were both showing interest in him, and I trust we shall see him in a competitive team before long. He is a man central to the coming years in F1.

Not so de Cesaris. With boost up and fuel tank contents down, he briefly shook everyone in Brazil by climbing to sixth before retiring with 'gearbox trouble', but that was his last hurrah of the season. He had few accidents in 1986, that much can be said. Simply, he made no impression of any kind, and now that his daddy's friends have failed yet again to get him into McLaren or Ferrari, one wonders what the F1 future holds for him.

The Minardi-Modernis were always nicely turned out this year, and sometimes surprisingly fleet. The same could not be said of Enzo Osella's backyard specials, still labouring on with the antiquated and thirsty Alfa Romeo V8s. It was sad to see a driver of Piercarlo Ghinzani's ability wasting yet another year of his career for the sake of 'being in F1', and hopefully in future he will have the sense to stick with sportscars, where competitive machinery happily comes his way.

Canadian Allen Berg paid to join the team at mid-season, and must have wondered why. He started last in every one of the nine races in which he took part, and could have reasonably expected nothing else. At Monza a last-minute deal put F3 man Alex Caffi into the car, and he - like Berg - kept his nose clean and his eye on the mirror. The Osella team is very likeable. Why do this though?

AGS made its first foray into F1 at Monza, arriving with a nicely-made, but extremely long and weighty, machine. Powered by a Motori Moderni V6, it also ran in Portugal, but wayward handling characteristics swiftly aged Ivan Capelli, whose undeniable talents were sadly wasted.

Question: what's FISA? Answer: the governing body of motorsport. Question: all motorsport? Answer: well, most of it, apart from dangerous breakaway elements like CART. Question: how does it vet drivers for F1? Answer: it has the superlicence system. Question: how does that work? Answer: well, it's a sort of club, actually... depends how acceptable you are, all that sort of thing.

Conclusion: Aaaah, yes, you get your drift. So that's how Caffi was acceptable at Monza, and Michael Andretti wasn't at Detroit, right? Hello? Is there anybody there? Operator, I think reality's been cut off.

It was a sensational season - far better than FISA deserved.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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