Grand Prix Gold: Brazilian GP 1986

"It was the easiest win of my life" was the way Nelson Piquet described his second home win at Rio's Jacarepagua circuit in three years and the 14th of his career. There were only two men in the race who might have beaten him. His own team-mate Nigel Mansell, in the second Williams-Honda, and Alain Prost in the still not to be underestimated McLaren-TAG.

Piquet didn't even have to worry about Mansell. For the second year in a row he spun out of the race on the first lap. Prost was more of a problem. The world champion took over the lead as Piquet and Senna headed for the first of two scheduled tyre stops. He stayed there for the next seven laps, but by lap 30 he was out of the race for good.

From then on Piquet just cruised. At the flag, there was 34.8 seconds between the Brazilian one-two. It could have been much more.

Qualifying

No matter how many grand prix seasons come and go there is always that extra tingle of excitement at the start of a new season, as the cars and their drivers line up in the pitlane waiting for the green light to set them free.

The slate has been wiped clean, and there are some familiar faces in unfamiliar places: new numbers, helmets and cars, a few new faces among the stars. For a brief few moments, on an uncharacteristically grey Friday morning, every one of the contrasting, colourful and noisy procession was an equal.

It lasted until the Longines timing monitors dotted along the pitwall lit up with the first list of numbers that will soon paint a picture of the races ahead.

For the enthusiastic Brazilian fans already gathering in the towering, tubular grandstands, along Jacrepagua's long main straight, the picture to come was already painted the black-and-gold of Ayrton Senna's Lotus-Renault and the white-blue-yellow of Nelson Piquet's Williams-Honda. For each, there was a roar of approval from the camps of fans as the two national heroes cruised down the straight for the first time, ready to do battle.

Ayrton Senna took his eighth career pole in Rio © LAT

The Senna cheers outweighed those for Piquet. The majority wanted to see the new Brazilian hope beating the twice world champion. The familiar under-dog syndrome.

By the end of Saturday's final timed session, at least, they were not disappointed. Piquet and Senna guaranteed a capacity crowd for the race in a thrilling duel for pole position that saw Senna snatch it from his rival on the very last lap of practice to head an all-Brazilian front row.

It was Senna's birthday on Friday, but Piquet had no intention of giving him any presents. He dominated the first day's practice with the fastest time in both sessions, driving the fastest ever lap of the quick 3.126-mile circuit.

"The car is very good, but there is still more to come," said Piquet. "In all the testing we did here last month, we had only one real quick lap in qualifying trim. The ratios and the fine tuning of the chassis were not exactly right for that run. Tomorrow, the quickest time will be down to the mid-25s," he predicted to a crunching mass of Brazilian and European press men at the back of the Williams pit.

His predictions were correct. But 24 hours later, the crush of fans and pressmen were the next pit down, at Lotus, for Senna had put together an outstanding performance. It had everyone on the edge of their seats as the TV cameras followed him around the 131.625mph average lap. His birthday present came a day late.

After a disappointing first run, which had been spoiled by understeer (and resulted in Nigel Mansell briefly making it an all-Williams front row), Senna sat apart, deep in thought, in the crowded pits. He discussed a change of wing settings for his Lotus, and then sat silent again as he wound himself back up for a truly incredible lap.

Using every inch of the track, and then some, he took the pole on the lap on which the chequered flag came out for the end of the session.

He had already known what he had to beat, and the luxury of an extra 20 minutes to think about it, because, with 10 minutes to go before the end, Piquet's hopes of improving on his Friday time had ended dramatically when he tried to take the 200mph-plus left-hand kink on the far side of the circuit flat out.

A rear wheel got over the edge of the track and flicked the car around; it launched itself off the kerbing, and into the catchfencing. Nelson was lucky to get away with nothing more than a bruised wrist, and his car with no more than a few minor cosmetic changes.

It was Piquet's second attempt to guarantee the pole, his first spoiled by Marc Surer's Arrows, which had suddenly slowed ahead of him when a turbo butterfly linkage came apart.

The disruption Piquet's subsequent accident caused to the rest of the session dashed several other hopes of faster times, even though everyone (except himself and Surer) were to go faster in that final session, despite the much hotter weather that Saturday brought to the Rio coastline.

Sitting in the pits with an ice-pack on his sore right wrist, Nelson was in no mood for entertaining the press, and the security men had to struggle to keep them out of the garage. The pressure was still on.

Nelson's team-mate, Mansell, might have saved the pole for the Williams team, but he had his first day's qualifying spoiled by an electrical problem, and an overly short top gear for the straight. On the second day, the gear ratios were right, but there were more disappointments. "The engine cut out momentarily three times as I came off the throttle and then went back on it again," said Nigel, after setting what was then the second best time, three-tenths faster than his previous day's best.

Another run at the end of the session was spoiled when he found a Minardi on his tail as he bedded in his second set of qualifying tyres: "I had to speed up too soon so as not to have him in my way when I went for the flying lap. That caused the tyres to go off, long before the end of the lap."

Still, he was a strong third on the grid, and not that unhappy. As he said, "with two Brazilians on the front row, I might be better off staying behind them anyway!"

Johnny Dumfries put the second Lotus in 11th place on the grid for his first grand prix, the Lotus number two doing an excellent job first time out in the new 98T, which he had only driven for a few wet laps before coming to Brazil. He did not get to do much driving in Rio until Friday afternoon because, two laps into the first session, his practice was stopped by a broken turbo oil scavenge pump, and he was forced to sit out the rest of the session with the team's remaining two cars reserved for Senna.

On Friday afternoon, he took a set of race tyres to get more laps in the car, and then fitted his first set of qualifying rubber, which placed him in a strong ninth on the provisional grid.

On Saturday, he improved his time on his first run, but he might have gone quicker yet but for a slower car which forced him to slow just before the end of the lap. He made some wing changes to the car to sort out understeer, and went back out with a used set of tyres before returning to the pits for a final effort on a new set of qualifiers. "The car felt great, and it was a good lap, but when I arrived where Piquet had gone off, I found the track full of cars and yellow flags," said a disappointed Johnny.

Rene Arnoux and Jacques Laffite fought it out for a place on the second row© LAT

To everyone's surprise, the two Ligier-Renaults of Rene Arnoux and Jaques Laffite fought it out for the remaining place on the second row of the grid. It looked like being grand prix racing's oldest driver, Laffite who had got the place until just before the end of the practice. But, after a bad start to his weekend when another turbo fire caused a considerable blaze in the back end of Arnoux's JS27 the first morning, it was Rene who claimed the second row with a second run just six-hundreths under Laffite's best. Sitting just behind him, on the third row, was Michele Alboreto's Ferrari, which must have made his first qualifying in more than a year even sweeter.

Both drivers were delighted with their cars, Jacques not missing the chance to tell the press. "They say that I am bad at qualifying when it is certainly the car that makes the difference. What time did Keke do with McLaren?"

Pirelli were equally delighted, their qualifying tyres obviously working well here, although none of their other teams were in much of a position to take advantage.

Last year, Michele Alboreto had held the pole with the new Ferrari 156/85 with a 1m27.768s. As things turned out, it was with the same car that Alboreto set a time of 1m27.485s for his sixth place on the grid. His new Ferrari F186 was out of action soon after the start of both qualifying sessions: it suffered three broken fuel pump drives during the weekend. Early on Saturday morning, an accident with Tambay's Beatrice Lola saw him run even fewer laps in the new car.

After setting his best time in the final session with the old car, he rushed back in an attempt to improve on it with Stefan Johansson's F186. But the flag halted practice before he could start his flying lap.

In contrast, Johansson had a trouble-free two days with the other new Ferrari, but had to work hard to get it handling to his liking, having never seen the car before Friday morning.

"The damping was all wrong at the start of practice and it was quite a handful to drive, but by the end of the two days it was a lot better," said Stefan. The straightline speed of the new, lower-line chassis - yes, even though the rear engine cover and the high cockpit sides made it look a lot bigger - were no better than those of the old 156/85. The time he ended up with looked bad on paper against those set with the old car, but that time was set with a heavy dose of brakes when a marshal ran across the road in front of Stefan. "They went completely over the top, and were running around everywhere when they saw Piquet had gone off," said Stefan.

Splitting the Ferrari drivers, and seventh on the grid, was McLaren newcomer Keke Rosberg, who spent a troubled Friday morning with an engine problem, and then got down to sorting his new car which, by Saturday, was quick enough for a strong time on his second set of qualifers.

Alain Prost ran the spare car with a new turbo on his first set of tyres, but was not pleased with the performance, so he went back to his race car and tried again.

Unfortunately, he left the garage just as Piquet went off. He was waved out onto the track, and then did a whole lap 'bringing in' his tyres before he realised that practice had been stopped. That took the edge off his tyres and, when he tried again after the track was reopened, he could not better a ninth quickest time.

The McLaren MP4-2C was a modified, lowline chassis version of the 1984 and '85 championship winner © LAT

Since the testing a month ago, John Barnard's chassis had been modified with a new, neater turbo intake and revised rear suspension. A new, entirely McLaren six-speed gearbox was now fitted.

The qualifying gap might have grown between the pole position time and those of the McLarens but, as the Sunday morning warm-up was to show, the McLaren-TAG is still a strong race contender. "We still have a few surprises for the rest of this year," said Ron Dennis with a smile.

I have a feeling that the Brabham team with its pair of BT55s also have a few surprises to come before too long, although you had to make a careful study of the Longines-Olivetti time sheets here to see the promise of the new car. The grid positions showed Riccardo Patrese back in tenth place, and Elio de Angelis on the seventh row.

The cooling and gearbox problems which had plagued the cars during the recent tyre testing had been overcome by some hectic work in England. The water and oil radiator positions had been transposed. A more effective intercooler has been installed, and ducts cut into the sidepods, along with a slightly wider intake to increase the air flow through the cooling system. There was also a bigger oil radiator for the gearbox, and Brabham, Weismann, and BMW had all pooled together to produce revised gearbox internals for the seven-speed transverse gearbox.

"The cars are cooling just fine now, and we haven't had a problem through practice with the gearboxes in either car," said a relieved Gordon Murray on Saturday evening. But these trouble spots had now been replaced by another, which he was completely helpless to solve. "For some reason, we are very slow on the straight because the engines will not produce power," said Murray. "The cars must be very fast through the corners to have set the times they did," he added.

The engines also refused to accept the usual qualifying boost without misfiring, so the grid positions were pretty impressive in relation to the straightline speeds, which showed the Brabham to be almost the slowest car on the track. Patrese was 20k/mh down at the end of the long straight compared to the BMW powered Benetton of Teo Fabi, which was the quickest at 320k/mh (just a fraction under 200mph).

Those figures were not so exaggerated in race trim, which saw de Angelis and Patrese third and fifth fastest in the Sunday morning warm-up although, as Murray pointed out, "It's going to be tough racing around the corners and losing out on the straights." Overnight checks had failed to find the answer to the problem.

Fabi might have been quickest on the straight (who said the Toleman was a high-drag chassis?), but he never got the chance to put a quick qualifying lap together, and did not better 12th fastest overall. He had an electrical misfire on his quick lap and, when he went for his next run, the plenum chamber exploded.

Gerhard Berger was delighted with his new Benetton chassis, but had his final practice spoiled by a down-on-power engine (16kmh slower than Fabi) and a stiff gearbox operation, particularly in third gear. He ended up in 16th spot on the grid. The two Benettons were hard to miss on the track, with their wild new multi-coloured paint scheme which even spread to the sidewalls of their Pirelli tyres. Maybe they were planning to blind their opposition!

A respectable 13th place on the grid went to Patrick Tambay and the Beatrice (for here at least) Lola-Hart, with which he had set 12th fastest time on the first day. His progress in improving the chassis and engine response in the mid-range corners (by using a smaller turbo) morning, however, when he and Alboreto collided coming out of the fast right-hander after the pits.

Patrick Tambay had a good qualifying session until he collided with the Ferrari of Michele Alboreto © LAT

"I saw him coming up in a hurry, and moved to the left to leave him the quick line. But he also moved to the left, and the next thing I saw was the Ferrari on my left - taking off my left front wheel," said Patrick. The wheel left tyre marks down his helmet and he was lucky to escape unhurt. So was Alboreto, who extensively damaged the back end of the Ferrari when it ploughed through the catchfencing and hit the barrier.

Alboreto was pretty upset at the time but, when he had cooled off, he agreed that it was a simple misunderstanding between them.

Tambay's car needed a new front corner and Alboreto's Ferrari a new rear end and engine after it had been heavily doused with fire extinguishant.

Alan Jones was showing considerably less enthusiasm for driving the Hart-powered THL1 chassis than his team-mate, especially after his first day's qualifying was spoiled by the lack of 500 revs from the engine. On Saturday he did only a few laps in the morning before he parked it on the other side of the circuit with a dead engine. He had to use the spare car for the final session, and both his qualifying runs were spoiled by gearbox problems. "Fourth gear was where third should have been on the first run, and then and then when I went back out for a second run there was no fifth. Not much of a day," quipped Alan, who was also unhappy with the handling of his car.

"It just won't get into the corners quickly without understeering off the road and I hate driving a car like that." Talk about the new Ford THL2 car waiting back at base and Alan was much more enthusiastic. "It feels really nice to drive. I did a lap in 1m10s at Silverstone on Monday after just a few laps on a green track. The sooner we start to race it the better."

The eighth row of the grid was headed by Thierry Boutsen's Arrows-BMW A8, which represented a good effort considering the Belgian had spent most of practice sitting on a packing case in the garage after a string of engine problems related to the fuel pump/metering system. His car had suffered fuel fires on both days of practice, and with his team-mate Marc Surer suffering engine problems, there was heavy use of the single spare chassis, which Boutsen ended up having to qualify.

Surer didn't go any quicker in the final trouble and he was back on the 10th row in 20th spot.

Martin Brundle and Philippe Streiff shared the ninth row of the grid with their two 1985 Tyrrell-Renault 014 chassis now painted in their new white Data General livery. For both drivers the first session was spent getting used to driving again, for neither had sat in a car since they took off their helmets after Australian Grand Prix six months ago.

"The corners seem to be coming up a bit quick at first, but then you soon get back into the swing of things again. The neck muscles start to get a bit stiff, though, and there is nothing much you can do about that except drive and wait for them to get strong again," said Martin.

Streiff progressed considerably with each run in the second car, and ended up just three-tenths behind his team-mate. "After all the pressures of negotiating a drive during the winter, actually driving a car again is the easy part," said Streiff, happy to have finally found his way into the Tyrrell team.

Heading the 11th row was Jonathan Palmer in the latest Zakspeed 861 which was keeping him busy trying to sort out the handling of the new chassis and the engine settings for the revised unit with its new Bosch Motronic injection system. "We are having a lot of work to do to get it running correctly throughout the rev range," while a broken piston and a misfire that turned out to be caused by an overheating battery did not make life any easier. "It's getting there, but we could certainly have used a week's private testing before coming to the first race," remarked Dr Jonathan.

Bringing up the back of the grid were the Italian Minardi and Osella teams, all four cars fraught with assorted problems that saw none of their drivers get much running in. De Cesaris completed the 11th row, and was doubtful about the gearbox life of his car after a lot of difficulties. For the race he finally decided on the older M185 chassis without the revised B-spec front suspension and aerodynamics. His team-mate Sandro Nannini brought up the back of the grid, having only managed around 15 timed laps throughout practice. He was not very optimistic about his chances of finishing the Grand Prix for the team.

Osella resurrected their old Alfa Romeo-powered FA1G chassis with two different bodywork options on each, although after considerable engine troubles throughout the weekend neither Christian Danner nor Piercarlo Ghinzani were too concerned about any differences between their chassis. Just keeping them running was their major concern.

See FORIX for the full grid and all the stats from the 1986 Brazilian Grand Prix

Race

With all the rivalry that the local papers and television had stirred up between Piquet and Senna, it was hardly surprising that here wasn't a seat left in the house by the time the grid lined up for the 1pm start under the hot sun.

The pre-race warm-up had already given us our first good idea of what to expect. Prost had been quickest, almost a second ahead of Mansell. Piquet was back in sixth place after spending a worrying session curing an electrical problem. Rosberg was down in eighth place, his engine already showing the first signs of the ailment that was to prove terminal so soon after the start.

Well up there were de Angelis in third and Patrese in fifth, their engines still performing no better.

Berger was fourth, perhaps a surprise still in store from the Benetton men, although Fabi was seventh after using his spare car when his race engine would not run properly.

Senna was way down there in 10th place, quickest Renault runner, using the only valve-springless engine in the race, although all but Streiff had used the qualifying motor with the new air-operated piston valve return system.

There was no real power advantage over the regular engines, but it was nice to know that he could hang onto a gear to 13000rpm if he needed to at the start and that a missed gear was not likely to take the edge of the engine.

Power was what the Renault runners really lacked, or more precisely, fuel enough to match power that Honda and TAG were obviously getting from their cars. Prost, Mansell, Rosberg and Piquet set the quickest four speeds at the end of the long straight, 15mph slower than they had been in qualifying, while Alboreto was right there, too, indicating perhaps that all was still not well around the corners with the new Ferraris. Senna was over 4mph off the straight line speeds of the leading cars. He had already planned his race.

It was carnival time in the grandstands. Rival groups of Senna-Piquet fans tried to out chant the other. The 'Sennas' won.

The light went green, everyone got away to a safe start and there was a great roar from the crowd that almost drowned out of the roar of the grid as Senna held the lead going into the first corner with Mansell on his tail.

The Lotus and Williams were nose-to-tail down the straight past the stands and then Mansell pulled out of the slipstream to take the inside line into the fast left-hander with its bad pump under braking. Sparks flew off the underside of the Williams as it bottomed out and dust came up on the inside as Senna left Mansell barely enough room to get by, Piquet hung back and watched from the best seat in the house.

The cars were almost side-by-side. Senna perhaps half a wheel ahead and at a disadvantage on the outside of the tightening corner, which could see the Lotus on the slippery outer edge if he didn't hold his line or Mansell didn't back off.

Both drivers wanted the same bit of track and there wasn't room for both cars. Hugging the inside, right on the edge of the tyres' adhesion, Senna's inside wheels nudged Mansell's outside wheels. It was enough to unbalance the car which saw the back of the Williams come around in a long lazy slide as the front wheels went up on the grass, the car carrying on around into the inside of the corner and crashing into the barrier.

The touch nearly caused Senna to lose it. The car fishtailed momentarily, but he saved it from a spin and kept his lead to more delighted roars of approval from the crowd.

Next time around, Piquet had taken over from Mansell. He shadowed the delight of the crowd (and no doubt the TV spectators around the world), an orange-gloved arm appeared out of the Lotus-cockpit and Senna pointed behind him most of the way down the straight as if to say 'See who's number two?'

Nelson Piquet hunted down Ayrton Senna's Lotus © LAT

Nelson pulled halfway alongside the Lotus going into the same corner which had caused Mansell's demise, but then at the last second backed off and left Ayrton the corner. This race had only just begun. It was the last two laps that counted, and not the first.

Senna must have been using all of those 13000 available revs to keep Piquet behind him that lap, for the next time the Williams-Honda was comfortably ahead before they even got on the brakes and Piquet went through into the lead.

Oh yes, and behind these two there was the rest of the Brazilian Grand Prix. Alboreto was now third after slipstreaming past Arnoux's Ligier in similar fashion to the leaders, with Rosberg running a strong fifth ahead of Johansson, a hard-driving Patrese, then Laffite, Jones and Tambay in the red Beatrice cars. Prost was also rapidly making up lost ground after a bad first lap saw him in 13th place at the end of it.

And who was this storming through the back end of the field behind Prost, past Berger on lap two and then both de Angelis and Brundle on lap four? No, it couldn't be right. A Minardi? Yes it was, that of de Cesaris, and not a touch of sun stroke as I had first thought. But how can that be? 'Half tanks and a lot of boost by the way the car was braking and accelerating,' said one driver, who had enjoyed a similar short-lived glory in the past. Very impressive when prospective, perhaps not so well informed, sponsors see it happening on their television screens.

Anyway, it was a short-lived charge, which ended up in sixth place between the two Ligiers on lap 16, and it certainly added a bit of spice to what was rapidly becoming a dull race.

Jones had decided to 'go for it' from the start instead of driving a race to finish as Tambay was doing, and his car came to a smoky stop at the end of the straight just five laps into the race.

By that time, Rosberg's McLaren was also trailing a plume of white smoke behind it as a piston burnt a whole in the crown and finally put him out of the race for good on lap 6.

Ten laps later Ghinzani's Alfa engine died in the Osella, the same time as de Cesaris parked the Minardi two-thirds of the way down the straight with what the team said were gearbox and turbo problems. Nannini's exit from the race two laps later was far less spectacular than his team-mates, for he retired the second Minardi from the back of the field with an oil leak and holed exhaust pipe.

All of the Goodyear runners had decided to start on C-compound race tyres and most of them were planning two stops, Piquet having already arranged to stop on lap 18 for the first set and lap 39 for the second. He had decided he didn't want to use a radio and those were the laps his team were expecting him.

"Lap 18 was just the right time to stop for fresh tyres," said Piquet later, and when he had peeled off into the pit lane another roar went up from the crowd as Senna took the lead.

By now it was Prost pressuring the Lotus in second place after Alboreto, who decided to put fresh tyres on the Ferrari at the same time as Senna.

The two Ligiers of Arnoux and Laffite were running together in fifth and sixth places, while Patrese behind them headed for the pits too.

They were getting more cars down the pitlane than they were down the straight at one point, as more cars made their stops including Senna, the lap after he had been passed by Prost for the lead. Until Prost also stopped for tyres, his lead was quite a healthy one. It looked as though the Frenchman was going to try and make half-distance on one set of tyres.

Suddenly, the sight of the red and white McLaren racing around well clear of the rest was an all too familiar one. Piquet rejoined the race about 15 seconds behind the McLaren, but was soon making up ground again on his lost lead. Third was now Arnoux, still to stop, while Senna had split the two Ligiers, with Laffite now fifth.

Patrese went for an early pit stop and then never really figured in the race again, for the Brabham's water temperature gauge started to go off the clock as a leaking water rail drained the car before it finally expired.

Riccardo Patrese's Brabham retired due to a water leak © LAT

Sixth place was then being held by Tambay, who had planned a late tyre stop anyway, but was even contemplating going the whole distance because his car was handling so well as he drove it in true 'cruise and collect' style, that was already starting to pay off.

"I had a bit of power oversteer and a little understeer into the fast corners but with the lack of power the tyres seemed to be holding up very well. At a track like Rio, if you finish without too many problems, you are usually in the points," said Patrick after the race, but his hopes of finishing were dashed a few laps after he took sixth place when the engine suddenly stopped on lap 24. "I think it was the electrics, because it just stopped with no warning,"

A few laps before Jonathan Palmer's hopes of doing the same thing also disappeared when his engine stopped, only there was no doubt why. The plenum chamber had blown off the side of the Zakspeed engine, causing a minor fire.

After an early stop for tyres, it was Johansson who moved up to sixth place behind the Ligiers having already had a lively battle with Laffite in the earlier stages of the race. He set about catching them again, but his race came to a dramatic end on lap 26 when he got to the end of the straight and braked.

"The car suddenly snapped sideways and I slid off the road along the grass and into the sand run-off area. I tried to drive it out again, but the wheels dug a hole and left the bottom of the car sitting up on the sand," said Stefan. Apparently there was a problem with the car's front left brake which had caused it to snap around at the fastest point on the circuit.

Alboreto had also dropped well out of the picture after an unscheduled stop with an electrical problem, but a the rate the cars were falling by the wayside, before the race was even half way over, any car that was still running was still worth racing.

De Angelis was certainly a believer in that principal, for with only half the gears in his seven-speed 'box working and his pit stop for tyres, he was still plugging on to the finish where the others might have decided to call it a day.

The crowd got excited again when Piquet rapidly hauled in Prost for the lead although by the time the surviving McLaren was starting to trail smoke, as Rosberg's had done. In the cockpit Prost saw his fuel consumption suddenly start to rise and he slowed to try and get it back down again.

When Piquet took the lead, Prost headed to the pits for fresh tyres, coming back into the race in third place behind Senna, but two laps later, at half distance, his hopes of victory went the same way as Rosberg's.

Had the team tried to run the engines too lean? Had the new airflow sensor to the turbo given the black-box the wrong information? That's what McLaren hope to find out before Jerez in order to prevent another wasted race, which they certainly cannot afford in a season with such tough opposition as the William-Honda to beat. For good measure some of the fuel taken out of the cars was also being siphoned off into a can to be analysed back at base.

With Prost out of the race Piquet found himself all alone holding a comfortable 25s lead over Senna who was powerless to put up any kind of serious challenge.

Forty seconds behind Senna it was Arnoux in third place now, with Laffite fourth, still only 8s adrift.

Brundle drove a strong race to finish fith © LAT

A lap behind, Brundle moved up to sixth place, but was about to lose his place to a hard driving Dumfries, going well in the second Lotus. Next came Boutsen ahead of Alboreto, while falling away in tenth place with a misfiring engine after a good start, was Berger's Benetton.

Fabi had dropped out of contention early in the race when he made a long stop to sort out an electrical problem which was eventually traced to a cracked ignition cap. He was still running well, but four laps behind.

The 'race' ended there, but we still had another 30 laps to do, and there certainly wasn't going to be much racing going on.

Piquet trundled around and both he and Senna made their next scheduled stops for tyres with no problem, Senna stopping the lap after Piquet, and coming back out of the pits a bit closer than he had been before.

Just to give him the message, Piquet, who must have been getting bored by this time, put together a flying lap of 1m33.546s to shatter Prost's old lap record by over three seconds, and then settled down into another easy pace that he held to the flag.

"The car was very easy to drive, and everything worked perfectly. A promenade," said Piquet after the race. He then sent a special personal message to team owner Frank Williams via the television during his post-race unilateral TV interview.

"Thanks for a very good car," he told Frank, everyone at the circuit delighted that his win would obviously cheer him up back in his hospital bed in London, where the BBC had arranged to rush a copy of the tape to his room as soon as they had received it.

On the front of that tape was another message for Frank Williams, held up in front of Piquet's car just before the start of the race. "Don't worry, Frank, we will look after the store," said the message and they certainly delivered the goods in Rio.

Senna followed Piquet home for a safe six points and second place, making it the first Brazilian one-two since Carlos Pace and Emerson Fittipaldi climbed the winner's rostrum together at Interlagos in 1973. It was also the first time that one of Patrick Head's chassis had won first time out.

The only racing that went on in the second half of the race was between the two Ligiers of Laffite and Arnoux. Laffite slowly closed the gap to his team-mate, and for several laps made several unsuccessful attempts to claim the third place on the winner's rostrum. "I must admit I was worried that something like Adelaide was going to happen all over again, but they both drove the way they should have done," said team manager Gerard Larrouse.

Laffite moved ahead with ten laps to go, Arnoux finally letting him by the end of the straight for his rear tyres had worn so badly that he had no grip at the back end. He was also starting to get anxious about his fuel. When the flag came out the on-board computer said that he had one lap left in the tank, while Laffite's was down to just over two.

Ferrari's hopes of a finish with their new car didn't last long after the half-way point, for Alboreto stopped for good on lap 35 with what was officially described as an electrical problem, although there was rumour that the fuel pump drive had broken yet again.

Michele Alboreto's weekend went from bad to worse when his Ferrari was retired with electrical problems © LAT

Boutsen was another to go when a broken turbo exhaust system left his Arrows with no power. The end of a black weekend for the normally reliable Arrows team, for Surer had stopped early on with a suspected valve problem with his engine.

Brundle came home to take a well deserved fifth place, a lap down on the leaders, for his first 'official' world championship points while Berger made it to the finish in his Benetton, two laps behind, to take sixth place and the last point of the day.

Streiff brought the second Tyrrell over the line to continue Renault's 100% reliability record in this race with four engines in the first five places, while Dumfries would certainly have made it five in the top six places had he not made an unplanned pit stop on lap 40 to fix an electrical problem. He lost more time when he found Senna already in the pits, so the team waved him back out again and he did another slow lap before finally getting his car sorted out.

He ended up in ninth place, but deserved better as he drove flat out in the final laps to try and catch the ailing Brabham of de Angelis, which he just failed to by nine seconds. For his first grand prix it was a super effort, his fastest lap of 1m35.0s coming just 11 laps from the finish when everyone else was counting the laps to the flag.

Two laps behind the next man, last placed finisher Fabi didn't have any hopes of a point, but once his car had been fixed at the start of the race he drove a hard race setting a 1m34.0s lap on lap 49 of the race.

It wasn't really a memorable race, unless you happened to be a Brazilian. Nelson Piquet and the Williams team made sure of that.

It was a shame that his new boss wasn't there to enjoy it. Hurry up and get well, Frank.

See FORIX for the results and stats from the 1986 Brazilian Grand Prix