Grand Prix Gold: Belgian GP 1986

FISA's fuel restriction rules could have ruined the Belgian Grand Prix, but didn't quite. Nigel Mansell just made it to the line for his first victory of the season, and Ayrton Senna was similarly hard-pressed to collect another six points for his title quest. Another two or three miles and we might have had a Ferrari one-two! As it was, Stefan Johansson and Michele Alboreto were third and fourth.

A multiple shunt at the first corner effectively ruled out Alain Prost, who came back majestically to claim a point, and Gerhard Berger, the sensation of qualifying. For a while it seemed that Nelson Piquet was going to walk this one, but his engine let go. After that it was a matter of coping with understeer, tyre wear and fuel consumption and of working judiciously with the boost switch, as usual. At Spa, Mansell, Williams and Honda had the best compromise, even surviving a spin on the way.

Qualifying

We first came back to Spa three years ago, and on that occasion too, it was the next race on the calendar after Monaco. The feeling of euphoria was almost overwhelming and a lot of us felt the same last weekend. After the claustrophobia of the principality, the sensation of space and speed in the forests of the Hauts Fagnes is a delight. I defy anyone - no matter how outwardly jaded - not to be impressed at the sight of a modern grand prix car as it rifles into Eau Rouge. Flick left at the bottom of the hill, pitch right as you go through the dip. The really quick do this with the left hand only, for the right is changing down.

There was also inevitably a sense of sadness in Belgium, and everywhere in the paddock conversations fondly recalled Elio de Angelis, his style, his graciousness. For the Brabham mechanics, their faces untypically drawn and serious, this weekend was plainly graft, a race to be got through. Gordon Murray did not come to Spa at all.

The show, however, rolled on, as it always has and always will. Prost, Alan Jones, Jacques Laffite and others were among those who worked to free de Angelis, who saw the aftermath of the accident in all its frightfulness. This is not the same as a phone call, an item on the news, even a stopped session. It is to confront what can happen to you and to see the resolution and commitment of these same people a few days later is to be reminded yet once more that grand prix drivers are not as other men.

The pole, ultimately, went to Piquet, his first since joining Williams, and he took it right at the end of the last session, skimming just over a tenth of a second from Berger's Friday time, which had surprisingly looked set to survive.

The Williams-Honda had not quite the poise and stability of the McLaren through the fast turns, nor the grunt of the Benetton-BMW and others up the long climb to Les Combes. But it was pretty good on both counts, and a driver of Piquet's stature and experience is worth a lot at a track like this.

Berger put his Benetton on the front row unexpectedly © LAT

He had been second to Berger on the opening day despite choosing to run the spare FW10. "I didn't like the feel of my own car," he said. "It wasn't consistent - felt different on left and right-handers." On Saturday morning, too, he had to fall back on the T-car when his own broke a CV joint.

For the afternoon though, all was well. As many drivers were to do over the practice days, Piquet began with a set of Goodyear Cs, soft race tyres, taking his qualifiers in the closing minutes. Heavy rain overnight and through the morning, had washed away the dust of which many had complained on Friday. "I expected the track to be much quicker," Piquet said. "But it wasn't." In the end his time was only three tenths better than he had managed the day before. But no one else beat Berger.

Mansell thought he might. Fourth on the opening day, he looked a pole contender throughout: "I ran Cs at first, and did a 54.5s on them," he said on Saturday afternoon. "The car felt really nice, and I expected to improve a lot on the qualifiers. It felt like a really good lap - and then I came up on Rene Arnoux."

You may remember an altercation between these two at Monaco before the final session. Mansell was on a quick lap, and Arnoux wasn't. The upshot of the dispute was that the wayward Ligier finished up in the barriers, consigning its driver to the spare for the final thrash. Afterwards each man was aggrieved.

"He was going very slowly," Mansell said. "And suddenly he booted it, then lifted off, so that he blocked me all through the long downhill left-hander on the new section. Then he booted it again. I finally got past him coming into Blanchimont, then slowed in front of him. We came back to the pits slowly, and he didn't dare overtake me. There's no question about it - he did it quite deliberately and it's just bloody stupid. Let's face it, if we all behaved like he does, no one would ever get a quick lap in. In Monaco I don't think he saw me at all. Here I'm bloody certain he did."

While Arnoux shrugged and made 'Who? Me?' gestures, Mansell quietly fumed that he would be starting only fifth - despite being only a couple of tenths from his pole-sitting team mate. "At least I feel good about the time," he said. "After all, it was on race tyres."

So Berger was on the front row with Piquet, and afterwards he was very disappointed not to have pole position. He also set his best time on race tyres - Pirellis, of course. The Italian company's qualifiers, it turned out, were not a lot of use at Spa, failing to last a single 4.3-mile hot lap.

On Saturday the young Austrian felt confident of maintaining his place, but it was not to be. "My engine cut out on both runs," he glumly reported an hour or so later. "On the first one I believe it cost me a second at least - without it I think it would have been an easy 53.6s."

Even thus afflicted, however, berger managed sixth best time of the session, and was very much a factor for race day. Maybe the Benetton was a little less secure than some through Eau Rouge, but its progress was mighty impressive in the fearless young driver's hands. No one went at the left-right harder.

Until the final session all the Benetton troubles seemed to be Teo Fabi's. On Friday morning he had to take the spare car after his own had caught (turbo) fire quite vigorously and in the afternoon an intercooler failure left him stranded out on the circuit. He too complained of a misfire on Saturday afternoon, but still managed the all-important quick, clear, lap that was good for sixth on the grid. Only Benetton had two in the top half-dozen.

Surer was seven spots behind his team-mate Boutsen on the grid © LAT

Prost was fastest in all four sessions at Spa last September, and had high hopes of starting again from pole position. "The car was fantastic here last time, perfect, I would say. The best I have ever known it. But today," he frowned on Friday, "I was not completely happy with the balance."

You have to understand that the world champion was speaking in relative terms, since he was at that time third fastest, a mere half second from the pace. "I ran two sets of qualifiers today," he added. "And I think it was a mistake." Work on Saturday morning made him a good deal happier, and he approached the last session with confidence, once more committed to qualifiers, but third was where he stayed.

"The car was nicer this time," Prost smiled. "The only trouble was, I had a slight turbo problem on my quick lap, came in to have it fixed, and that meant I had to do three laps on the tyres. I lost grip, of course, so... less than two tenths from Nelson, I am happy with that. Here where you qualify is not a big problem."

The other McLaren, though, was down in eight place, despite a display of typical of Keke Rosberg drama at Eau Rouge, where he looked a street quicker than his team- mate, and into La Source, where he braked on one occasion unbelievably late, disappearing into the hairpin in a cloud of smoke.

On Friday afternoon Rosberg was just into a quick lap on his first run when his engine suddenly lost boost as he accelerated down past the old pits. With great presence of mind he really stood on the brakes, so as to stop before Eau Rouge, and enable the car to be retrieved. Its were then tyres transferred to the spare MP42/2.

Then, on what should have been the best lap of his second run, he was badly held up by Senna at the exit of Eau Rouge. That resulted in a brief interview afterwards, not resolved to Rosberg's satisfaction. On Saturday he improved by three quarters of a second, but such was the unusual closeness of this grid that it benefitted him nothing. In fact, he dropped a place.

Senna was on row two with Prost, and this weekend somehow the black Lotus never looked truly like a contender for pole. In the hope of preventing further wheel-bearing failure (such as put the Brazilian out at Imola), Lotus have been working on some new rear uprights, which were flown out to Belgium but, in the event, not used. At this, unlike Monaco a high downforce circuit, it was decided to play safe, and in fact the 98Ts at Spa had last year's 97T rear end.

In this specification, the car's balance was not entirely to Senna's liking on Friday, although changes on Saturday improved it. As at other circuits this season (Monaco apart) the car was chased by cascades of sparks all round the circuit (as also, at Spa, were the two Williams), but the downforce took its toll on the car's straightline performance. Through the trap at the top of the hill Piquet and Mansell were 10th and 14th, Senna and team mate Johnny Dumfries 19th and 21st.

Still, Senna was fourth, only a gnat's whisker from first, and we remembered the way he ran away here last Autumn. And, he said, on his best lap in the final session third gear jumped out a couple of times. So he was scarcely out of the picture.

After missing the cut at Monaco, Dumfries was in much better spirits at Spa, 13th on the grid, 3s from Senna. "My car felt much better today," he commented after the last session. "And I think I might have been quicker. On my second run there was a problem with third gear - we had to tighten up the detent spring - so my best lap was my third on that set of qualifiers. For now we've stopped using the six-speed gearbox, and I had no other problems with it at all."

Berger's scintillating form meant that there was never a hope of Arnoux's being the fastest Pirelli qualifier - a feat he has managed more than once this year. Neither he nor Laffite were at all happy with the Italian tyres in Friday's dust. Arnoux, in any case, found the Pirelli qualifiers good for little more than half a lap.

After the rain of the following morning though, his frame of mind improved. And in the afternoon, although he moved only a single place up the grid, the Frenchman lopped nearly 2s from his previous best, pipping Rosberg and moving within striking distance of the pace.

Alboreto wasn't happy with his Ferrari © LAT

Laffite, by contrast, had a miserable session without a single quick lap - or close to one. "Not so good, not so good," he said, still refusing to abandon his grin. "First run, the gearbox broke on my car, back to the pits on foot, out in the spare, some electrical problem with the engine. Finish. I cannot do a lap." His Friday time in the Ligier slipped him down from 13th to 17th.

More Maranello gloom. "Not very good, really," muttered a tight-lipped Johansson, and Alboreto was rather more forthcoming: "It's quite a long time since the car was as bad as this."

As expected, the Ferrari did indeed have Garrett, rather than KKK, turbochargers aboard when they lined up in the pits on the first morning. For the timed session, though, they were replaced by the German units, and the pattern was repeated the following day. What's more, the Italian cars - no trace of a spark from them! - were blindingly quick in a straight line, Alboreto fastest of all (199.667mph) at the top of the hill during the last session. And afterwards he said they were running their low- downforce set-up - because it was the only one they had.

Revised rear suspension geometry made no difference, both drivers avowed. They were terribly short of grip. "It's really a shame," remarked Johansson. "We've got fantastic qualifying power here, but we can't really use it." He finished up 11th, two places behind Alboreto. For the race, both men confirmed they would be using Garretts, although neither seemed to have a good reason why.

Rounding off the top 10 was Patrick Tambay, still in some pain after his Monaco shunt, but driving beautifully and really enjoying the Lola-Ford. Timings at Eau Rouge revealed that Tambay was quickest of all there during the last session.

In the wet conditions of Saturday morning the Frenchman's name topped the lists for much of the time, but that session finished disastrously. "We had an oil leak, which became an oil fire," he explained. "I thought the engine was running a bit roughly, but didn't realise why - the fire was burning through the plug leads on one side of the engine."

Tambay got the car to the pit entrance, at the same time telling his team by radio that some help would be nice. From the other end they ran down with extinguishers, and not too much damage was done. Through the lunch break the mechanics changed the engine, and Patrick missed the first 15 minutes of the last session.

"I started with Cs, did 56.6, then took the qualifiers and did 56.9! Really, the car was nicer on the race tyres, so we put the Cs back on - and I did a 56.3. I feel good about the race, wet or dry. The car feels terrific - and you have to remember we have no qualifying boost."

His team-mate was rather less content. "I think I must have a big helping of good luck coming to me," Jones said after practice. "Yesterday I had fourth gear jumping out all the time, and today the something-ometer broke during my second run, and the car just stopped." The problem, according to Ford, was a loose throttle sensor in the engine management system. "I got held up a bit on my first run," added Jones. "And I'm quite sure the second one would have given me a low 56."

It clouded over somewhat in the last few minutes of the final session, and that helped one or two people to improve their times - a disappointment to Martin Brundle, who looked set to start ninth in the Tyrrell 015. As it was, Brundle dropped to 12th, but his spirits remained buoyant. "The car feels nice here, I must say - whether it's wet or dry, on race tyres or qualifiers. We had a bit too much understeer on the first day, but dialled most of it out. I think a good result is on here."

His team-mate Philippe Streiff, whose Friday problem was oversteer, was only a second slower than Brundle around the 4.3 miles, but such was the closeness of the times at Spa that it meant a difference between 12th and 18th.

Not unnaturally, Thierry Boutsen was less than thrilled that the British Aerospace strike prevented the completion of the new Arrows A9 in time for this, his home grand prix. He did a fine job with the old A8 on the first day, 12th fastest, but in the last session his engine let go when he felt he was on a real screamer. "I hadn't run full boost on the first run, and on the second everything seemed fantastic - I felt I might have got into the 55s." As it was, he had to go to the grid 14th, seven places up on Marc Surer, who failed to improve on Saturday when his engine broke a valve.

Piquet stuck his Williams on pole © LAT

There was, of course, only a single Brabham-BMW at Spa, and an understandably subdued Riccardo Patrese did not have it easy during the qualifying days. The engine pick-up out, he said, was considerably better than of late, but on Friday he complained of oversteer through the fast swerves. In the afternoon he blew the engine of his race car, then inadvertently over-revved the one in the spare car as the back wheels came momentarily off the ground. Saturday morning brought gearbox problems, and in the afternoon he found the engine refusing to rev cleanly on full boost. The white and blue car qualified 15th. Everyone in the team would be glad to have this weekend done.

Andrea de Cesaris managed a single sub two-minute lap in the Minardi, placing him 19th, a position his team-mate Alessandro Nannini might well have beaten, had he not suffered transmission failure in the last session.

Zakspeed had Jonathan Palmer 20th and Huub Rothengatter 23rd. "The chassis feels quite nice here," Palmer said. "But I'm sure we're still short of downforce. I've had no engine problems with either car, and it's nice to have carbon brakes for qualifying - the first time we've used them. What's encouraging is that we're five seconds quicker than we were last year, while the top teams are hardly quicker at all."

And at the back, to nobody's surprise, were the Osellas of Piercarlo Ghinzani (who blew up on his first Saturday run) and Christian Danner (who blew up on his second Saturday outing). Danner's car was actually new, being the one intended to take the Motori Moderni V6, which Osella is currently unable to afford. For Spa, therefore, both cars were powered anew by the Alfa Romeo V8 - the engine which took de Cesaris into a far distant lead in this race only three years ago.

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

Race

Saturday may have dawned miserably, but Sunday was perfect all through. Francorchamps has more than its quota of wind and rain, but when the sun shines there is no grand prix circuit on earth to touch it. And it was just so on race day.

Prost had said the previous evening that his McLaren felt about perfect, that only the worn qualifiers had kept him from pole position, and in the morning warm-up the two red and white cars duly took up their customary positions at the top of the list - Rosberg a hundredth quicker than Alain. Next were the two Williams of Mansell and Piquet, then Tambay's Lola-Ford!

Tambay had been confident that the car would be right on the pace in race trim, and now there seemed no doubt at all. But at the foot of the times was Jones' sister car, which managed not a single lap.

First of all, the 1980 champion lost time while a gear selection problem received attention, and then the engine refused to run. A faulty master switch was eventually found to be responsible, but by the time everything had been rectified it was too late to calibrate the fuel computer for the race. The Australian would have to start without it - and that would have repercussions.

As an example of Murphy's Law in motor racing, Palmer's warm-up period takes a lot of beating. "Let's think, now. First of all the boost gauge fell out of the dashboard. Then the engine refused to rev over 6000 because of a dud alternator. So I got in the spare, whose rev counter wasn't working. Then the throttle started jamming - and then a piston went!" That's a considerable amount of strife to cram into half an hour.

Elsewhere down the field, Johansson was agreeably surprised to find himself sixth fastest in the Ferrari, and Senna remained very dissatisfied with the balance of the Lotus. Pirelli runners spoke gloomily of 'a Goodyear race', all of them opting for softish fronts and hard rears. For nearly everyone on Goodyears it was going to be a pitstop race, all but Alboreto and Surer (on Bs) going for Cs all round.

To the start, then, and it was chaotic - predictably so, perhaps, when the first corner is a tight hairpin. Last minute problems meant that Patrese and Danner started from the pitlane, which may have been the best choice on Sunday. Towards the back Rothengatter stalled, obliging those behind - including the doctor's car - to swerve around him, but the real drama was at the other end of the grid.

Piquet got away beautifully from pole position, and was thus well clear of the mayhem to follow. Prost also got a flier and seemed to have asserted himself in second place, taking an inside run down to La Source - where he was in for a surprise.

Berger, by contrast, did not start so well, too much wheelspin putting the Benetton into rather an unstable state as it finally catapulted away up the road. Senna, behind him, tried to go right, but found the green car veering that way too. So the Lotus driver went left instead as La Source loomed - a path now also followed by Berger. Therefore three cars - Prost, Berger, Senna - were abreast.

At the corner the Lotus driver, on the outside, took an uncompromising line, obliging Berger to do the same. Which left Prost, a completely innocent party, suddenly with no race track in front of him. The Frenchman did everything he could to lift off, brake and get out of the way, but in the end crashed over the high inside kerbing and then over the front of the Benetton, which destroyed its nose and pitched it into the middle of the road.

With Berger now sideways in the middle of the road, there was real mayhem. While Piquet and Senna hurtled away into a race of their own, the scene at the hairpin was like Milan in rush hour. If racing cars had horns they would assuredly have been in use.

Rosberg, having already driven off the road to pass a slow starting Fabi, found himself first with no path through the corner - then with no clutch! If he stopped, his race was over, so Keke kept moving, flicking the McLaren through a complete 360-degree turn (back towards the startline), after which he spotted a way through the jam and proceeded with his race!

Prost apart, the real loser in the carnage was Tambay, whose left front suspension was wrecked against the rear wheel of the stationary Fabi, himself stuck behind his broadside team-mate, who... You're getting the picture? It was sad for Tambay, who had looked set to give the Haas team its most competitive race so far.

For some, though, there was not too much trouble. Piquet and Senna were well clear but Mansell was not too far behind after the opening lap, and then came Johansson, Dumfries, Laffite, Jones, Boutsen, Alboreto and Brundle. Long after the rest had been through Prost and Berger arrived at the pits.

Piquet surged ahead early on © LAT

The world champion patiently sat there while his mechanics changed the McLarens nosecone, but by the time he resumed, almost a lap had been lost to the leading Piquet.

No such prospect remained for Berger, however. The Benetton men changed the right steering arm with remarkable pace, but nothing could be done about the bent front wishbone. Having thoroughly checked that all was safe, they sent him back into the race, a full two laps down. He would drive hard and fast for the balance of the day - for nothing. Moreover, he had to do the whole race without a tyre change: "After the stop the clutch was not working properly, and I could't run the risk of coming in, maybe not being able to get going again."

An angry Prost now had no problems whatever, and he proceeded to begin a drive befitting his title. Was that a touch of oversteer just there, out of the Bus Stop chicane before the pits? From Prost?

At the start of the third lap Mansell took Senna as they accelerated past the old pits and down to Eau Rouge, so now everything looked comfortable indeed for Williams, Piquet being another 5s up the road. Johansson was doing remarkably well to keep the skittish Ferrari in touch, and after quite a time interval Dumfries looked increasingly confident in fifth place.

Lap five: Mansell spun wildly at the first half of the Bus Stop. "It was entirely my own fault," he admitted afterwards. "I was flat through the kink before it and I simply couldn't stop in time. I didn't want to go straight on into the escape road, so I had to bounce the car over the kerbs very hard - which made it jump into a spin. Not very clever, was it? But at least the car was intact."

Senna and Johansson had gone through by the time Nigel smoked away once more, so Piquet's lead looked even more secure, now out to 7s.

There were changes on the seventh lap. Jones came in to change blistered tyres, dropping from seventh to 12th, and Dumfries came in to retire. He had spun over a kerb and holed the water radiator. "My own fault," he said. "I was probably trying just a bit too hard." This was a shame, for his early laps had been impressive.

After these changes the order on lap eight, therefore, was: Piquet, 8s clear of Senna, then Johansson, Mansell, Alboreto (on hard tyres, remember), Laffite, Brundle, Arnoux, Streiff and Fabi. And there were more retirements. Rosberg, following a spirited attempt to make up ground after the first corner fracas, was gone with a blown engine, and Boutsen, darling of the locals, pulled off when his engine cut out.

A man really on the move at this point was Arnoux, who had also been delayed by the melee. Twelfth on the opening lap, he had the Ligier up into sixth by lap 10, passing his team-mate Laffite in the process. But his rear wing had been damaged in the incident, and eventually he needed a long stop to have it replaced. On rejoining, he used too much boost even for the 'pneumatic' Renault V6, which came asunder in a major way.

Streiff, too, was in trouble, losing a lot of time with a spin that stalled the engine. "I don't know what the problem was," he commented. "My rear brakes were snatching - but only occasionally. It wasn't the balance which was wrong. Usually they worked well, but sometimes not - and then I was in trouble." Streiff's Tyrrell was used for on-board camera work at Spa, the device recording one of his adventures at the entry to La Source.

All the while, however, Piquet was quietly into his own race, very settled and moving a little further clear of Senna with every passing lap. After the 15th the Lotus was 11s adrift of the Williams - but next time round Senna was in front, Piquet drifting sadly into the pits, engine blown.

Prost was in recovery mode after breaking his front wing on the first lap © LAT

By now Mansell had towed past Johansson again, and quickly he began to gain on Senna. The pitstops were obviously going to be crucial to the outcome of this race, and Mansell was the first of the significant runners to come in on lap 20. It was a scintillating stop, achieved in 8s, but the Williams driver angrily waved his arm as he pulled away. The Spa pits were ludicrously crowded and idiotic photographers stood plumb in front of the cars. When one of them gets flattened, FISA will presumably ban them from the pits during the race.

Senna came in a lap later, this stop - 9.1s - not quite as quick. As he oversteered out of the pits hairpin Mansell was accelerating past and had momentum on him.

All this meant that, for the first time in his life, Johansson was leading a grand prix! It was merely temporary, that much we knew, for the Swede would have to take new tyres shortly, but till it was pleasing to see a Ferrari in front again, something we have not seen since last August.

Number 28 stayed out there for another couple of laps, coming in at the end of the 23rd for what may be the fastest tyre stop ever seen in F1. The clocks stopped at 7.75s, and Johansson came away from his pit in a lovely, full-blooded power slide. By now, though, he was down to fourth, behind his team-mate Alboreto, who was not intending to stop, of course.

It was at this point that we unfortunately lost Brundle, who had been running strongly in sixth place, looking a certainty for points. As the Tyrrell passed the pits on the 24th lap Martin suddenly found himself searching for a gear - any gear - and at the end of the next he was slowly into the pits after a fine drive.

The drive of the race, however, was coming from Prost, the fastest man on the circuit. All the time new records were being announced for him, and he was driving with all the precision we saw at Monte Carlo, never hitting the Bus Stop kerbs, changing gear past the pits so smoothly that it was imperceptible in the attitude of the car. He gets better and better, it seems, and he started from far up the scale.

Following his tyre stop (on lap 21), Prost was unable for several laps to find a way past Berger, whom he was lapping, but once by he proceeded to close on sixth-placed Jones at the rate of 3s per lap, moving into the points when the Australian made a stop for tyres - his second, of course - on lap 31. From that point on there could be no further progress for McLaren, as Laffite's Ligier was more than half a minute ahead.

The main interest, of course, lay with the first four. Mansell led from Senna, but the first half of the race suggested that there was little between them: and Johansson, on fresh Cs, was inevitably closing on team mate Alboreto, on tiring Bs.

"The second half of the race," Mansell said, "was a matter of pacing - from the point of view of both fuel and tyres. I'd been behind Senna earlier on, and I could see that his tyres were wearing exactly the same as mine. We were both understeering too much. As for the fuel, it seemed as though I was playing with the boost on every lap. With about 10-12 laps to go I was getting on the wrong side with the fuel calculation, so the team warned me to turn the boost down - and he started to catch me! It was an awkward situation. I desperately wanted to break the two, because as long as he was in it he was saving his own fuel.

"As soon as I got back just on the right side with the fuel, I turned the boost right up to try and get clear, and also to demoralise him a bit. On one lap I managed to pull out another couple of seconds - and then Patrick Head started to give me a real ear-bashing over the radio: 'Watch your fuel!' The team was fantastic, really. Down to point two of a litre they could tell me how much fuel I had."

The Ferraris ran together during the latter stages © LAT

Senna's worries were much the same: "I had big understeer all through the race, so the car was very hard on the front tyres. And in the last few laps I just didn't have the front end to work with. Like Mansell, I was worried about fuel also, and I knew that only he, of all the world championship contenders, was in good position for points. Therefore I decided to have six points rather than risk having nothing."

The big late-race battle fizzled away, therefore. Over the last five laps, indeed, the gap grew from five to seven to 10 to 14 to 20 seconds.

There were other excitements, however. For reasons unclear (since their men were running third and fourth, rather than one-two), Ferrari hung out a 'SLOW' sign as the red cars passed the pits after 37 laps. Johansson was now right on Alboreto's tail. And it was clear that he had been looking elsewhere, since he was some way ahead of Michele the next time around. "Signals?" he innocently asked afterwards. "I didn't see any signals."

Sadly, after 41 laps, there was no sign of Jones, who had driven a great race with the Lola-Ford. With no fuel computer to work with (following fraught warm-up problems), he had simply run out of fuel. "It was a shame, wasn't it?" he grinned afterwards, obviously quite elated with the race, if disappointed with the outcome. "The engine ran perfectly all the way, and the chassis was terrific - perhaps as good as anything I've ever driven."

Two laps from the end Surer's Arrows came up from the Bus Stop to the final corner, and a few seconds later its left front wheel followed it by! Surer calmly drove in for a new one while the original bounced into the pit guardrail. It was good that it hadn't gone its own way at a spot like Eau Rouge or Blanchimont.

In they came, the survivors. Mansell and Senna were happy to pull off into the scrutineering area by the old pits, for neither car could have completed another lap. A happy Johansson, though, said his Ferrari had a lot of fuel left - if its gauge was telling the truth. It was refreshing to see a different face at the post-race press conference. Had the Ferrari suddenly come good? someone naively asked.

"Well," Johansson replied thoughtfully. "It was definitely more competitive today than it has been elsewhere this year. I notice that Nigel and Ayrton they had understeer problems today, and that definitely helped because we always have it."

Afterwards Alboreto said he did not blame Johansson for passing into third place - he would have done exactly the same, he added. He was pleased simply to have some points, his first of 1986. The ever reliable Laffite finished his 172nd grand prix in fifth place, collecting points for the 57th time. And Prost could justifiably muse that sixth place was a lousy reward for a magnificent drive. Even his car was as good as dry by the end, for he had used it hard. There will be arguments for a long time about the cause of the first corner accident. Beyond doubt is that the world champion was an innocent by-stander.

Still, he got something for it, and is only a couple of points back from Senna in the title race, with Mansell now a challenging third. Others came away with nothing, including Berger, whose tyres were in ribbons by the end.

Or Palmer, still managing to smile after a desperate day with the Zakspeed. You might have thought the warm-up troubles were enough, but not a bit of it. "What happened, now? Well, they changed the Motronics on the line, then I did two laps, came in and they changed it again. Then I stopped for a new battery, then for tyres, then another new battery... Pity, really. It was going quite well. When it was going."

A good race on a fantastic circuit. And all the better for Mansell's dedication of the victory to de Angelis, his former team-mate, the man who wasn't there, the man who was in everyone's thoughts.

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