Grand Prix Gold: Italian GP 1986

As Piquet and Mansell cruised round their slowing down lap on Sunday, Nigel drew alongside, pointed at Nelson, clapped his hands, saluted a great performance. He had led for most of the Italian Grand Prix, but Piquet's late race charge had been irresistible. They now stand at four victories apiece, and the Adelaide organisers must be rubbing their hands.

There was nothing for Prost or Senna on Sunday, although the world champion turned in one of the greatest performances of his life. And there was nothing more than a couple of points for Benetton, who had Fabi on the pole for the second race running. Monza was pure Williams. With a dash of Ferrari.

Qualifying

Monza Parco. See or hear those words, and you think - you should think - of lazy early autumn heat and dust and clamour and traffic jams. Also in there somewhere ought to be Ferraris and crowds. And you must approach Monza in a positive frame of mind, expecting to be irritated and exhilarated in roughly the same measure. While you are there, you will be conscious that this is something real, unique. If you like Holiday Inns and Kentucky Fried Chicken, it is probably not for you. Play it safe at the new Nurburgring or somewhere.

Monza is like no other circuit on earth. On TV one night they showed some film of the 1927 Milan Grand Prix. You watched Nuvolari on the pit straight, reflected that you had seen Alboreto on the same piece of road a few hours earlier - a loop in time of more than half a century. Perhaps in 2043 some of you will read similar sentimental ramblings about Jerez, who knows?

Come to think of it, the Nuvolari stuff must have been run on Saturday, for neither I nor anyone else saw Alboreto the previous day. And there lay the first sensation of the Monza weekend. No Michele! He wasn't well, the crowds were told, and they didn't like it. Would he be showing up for the second day? Marco Piccinini - who could tutor Arthur Scargill in the art of fending off a question - lifted his arms in that all-puropse Italian gesture, and said he didn't know. He hoped so. The spectators were with him on that.

So what was the problem? We had a day of splendid Macchiavellian theatre. He had a stomach bug, some said. He had gone to the bathroom, feeling sick, had slipped and hurt his arm. No, no, others insisted, he had blacked out, fallen and damaged his arm. Aye, such drama! It wasn't all that at all, a third, dark rumour suggested. He had fallen off his motorcycle, broken his collarbone...

Different people believed different things. Piccinini finally made an official announcement about the tummy trouble, the accident in the bathroom. "Well, you know Michele," one driver joked. "Always keeps his motorbike in the loo..." "I have tiles in my bathroom," said another. "Not tarmac..."

Whatever, we were all glad - if somewhat surprised - to see Alboreto striding through the paddock on Saturday morning. I asked about his arm. "Oh, it's nothing too bad," he said. "The real problem was my stomach. If I had not felt better this morning, I would not be here. But today is much better."

Fabi became only the third Italian to start his home race from pole © LAT

He smiled, walked on to the Ferrari enclosure, where the assembled Italian press fell into paroxysms of joy.

By this time, of course, we were a day into the meeting. On Friday Ayrton Senna, the 1985 pole man, had been fastest, tailed by the Benettons of Berger and Fabi, the Williams of Mansell, the Ferrari of Johansson - Stefan getting all the treatment for once (in Michele's absence), and making the most of it.

On Saturday, though, Senna was shoved down to fifth. Mansell kept his third spot, but ahead of him on the final reckoning were Prost's McLaren and, fastest of all for the second race running, Teo Fabi. Luciano Benetton's car was on the pole at home, and the wild-haired tycoon must have been a happy man.

So, too, must Teo, although his face is not exactly a barometer of emotion. It was a fabulous lap, fully half a second quicker than Prost, and it gave Rory Byrne a great deal of quiet satisfaction. It was here at Monza, he pointed out, that the infant Toleman team first qualified for a grand prix, Brian Henton scraping onto the back of the grid. Now, five years later, albeit renamed and reconstituted, it was at the other end.

Fabi ran soft race tyres, rather than pure qualifiers, throughout practice, and proved that his pole position in Austria had been no matter of fluke. In qualifying set-up, at least, the combination of Teo, Byrne's 186 chassis and BMW's 'upright' four-cylinder is daunting on a fast circuit. The Italian's average was 154.312mph.

As he accepted another scooter for his feat, it was left to Peter Collins to describe the session. "At the last corner - Parabolica - his engine cut out momentarily. That was still his quickest lap, and he reckoned otherwise it would have been a mid-23, no problem. To be honest, I reckon the engine in Berger's car was a bit stronger. We were hoping to have him up on the front row with Teo, but probably overdid it a bit with the boost..."

Gerhard, who had been quicker of the two on Friday, went out at the very end of the session, looking to improve on his fourth place. Over the line he went to begin the lap, and the Olivetti speed trap registered 214.391mph, the fastest seen all weekend. On the approach to the first chicane the Benetton was up to 218.238mph (quickest again). All eyes were on him, but the engine, as Collins said, was probably being asked for too much. Halfway round the lap there was a large puff of smoke. Fabi's place was safe, and Berger had to settle for fourth.

They neatly summed up the BMW weekend. On terminal speed the five quickest cars were the Benettons, the Brabhams and Boutsen's Arrows. The engines were unmatched for top end power - and also for lack of longevity. On Saturday Brabham alone had five failures...

They are realists at Benetton, and they suspected that Saturday might be the last hurrah of their weekend. Collins again: "We can't kid ourselves we're in the same competitive state for the race. To be honest, we're a bit concerned about tyre wear, and on fuel economy, too, I think we might be in trouble." Still, we thought that might have been the case at the Osterreichring, and the green and white cars ran away until problems intervened.

On the front row, with Fabi, was the number 1 McLaren of Prost. Despite being 12mph slower over the line, Alain was less than half a second from Teo, and more than three-tenths faster than anyone else. The balance of the car, he confirmed, was good - even without the assistance of John Barnard.

Prost started second, despite being 12mph down on Fabi through the speed trap © LAT

"I'm quite happy now," he said on Saturday afternoon, "but yesterday was a waste of time. I got slowed by the oil, and after that the track was slippery for the rest of the session."

This was in reference to his old friend Rene Arnoux, who had blown up his Ligier-Renault and chosen to douse the Lesmos in oil rather than pull off. So bad was it that the session was stopped for 20 minutes, allowing the marshals to put down necessarily huge quantities of cement dust - which stuck to everyone's tyres. Arnoux's manners are from the far end of the evolutionary scale.

Prost got the McLaren very much to his liking on Saturday, however, and seemed comfortably set for the pole until Fabi's scintillating lap. With both his runs completed, the world champion went back on his used qualifiers, his purpose almost to run out of fuel. Over the last year or so, the TAG engine has been much troubled by intermittent cutting out in the late stages of a race, when the fuel has been getting low. Rosberg retired in Austria for this reason, and Prost almost lost victory the same way.

To that end, Porsche had made changes to the fuel pick-up system, and Alain wanted to put them to the test. With little fuel aboard he went out, and very nearly ran the car dry, having to weave down the pit lane. On the face of it, he said, the revised system worked well.

Keke was less happy. A tenth faster than his team-mate on Friday, he was almost a second slower in the last session, and qualified only eighth. When he started to push, he reported, so too did his car, and Rosberg has never been at ease with understeer. He made both his runs very early in the session, and was fourth when he parked his McLaren, thereafter watching others push him down the queue.

Senna, as we have said, was fastest on Friday, and he did the time right at the end of the hour in typical style. On the pole a year ago, he looked a strong contender for Saturday. His first run produced a 1m24.916s (second at the time), and with seven minutes left he came out for a second. By then Fabi and Prost looked to have secured the front row, and only Senna and Berger were realistic threats. Both, as it transpired, blew up in their efforts.

Ayrton believed he was on a screamer at the time. It was not his tidiest lap, but he thought it might have got him up to third, maybe second. Fabi's time was out of reach.

Early in the Saturday morning session Senna had the unpleasant experience of hitting - at very high speed - a piece of flotsam on the track. It was thought to have been a skidplate from an F3 car, and it did a considerate amount of damage to the Lotus's nosebox. While the mechanics went to work on the 98T, Ayrton went out in his spare car - whose qualifying engine broke. Not a good session for him, and hardly ideal preparation for the final one.

It seems inescapable that the piece of debris had been on the track, undetected, since the F3 practice on the previous evening, and one wonders how it could have been missed by the marshals. After Senna's incident the errant piece of metal was collected by Rothengatter, and the bottom of the Zakspeed monocoque was seriously damaged.

While the first Lotus qualified fifth, the second was back on row nine. Typically, Johnny Dumfries made no attempt to lay the blame elsewhere: on Friday, he said, he goofed at the chicane during his quick lap, and on Saturday could not get his tyres to last anything like a full lap. They were gone, he reckoned, by the Ascari chicane, which meant there was very little grip through the crucial Parabolica.

Williams worked hard on set-up for the race during the first two days © LAT

If Dumfries had problems, however, two other Brits were well in with a shout. Mansell, the world championship leader with Williams, we expect to find up there, but only four places back of him on the grid was Warwick's Brabham, and that was a fine thing to see.

Nigel was fourth on the opening day, and reckoned he could improve substantially. "On my quick lap I had one of those incidents where you can either lift off or take a chance - and this time I took a chance. I was flat in sixth going down towards the first chicane. Jones was ahead of me, right behind another car - I don't know who it was. Just as I was coming up on them, Alan flicked out from behind the other guy, which meant that we arrived at the chicane three abreast...

"I didn't lift, but it meant going way off line, picking up dirt on the tyres and all that, so it rather spoiled the lap." For the last session he spoke in terms of a low 1m24s, and right at the start did a 24.8s, fastest at the time. There was a slight gasket leak in the left hand turbo, but it was decided to leave it alone, hope for the best. For the second run they took off some wing, trading downforce for straight line speed, but it proved a mistake.

Still, Mansell finished up third, and was very confident for the race. "I've done 26.8s on race tyres and boost this morning, he said on Saturday, "and I think we're looking good. But you know what Monza races are - it's a matter of whose engine lasts."

Interestingly, Nigel seemed quite clearly to have reasserted himself in the psychological battle at Williams over the last two races. Many spoke of Hungary as the turning point between Mansell and Piquet, but in Austria the Englishman was quicker all through, and the same was true of Monza practice.

Nelson's opening run on Saturday was three-tenths slower than Mansell's, and temporarily gave us a Williams front row. He had gone with three qualifiers and Goodyears soft 'C' race compound on the left rear, and liked the balance. For his final effort, though, he chose qualifiers all round and blistered them by going too hard through Parabolica to start the lap. Sixth was his grid position, and afterwards his mood was cranky.

His old sparring partner from Formula 3, however, was in better spirits than for many a day. On Friday evening Warwick's luck seemed to be running to form: "Engines never blow up on slow laps, do they? But I'm telling you, the one I was on today was the kind you get maybe three times in a season. Everything was right - the car was working beautifully, power terrific, no traffic and I was driving well. It was a screamer, right? And then coming into Parabolica the engine suddenly shudders, and I know that's it. It was so frustrating being so close to the end of the lap - I even tried to change down to get it to the line!"

In the meantime Patrese had lost a turbo, and that meant a repeat of Hockenheim: Riccardo would take the spare, then hand it over to Derek. When Warwick had finally got it, the engine lasted but 500 yards. After the first day he was without grid time.

Saturday, though, was the best day he has had at Brabham. In the morning he got in more than 30 laps, no trouble, and in the final session produced two terrific runs, which put him seventh overall.

Patrese, meantime, had another busy afternoon, blowing up the engine in his own car, then the one in the T-car, then finally the one in Warwick's! It did not bode well for the race, but both men enthused about the performance of their cars. "It really feels great here," Derek said. "The engine's better, with new inlet manifold, new bits in the management system and so on, and we've got revised front suspension geometry, which has transformed the turn-in. I haven't looked forward to a race so much for years."

Alex Caffi made his GP debut with Osella © LAT

The Ferrari drivers were not quite so enthusiastic. Alboreto said he felt quite OK on Saturday afternoon, and produced a fine first run which brought heavy applause, but was only eighth fastest. By the end of it his qualifying engine was losing oil pressure, and his second run was a tenth slower.

Johansson's Christmas Day had been Friday, when Michele was absent. For the first time in his Ferrari career he had all the attention, two cars to play with and so on, and he made the best of it, fifth fastest. On Saturday, though, he improved only marginally, and fell to 12th: "The engine kept cutting out on the straights. Then I took the muletta, and a turbo went..."

Stefan thought the balance of the car quite good, however. "We're losing time at the chicanes, I think, but through the Lesmos I reckon I'm quicker than anyone. We could have a good race actually."

Monza is a track on which Arnoux has shone over the years, but he was highly disappointed with the balance of his Ligier during practice, complaining on Friday of far too much oversteer. In the afternoon, as we mentioned, he blew up massively and chose to share his misfortune with his colleagues. When qualifying resumed Rene took out Alliot's car - then had the gall (no pun, etc.) to say that he would have gone quicker if the track hadn't been so slippery...

On Saturday both drivers went quicker - but so did everyone else. And by the end we had Arnoux 11th and Alliot, who broke two engines, 14th.

Arrows brought their recalcitrant new A9 down to Monza, but it was there only as a T-car, to be pressed into service in dire emergency. The old A8 remains a better proposition, and Thierry Boutsen predictably ran the wheels off his, 12th on the first day and 13th overall. The balance of the car was not bad at all, he said, but of course the strongest card in his hand was BMW bhp. On terminal speed, before the first chicane, Thierry was close to 212mph, and only the Benettons and Brabhams were quicker.

Christian Danner, too, was impressive in lapping only a second or so away from Boutsen. Late in the Friday session he spun luridly (on oil dropped by Berger), and in the final session complained of a little too much oversteer, but generally these were the best practice days for Arrows for some time.

To understand the predicament of the Lola-Ford drivers, you had only to scan the speed trap figures. Where Berger and Fabi were up around 218mph, Tambay and Jones were barely scraping 200mph - considerably slower, for example, than Palmer's Zakspeed and Nannini's Minardi-Moderni. "Look at the figures from the untimed session," Patrick murmured. "You will see that my speed is the same as in qualifying. We can't put the boost up - and we get blown away."

"Into the Curva Grande," he went on, "I snick it down into fourth, and then I'm flat all the way through, no problem. That says it all." And the chassis? "Oh, very nice, beautiful, as usual. But here it's all horsepower, isn't it?"

Tambay qualified 15th, a disheartening result for all that effort. On what he felt was his best lap of the two days - his second run on Saturday - the engine went dead as he went into Parabolica. In the pits the problem was traced to a fault with the Lola's wiring loom.

For all that, Patrick had a better time of it than Alan Jones, who was unable to do a single flying lap on Friday afternoon. An oil leak in the morning had meant an engine change over lunch, and the replacement Ford V6 refused to run cleanly. The following day his engine blew all its water out in the untimed session, and that meant yet another change. In the afternoon Alan qualified a disgruntled 18th.

Patrese blew three of Bernie's BMW engines in one afternoon! © LAT

Only half a second slower was Nannini. In Hungary the young Italian blew off team-mate de Cesaris, who was driving the new Minardi M186. For Austria, therefore, Andrea demanded to have the old car back, and Sandro, in the new one, blew him off. At Monza they swapped again, and Nannini, back in the old one, blew de Cesaris off, etc, etc. there seems to be a basic truth here, which Andrea appears to be incapable of taking on board. Last weekend he qualified 21st, almost a full second slower.

Tyrrell were nowhere at all at Monza, Brundle and Streiff qualifying 20th and 23rd. So bad were Martin's gear selection problems on Friday that he had to take the spare (with race engine) - and then only after Arnoux's oil had gone down. The following day it was Philippe's turn: an electrical problem meant that his engine would not run properly, and he was one of only three drivers who failed to improve.

One place ahead of Streiff was Jonathan Palmer, who improved substantially on Saturday after a bad misfire on the first day. Team-mate Rothengatter was 24th, and then we had Capelli in the new AGS-Moderni. The car, which had undergone only minimal pre-race testing, was quite nicely made, but was soon christened 'Auto Union' in light of its very considerable length and weight.

A turbo failure at the start of the first qualifying session kept Ivan from setting a time on Friday, but he qualified comfortably, fighting rather sudden oversteer all the way. Behind him on the grid were the Osellas of Piercarlo Ghinzani and... Alex Caffi...

According to the entry list the second car should have been driven, as usual, by Allan Berg, but financial considerations came into play - and with them Caffi.

There were no complaints about the young Italian F3 man. Indeed, he did a competent job in the car, showed good track manners in keeping out of the way. But inevitably his inclusion in the team raised questions about FISA's Super-licence system. It is, M. Balestre, a strange one which lets Caffi (even if he did win the FIA Trophy at Paul Ricard), and keeps out Michael Andretti, whom Carl Haas wanted to run at Detroit. Ah, but of course, he's a CART man, isn't he? And here was I, thinking that proven competence was the criterion...

Caffi, 27th fastest, theoretically failed to qualify. But rules in motor racing are malleable things, and after all he was an Italian in Italy. The other constructors raised no objections to his starting.

Doubtless, they would have adopted the same Christian attitude if it had been wet on Saturday, when Alboreto had his one and only shot at qualifying...

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

Race

On Thursday the organisers had spoken glumly of their pre-race ticket sales. In 1985 the crowd - by Monza standards - was well down, and money was lost. This year prices lurched upwards once more, the Ferraris looked unlikely to win, and the whole thing was live on TV, for three full hours.

Sunday morning brought confirmation of their fears. There were no traffic problems on the way to the circuit, and on the main road outside the track there were plenty of parking spaces. Inside the story was the same, with gaps on the spectator fences, where formerly they crushed in six-deep and more. The stands, however, were healthily full.

What was more, they looked like having something to cheer. After the morning warm-up Alboreto reported that his Ferrari felt better than ever before, and he felt confident of being able to run right on the pace.

Indeed, it looked that way. Michele set second fastest time, and inevitably there was some cynicism about the man and car who beat him: Patrese's Brabham-BMW. "You've got that wrong," joked a rival team manager. "It's an Olivetti Brabham-BMW, and we're at Monza. He was quickest in the warm-up at Hockenheim, too, and it was an Olivetti Brabham-BMW..."

Well, whatever, Riccardo topped the list, followed by Alboreto, Prost and Mansell. Less content by far was team-mate Warwick, whose engine simply refused to pull, and who also had clutch failure after only five laps. Disgruntled, too, was Senna, only 10th and complaining that his race-spec Renault V6 was well down on power. Jones, by contrast, was pleased with the Lola-Ford, an impressive seventh in the list.

At 2.30 they did their pre-race warm-up laps, formed on the grid, cut their engines. On went the electric tyre blankets, and we waited for the final minutes to pass. The build-up in atmosphere before the start at Monza is unequalled anywhere.

Finally, engines were fired up once more, and they got the green flag for the parade lap, and now the drama began. Poleman Fabi moved only a few feet before his engine died, and Prost, next to him on the front row, shifted not an inch!

After the warm-up Alain had decided to race the spare McLaren, which he slightly preferred. But the car's alternator was broken, and now its battery was correspondingly flat. As the Benetton mechanics got Fabi on his way - albeit for a back-of-the-grid start - the world champion ran to the pits, where his original race car was in readiness for just such an emergency. There was no question of any formation lap for him. He would have to start from the pitlane.

Thus it was that the grid formed up without a front row! Effectively Mansell was now on the pole, with Berger next up, and when the green light flashed it was the Austrian who got away the best.

Into the first chicane he led from Mansell and Piquet. From pit lane Prost embarked on his task - and Senna knew already that his afternoon was through, transmission broken.

Afterwards his team suspected that an input shaft had failed, giving rise to a few hair-raising seconds as the black car crawled down the road. As the field engulfed him, all Ayrton could do was keep straight, wave his arm, and hope. Briefly the scene was eerily similar to the build up to the disaster eight years ago, when Ronnie Peterson's Lotus got away slowly, and a few seconds later came the multiple accident which took his life.

Happily, there was no such catastrophe this time. Everyone missed Senna, who parked on the right and walked back to the pits, his world championship aspirations having taken a dive.

Alboreto's engine blew, much to the dismay of the Tifosi © LAT

Lap one: Berger, Mansell, Piquet, Arnoux (from the sixth row!), Rosberg, Alboreto, Alliot, Johansson, Warwick, Dumfries. From the back of the grid Fabi was already up to 17th; from pitlane Prost was 24th. With justification we looked for coming excitement from these two, and we were to get it.

At the front Berger showed early signs of pulling away from Mansell, but after three laps Nigel had cut the gap. As Gerhard had expected, the Benetton in race trim was not the force it had been in qualifying, and it seemed only a matter of time before the Williams duo moved by him.

For the crowd, however, this was of minor importance at the time, all eyes being on Alboreto, who was flying. Fifth on the first lap, he overtook Rosberg on the second, Arnoux on the third, and showed no sigs of losing anything to Piquet. Not far behind him, either, was Johansson, so Ferrari looked set for their most competitive Monza race in years.

For Tambay and Patrese, however, the Italian Grand Prix was already finite. On lap three they collided at the second chicane, Patrick's left rear wheel gouging deeply into the Brabham's side pod.

By the end of the sixth lap Mansell had Berger very much in his sights, and on the seventh he moved by into the lead. Piquet and Alboreto, keen that he should not get away, went past the Benetton a lap later, but by now Nigel was more than a second up the road.

At 10 laps the gap was 1.6s. Alboreto was keeping well up with Piquet, but Berger was falling away in fourth place. Then came Johansson, Rosberg, Arnoux - and Fabi! In a matter of 35 miles Teo had gained 18 places, but the fastest man on the circuit was Prost, now up to 10th and turning in the sort of comeback drive we saw from him at Spa.

McLaren's preparation and reliability being what they are, Alain is rarely called upon to produce this kind of thing, and you can lose sight of the raw racer in the man, forget that no one is more of a fighter. Now, as he chopped and carved his way through the field, sometimes passing several cars in a single lap, we were reminded. He was running faster than anyone, and doing it in supremely dangerous conditions - in traffic.

In the office, meanwhile, officials were debating whether or not he were risking life and limb for nothing. We will return to this.

Laps 11 and 12 had the spectators roaring, for Mansell, Piquet and Alboreto went by the pits as a single group, but thereafter Nigel pulled a little way clear again, and looked to have everything well in hand. And the extent of Prost's effort came truly into focus when he caught and passed the flying Fabi for eighth place. Surely, we began to murmur, he couldn't win this thing?

In the office his immediate future was still under discussion. But we'll come back to that.

At the end of lap 17 there was a groan from the stands. Mansell came by, then Piquet, but it was Berger who next appeared, and Alboreto headed for his pit. He had spun at the first chicane.

It looked like a straightforward mistake, the result of running over a kerb, bouncing off it so that the Ferrari was unsettled as it went through the final right-hand section. "No," Michele insisted. "I'm sure there was some oil there - the car just flicked out of control." His tyre stop required only 7.55 seconds (the fastest of the day), and he rejoined in 11th place.

Brundle made good progress early on © LAT

Alboreto, fortunately, did not hit anything in the course of his spin, but Warwick was less lucky. He had run as high as eighth earlier on, but started to fall back as a brake problem - the rears were locking - worsened. Derek also spun, and had suspicions that it could have been on oil, the Brabham hitting the guardrail backwards.

Lotus's disastrous day reached its conclusion on lap 19, when Dumfries pulled off, having run well in ninth place. "I just couldn't find any gears at all," he reported, the seventh retirement of the day.

Lap 20 saw Prost right up with team-mate Rosberg, who was having one of those days when you forget he is in the race at all. Into the first chicane Alain charged by, but as he did so one of the McLaren's front wing endplates fluttered away. The wing had started to sag, and as the car braked for the corner the endplate dug into the track.

Now we got ready for tyre stops, and on lap 22 Piquet and Prost came in. Nelson's left front took an eternity to change, and he was stationery for nearly 17 seconds, but Alain needed a new nose cone, as well as tyres, and he lost more than half a minute. All that hard work appeared to have been for nothing, and indeed it was so. The officials were on the point of making up their... I was going to say 'minds'. Now what they needed was a black flag and a figure 1.

Rosberg came in on lap 23, and here the right front took the time (13.5s). Next came Johansson (9.6s) and, on lap 25, Mansell. This was the crucial one. With Nelson delayed, it seemed that normal Williams efficiency would have Nigel home free, and when they turned him around in eight seconds the issue looked to be settled.

Berger briefly led while Mansell was in, the Austrian himself stopping on lap 27. With most of the significant tyre changes done, the order was Mansell, Arnoux (still to come in), Piquet, Berger, Johansson, Alboreto, Rosberg, Fabi, Jones and Boutsen. Twenty-three laps remained.

But not for Prost. The black flag was out for him - and not, as we suspected, because the McLaren appeared to be dropping oil. No, the world champion was being stopped because he had changed cars after the green flag had been waved to begin the formation lap. Nearly three-quarters of an hour earlier.

The rule is in the FISA Yellow Book, no argument there. Nor was there any doubt that it had been broached. So why, one must ask, did it take so long for Officialdom to decide to black-flag him?

Why was he allowed to drive flat out for more than half the race - for nothing? We shall never get a satisfactory answer to these questions, because none exists.

They showed him the drapeau noir for a couple of laps, but in a manner of speaking he cheated the hangman by pulling off with a blown engine. "I was very disappointed today - I need the points, and felt before the race I was in good shape to win," Alain said. "But more than that, I am furious about the time they took to disqualify me. You know, in a situation like that, you have to take very big chances, and I had done that for many laps. Why could they not stop me immediately? Monza 1986 he would like to forget.

So, too, would Arnoux, who had driven a superb race to get the Ligier up to second place. But when he stopped on lap 29, it was for more than tyres. Fourth gear had gone missing, and a long stop failed to find it. Eventually Rene returned to the race, but retired out on the circuit, team-mate Alliot having already gone with another blown engine.

Tyre change time at Williams © LAT

Fabi, too, got far less than he deserved for his fighting comeback. On lap 31 he came in to have a worsening misfire investigated, and in their efforts to trace it the mechanics "changed everything" - plugs, leads, battery, etc. after a long stop Teo went back out, turning the fastest lap of the race, but in the late stages he was to slide off at the first chicane when a tyre went down.

After his spin Alboreto had worked his way back to fifth place, running a hundred yards or so behind Johansson, but on lap 32 he was passed by Rosberg, and he completed his 33rd at a crawl, pulling off on the right beyond the pits. Motore. The spectators were very upset, but gave him deserved applause.

Michele's departure distracted their attention from the fact that Mansell, suddenly, was being reeled in by Piquet. For several laps the gap had been steady at around six seconds, but on the 33rd it was 5.1s, then 3.9s, then 1.9s!

Was Nigel slowing, or Nelson speeding up? A check on times revealed that the Brazilian was flying. Four laps on the trot produced new records, and Mansell was apparently powerless to respond. Was he in trouble? Or had his team-mate been sandbagging again?

There were several factors involved. For one thing, one of Nigel's seat belts - an additional chest support, independent of the main harness - somehow came undone soon after the tyre stop. "After that I was moving around a bit," Nigel said, "and I didn't really feel at one with the car. Also, to be honest, I think I pushed a bit too hard and blistered the front tyres..."

For another, Mansell and Piquet ran different set-ups in the race. "Nelson had been slower than Nigel in practice," said Williams spokesman Peter Windsor, "so for the race he and Frank Dernie" (the team's chief aerodynamicist, who works as Piquet's race engineer) "took a chance on a different rear wing, which had not been tried at all during practice, although it was one of several 'Monza' wings. And it worked. Nelson was quicker in a straight line than Nigel, without losing much downforce. And he was using a bit of boost when he caught up with him."

By the end of lap 37 the two Williams-Hondas were right together, but Mansell guarded the inside line into the first chicane. Piquet went in wider, came out a little quicker, and then simply out-accelerated his team-mate through the Curva Grande, edging him out wide as he did so. Within half a minute it was clear that Mansell could not stay with him. The issue was settled.

In Italy, they like Piquet, and they cheered. But they cheered a great deal harder as Johansson made efforts to separate Berger from third place. 'Ferrari, don't change - Stefan must stay' one banner in front of me read, and its owner seemed to have a good measure of support.

On lap 43 both Gerhard and Stefan set their fastest laps of the race, and on the 44th the Ferrari came by ahead, the Benetton's BMW engine sick. Into the closing stages, indeed, it became a matter of whether or not the Austrian would make it to the finish.

The last few laps were anti-climactic, Piquet running serenely round in the lead, Mansell having no alternative but to settle for second. Johansson anticipated a superb third place, and a curiously detached Rosberg took fourth place from the hapless Berger. Jones, who had stopped twice for tyres (the second of which was caused by the loss of a front wheel balance weight), moved into sixth, powerless to do any more.

On their slowing down lap the two Williams drivers saluted each other, which was nice to see after events of the recent past. We shall look out for it once more when their positions are next reversed.

Another 1-2 for Williams-Honda puts the constructors' title beyond doubt, but Frank and his men must still hope to beat McLaren's points record, set in 1984. They needed another 27 from the last three races, so the chances must be excellent.

In the paddock afterwards there was the usual frenzy. Ferrari had achieved a honourable result, so there was plenty of rejoicing. Williams people stood around, shaking hands and quietly celebrating in a manner of McLaren a couple of years ago. Benetton, after another sensational qualifying performance, were understandably disappointed to come away with but a fifth place.

Both Arrows and both Tyrrells made it to the flag, but not into the points: it was another frustrating day for Messrs Boutsen and Brundle. And you had to raise your had to Signor Caffi, who delighted Osella by finishing, albeit 11th and last. He may have been lapped half a dozen times, but it was the longest race of his life by far, and he drove it well, using his mirrors sensibly. A lot of the more seasoned men could study that to advantage.

All in all, a very fine race, with more great performances than I can remember. Piquet, Mansell, Johansson, Berger, Alboreto, Fabi, Prost... all did us proud on Sunday.

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