Grand Prix Gold: Portuguese GP 1986

So they came to Estoril, the four of them, with the world championship beckoning. And, truth be told, the heavy money was on Piquet, the man who had won three of the last four, who had the psychological momentum riding with his. During practice, though, it was Mansell who impressed. With a spare car to work with, Nigel was solidly there, beaten to the pole only by Senna.

On Sunday his game plan was well ordered and simple: he was aiming to lead all the way. And he did exactly that. Senna and Piquet were left to fight over second - which went to Prost, after Nelson had made a mistake, and Ayrton ran out of fuel. Nigel simply drove away from them, facing pressure only from himself.

Qualifying

Three days before practice began at Estoril, Nelson Piquet was at Silverstone, testing new 'periscope' turbo air inlets on the Williams-Honda. And some indication of the quantum stride taken by the grand prix car in the last year or so may be gleaned from his lap times. You may remember Keke Rosberg's mesmeric pole position lap at last year's British Grand Prix: in the Williams FW10 he alone got into the 'fives'.

A week last Tuesday Piquet's FW11 did a five dead - and did it on worn Goodyear Bs, with race boost and 60 litres of fuel aboard. Nor did it bring any sweat to his brow. "If you really want to go for a long time," he told the engineers, "we can do a low two, no problem..."

That being the case, it was reasonable to expect a substantial paring of the qualifying record at Estoril, also set more than a year ago. Before going on to a torrential first grand prix win which has gone into legend, Ayrton Senna took the pole with 1m21.007s. During testing here last winter, Piquet got under 1m17s, so what, we wondered, would he do in qualifying?

Surprisingly, he got nowhere near it - indeed failed to break 1:18pm. Times on Friday were much slower than expected primarily because of the track's dirty condition, and on Saturday Nelson could do no better than sixth. It was team-mate Mansell who looked like taking pole for Williams - until Senna came out, with six months to go.

You can never discount Ayrton from these pole position scraps, even when his haunted expression suggests he is unhappy with the car. Through Friday he had complained of poor balance and grip from the Lotus, and on Saturday morning blew the engine in his qualifying car. That was duly changed in time for the final session, and Ayrton was one of the few runners who opted for two sets of qualifiers. The first run produced a lap in 1m18.334s - good, temporarily, for pole position, but unlikely to survive. Soon it was beaten, by Mansell, by Berger, by Prost, by Fabi.

Mansell and Head work out how to trim the 0.8s qualifying gap to © LAT

At 1:53pm Senna came out again. Since his first run the Lotus mechanics had changed the turbochargers for a new and different type, Ayrton deciding to gamble. The TV cameras were on him throughout his second run, and it was indeed a stunning lap, requiring only 1m16.673s of the Brazilian's afternoon.

It was also a visually spectacular lap, reviving memories of early season qualifying sessions, such as at Jerez and Imola. All the way round the black car was shrouded in sparks. And it brought from rival teams and drivers a selection of comments, some ribald - "I see that Lotus has let her stays down again" and some cynical - "Amazing how the sparks seem to appear when he laps a couple of seconds faster than he has before..."

The man who lost most - pole position - was Mansell. "Of course I'm disappointed," he said, "but when you do a good lap, then have a car come along and beat it by nearly a second - way quicker than any other lap it's done... well, people must draw their own conclusions. You just have to congratulate Lotus, I suppose, don't you? If they're that much faster than us tomorrow, then I'll worry."

Senna on the pole, then, for the seventh time this season, and next up were two of his rivals in the chase for the world championship: Mansell and Prost. Considering the pressure upon him, Nigel was in remarkably easy frame of mind throughout the qualifying days. For one thing, Williams brought four cars down to Portugal; for the first time since Jerez, Mansell had a T-car. "I feel like a kid with a new toy," he grinned. "It saves you so much time, because you can try things, evaluate instead of having to listen to your main opposition..."

On Friday, Nigel topped the time sheets, setting his quickest laps on Goodyear Bs. Twenty minutes into the session Palmer's Zakspeed doused much of the circuit in oil. For half an hour proceedings were brought to a halt while marshals flung down cement dust, but parts of the track remained slippery, and Mansell's later run on qualifiers brought no improvement.

Saturday morning saw him fastest again, first on a set of Bs, then qualifiers, and he looked set to stay on top until Senna pulled the rabbit from the hat five minutes from time. It was a far from uneventful session for Nigel, however. Within five minutes of its starting he had a misunderstanding with Jones - "I honestly think he didn't see me" - which meant contact. A half-spin and a damaged nose wing, and towards the end he had another, harmless, spin into the gravel run-off. "I'd changed the car, and I just wanted to try something," he said. "And now I know it doesn't work..."

There was certainly no trace of any weakening in the psychological battle with Piquet, the man who has won three of the last four races. Circumstances dictated that Nelson had to set his best time in both official sessions on Bs, his run on qualifiers on Saturday being thwarted by traffic - always a severe problem at Estoril.

As well as that, it was discovered after the session that a securing bolt had pulled out of the rear underbody, allowing it to flap a little, rather as happened to Mansell in the race at Hockenheim. Piquet had to settle for sixth.

Mansell decided he preferred the new 'periscope' turbo inlets, and ran with them for most of practice, but Piquet went the other way opting for the original side-mounted inlets, and it was decided to stick with these on both cars for the race: there had been no 'endurance' testing of the new ones, and this is no stage of the season for a Williams driver to lose a race for a trifling reason.

For sponsorship reasons, Rosberg's McLaren was a bit off-colour in Portugal © LAT

Third on the grid we had Prost, right there as usual, and this was a tribute to his courage and single-mindedness. The world champion's brother, Daniel, had been suffering from cancer for almost a year, and the night before practice began he died. Like the professional he is, Alain turned up for work the following morning, grim-faced and quiet. It was a weekend to be got through.

There was a revised - heavily revised, some said - TAG V6 in his race car on Friday, but Prost was unhappy with it, preferring to concentrate on the spare McLaren. In the 'oily' afternoon session he set his best time, third fastest, right at the end. And he maintained the position the following day despite a bad misfire on his first run. This is a remarkable man.

Six tenths - four places - further back was team-mate Rosberg, who had a novel experience during his first run on Friday afternoon: "I went for a quick time, and changed up from fourth to... fourth!" the mechanics had fitted, it transpired, two identical ratios, rectifying the problem for his second run.

The following day Keke had problems, then a misfire, in his qualifying attempts, but afterwards was quite content with the cars balance. "I started off with a lot of understeer, but gradually we seem to have taken care of it."

Yet again the Benettons were strong in practice. Fabi never truly looked like making it a hat-trick of pole positions, but he finished up on the third row, three-tenths slower than team-mate Berger.

Swift as they were against the clock, the green and white cars did not look very house-trained out on the circuit. It was a matter of both drivers being very brave, using BMW's light-switch horsepower to persuade the cars out of pronounced understeer. Gerhard, in particular, was mighty quick into the first right-hander, then fighting his car for the next hundred yards or so. It was highly impressive on an occasional basis, but not a formula for a successful race.

"That's true," he agreed after practice. "On my quickest lap I put a wheel off and almost touched the guardrail, which lost me some time. I'm not hoping for too much in the race."

The understeer, both drivers said, was a Pirelli problem. There should have been new fronts available for Estoril, but production problems have delayed their appearance until Mexico.

Eighth on the grid was the faster of the Ferraris, that of Johansson. "The car's quite reasonable here," Stefan said. "We're losing time with understeer in the slow corners, but in the quick ones it feels very nice - and we're strong in a straight line."

A failing rear shock absorber gave him more oversteer than he needed on Friday afternoon, and traffic ruined the first (and quickest) laps of each of his runs on Saturday, but overall Stefan's mood was light: "At Monza we were much better in the race than in qualifying, and I think it could be the same here. In race spec the balance is good."

Alboreto, 13th, was not so pleased. "I had too much understeer on my first run today, "he murmured over post-qualifying lunch on Saturday, "and I was sure there was something wrong with my front wing. The run had been spoiled, anyway, because I slid on some oil dropped by Palmer.

"Anyway, they didn't check my wing - and on the second run it broke."

BMW power again ensured a second row start for Berger © LAT

This was really some brave lap by the Italian. By the first corner the right front wing was already sagging noticeably, and thereafter the understeer worsened to the point that the Ferrari became virtually unmanageable. At one turn it began to run wide, smoke plumming from locked wheels, and Michele had to make it through in a series of darts. But still he kept on - this was his last set of qualifiers.

A few feet short of the finish line the wing broke up altogether, pieces of it bouncing off the front wheel and high into the air, puncturing the tyre and damaging the cockpit bodywork. There was no anger in Alboreto's voice as he related the tale. The look in his eyes made it unnecessary.

Rows five and six each compromised a Brabham and a Ligier, Patrese and Arnoux, Alliot and Warwick, and while the Frenchmen were reasonably content with their cars, Bernie's boys felt they could - and should - have been much higher up.

Throughout the last session Riccardo's engine intermittently misfired, and Derek's practice days were the usual saga of blown engines, few laps.

In the last session, though, it began to come together. On his first run Warwick chopped his previous best by nearly three seconds, then took another second off that.

"Towards the end they put the boost up high," Derek said. "I was up to 197mph over the line, fastest of the session... and then an input shaft in the gearbox broke." That meant pulling off, parking, another walk home.

For most of qualifying Alliot was the quicker of the two Ligier drivers, but in the final session Arnoux pipped him by a tenth. The JS27s, which had revised suspension geometry in Portugal, had a relatively trouble-free time of it, but Rene - Rene Arnoux, the man who drives with blinkers - had this to say afterwards: "With this crazy qualifying system it's getting to be almost as important to block other drivers as it is to go for a time. It's a dangerous and stupid business, and it's about time someone found a way of eliminating it!"

Other drivers reeled in disbelief when they heard that, and none more so than Arnoux's longtime 'buddy', Patrick Tambay, whose Lola-Ford shared row seven with Alboreto. "A busy session," he gasped on Saturday afternoon. "First I went out on Bs - and a turbo went. They changed that, and I did a 1m20.7s then I put on the qualifiers, and got blocked by de Cesaris, so the time was slower. Then I went back to the Bs, and I had problems with gear selection, then brake fade - knock-off, you know - and then finally the engine tightened."

As ever, Patrick had few complaints about the chassis. "It's the old problem, I'm afraid. Over the line the Benetton is doing 201mph, and I'm doing 184. What more can I say."

A baulky gearchange, one of this car's weaknesses from the start, also caused problems for Alan Jones, on both days. On the speed trap figures he was slower even than Tambay, and he lined up 17th, sandwiched between the Minardis.

For the first time in a long while Andrea de Cesaris outqualified Sandro Nannini, claiming a place on row eight, alongside Johnny Dumfries in the second Lotus. In the first session the Scot went off the road after getting off line to go around Johansson, and in the second was hampered by fourth gear's reluctance to engage.

Tambay again outqualified Jones in his Lola © LAT

Nannini got within a tenth of de Cesaris on his first run on Saturday. And thought to improve with his second. For that, however, he needed fourth and fifth gears, neither of which was available to him.

Both Minardis, though, qualified ahead of the Tyrrell drivers, who had two quite appalling days. Martin Brundle was especially down: "Today began really well," he said on Friday. "In the morning session I was up to seventh for quite a time. Then we changed the springs, and that just threw out the corner weights completely - it was like driving a different car.

"Then, this afternoon, the engine blew. Immediately an oil line comes off and a fire starts - so quick and so violent that it melted the rear suspension! One corner of the car just sat down! And all this happens in about 500 yards. All I could do was take out the other car, with a race engine in it, and just set a time."

Streiff, too, blew his qualifying engine on Friday, which meant using a race motor throughout the second day. Traffic spoiled his first two runs, and a third - back on the original set of tyres - ended with an accident, the Tyrrell hitting the guardrail at the exit of the hairpin.

Palmer, as we said earlier, blew up hugely on the first afternoon, causing the session to be brought to a halt, and a turbo failure early in the last session put him into the spare Zakspeed, which he duly qualified 20th, six places up on the sister car of Huub Rothengatter, which took the final place on the grid.

Behind Jonathan were the two aged Arrows A8s of Boutsen and Danner, Thierry very disappointed to be down there after being 16th best on Friday. Injection problems kept him from improving very much in the faster second session. Christian, who had over-revved and blown up his engine on Saturday morning, was only a couple of tenths from his team-mate.

Ghinzani put on his usual display of unsung heroism in the Osella-Alfa, qualifying 24th, but Allen Berg - back in the team with Labatts backing for the rest of the year - was always the man most likely to miss the cut. Ivan Capelli's second appearance in the AGS-Moderni guaranteed that. Despite losing an engine on Friday afternoon, the Italian progressed well with the car, which had lost some of its Monza oversteer. Not all, though Capelli's confident throttle steering through the first right-hander made for fine spectating.

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

Race

Senna, not surprisingly, had hoped for a wet race. For much of the practice days the weather had been settled, with plenty of thick cloud. Rain, the locals said, there could be on Sunday, but although it threatened through the morning there was never more than an occasional drop.

For Berg it was sunny, anyhow, for the other constructors agreed that he, 27th and last in qualifying, should be allowed to start. Having granted the same privilege to Alex Caffi at Monza, any other action would have been churlish. "The stewards consider it in the interest of motor sport to allow the start of a car which has participated in all world championship events so far," ran the statement. Capelli's AGS, in other words, would not have been similarly accommodated.

The warm-up times had a familiar look, with Prost and Rosberg leading the way, followed by Mansell and Senna. But Alain's time - nearly two seconds quicker than his team-mate - was somewhat misleading, and not indicative of a good session.

He actually began with a few laps in the T-car, which was on wet settings and tyres, then transferring to the race car, which proved to have a bad misfire. At the end of the session, therefore, it was back to the spare. Still set up for the wet (but now running slicks, of course), the McLaren duly recorded the best time but Prost admitted it had little fuel in it. In the meantime the mechanics went to work on an engine change in the race car.

Some indication of Honda's fantastic fuel efficiency this season had come from Mansell the previous day. Would the Portuguese Grand Prix be a fuel race? "No - unfortunately!" he had replied. "As a matter of fact, I think Renault are looking good here. That engine can run high boost all day long - fuel permitting, of course. And also Renault now have nothing to lose..."

Senna did not see it that way. After the warm-up, indeed, he was depressed about his chances. It may not have been a 'fuel race' for Honda, but it most certainly was for the Renault EF15C. And Prost reckoned the same for the TAG.

After the warm-up the four world championship contenders sat together on the pit wall, posing for the photographers, smiles all round, we're all great buddies, really...

"Well," another driver murmured to me, "Alain gets on with Nigel, and Nigel gets on with Alain, and... that's about it, really, isn't it?"

At two o'clock they came out for the warm-up lap, most chosing to thread through the pits for a second or third lap. Prost went round once in the race car, came in, installed himself in the spare. There was no problem, but the engine in the T-car was a known quantity, the new one in the race chassis not so. The latter, therefore, became the spare. Straightforward, isn't it, this Formula 1?

About the last man to take up position on the grid was Mansell, who had done no fewer than four laps. I asked if there had been a problem. "A front wing endplate cracked in the morning," he said. "We've fitted a new one, and that always gives you more downforce. To allow for that, we've had to change the ride heights and so on. I did the four laps to check that everything was OK." And was it? "I'll be able to give you the answer in a couple of hours, I hope! Fingers crossed..."

Senna was mesmeric in traffic all afternoon © LAT

In a season which has seen many grand prix crowds dwindle, it was pleasing to note that the attendance here was considerably greater than at Estoril's two previous races. In the main stand, by the grid, Brazilian flags were much in evidence, but there were quite a few Union Jacks. The world championship was simmering nicely.

At 2:30 we had perhaps the tidiest start of the entire season. No one stalled, started from the pit lane or shunted, which must be some kind of recent record. And Mansell's getaway was as fleet as we have seen this year; revs, boost, clutch, all were working together as the Williams smoked past Senna's Lotus to claim a crucial lead.

Halfway around the first lap Ayrton made one attempt to get by, but he was not close enough, and past the pits it was Mansell, Senna, Berger, Piquet, Prost, Fabi and... Rosberg.

Through qualifying Keke's car had been in regular red and white Marlboro livery, but for the race had been redecorated in the colours of Marboro Lights, the company's low-tar brand. A rather sickly greeny-yellow had replaced the red, and, compared with Prost's car, Rosberg's looked like an unripe tomato in need of some sun.

After two laps it began briefly to look as though Mansell and Senna were into a race of their own. As the Benetton crew had feared, their cars were understeering acutely, not on the race pace, and Berger was dropping away - holding up Piquet, Prost & Co in the process. Fabi, in sixth, was doing a similar job on Rosberg and Johansson.

By lap three, though, Mansell was starting to put his stamp on the race. The gap to Senna was out to 16.7 seconds, and in succeeding laps, the pattern was maintained: 2.1s, 2.8s, 3.2s, 3.7s, 3.9s, 4.3s and so on. And if he was getting away from the Lotus, he was putting himself beyond reach of Piquet and Prost, both still trapped behind the resolute Berger.

Nelson finally forced by the Austrian on lap eight, and next time around Alain was also past, but they were now nine seconds adrift of the other pair of championship contenders. Rosberg quickly followed his team-mate past Berger, moving into fifth.

We therefore had the first five in the point standings running in the first five places...

Ten laps: Mansell, inching steadily away from Senna, then Piquet, Prost, Rosberg, Berger, Fabi, holding up the Ligiers of Arnoux and Alliot, who were on hard Pirellis and intending to go the distance without a stop, as were the Brabhams of Patrese and Warwick, which circulated in tandem behind them.

Lap 11 was the end of Jones, whose Lola was already so brakeless as to be unable to slow for a tight left-hander at the top of a steep hill! The red car slid into the sand, and a livid Alan walked back to the paddock.

Prost made it past Senna without too many dramas © LAT

The Australian went off in front of team-mate Tambay, who was also in trouble with brake pad knock-off from the early laps. Through the race Patrick would stop three times, to have the system bled, to have the ducts taped, then untaped. By the end of the afternoon, both men had led the management to understand that they could cope, they thought, with the thought of not seeing their cars again. Not a happy team.

Next to go were the Tyrrells, both Brundle and Streiff pulling off with flaming, blown-up, Renault engines. For some laps they had run behind de Cesaris's Minardi. Had they been held up? "To be honest, I hardly noticed him," Martin said. "The bloody thing was misfiring from the start, and I knew I couldn't pass him anyway."

If Andrea had been no problem to Brundle, he did a quite beautiful vintage job on Prost while being lapped. Alain was running on the tail of Piquet at the time, but by the time de Cesaris had been negotiated Nelson was nearly three seconds up the road. This was lap 24, and the tyre stops were getting near.

Here, perhaps, lay the only chance for Piquet and Prost to get to terms with Mansell and Senna. At this point Nigel had seven seconds on Ayrton, and the Lotus remained around eight seconds clear of Nelson and Alain. No one, in other words, making an impression on anyone else. A botched tyre change, a second set less efficient than the first... these were factors which could shake up the stalemate.

By now we had the world championship top six in the first half dozen places, for a frustrated Johansson had forced his way past Berger. In another lap Gerhard had been overtaken by team-mate Fabi, and then by Alboreto. Ferraris and Benettons together: Michele would now be held up by Teo!

On lap 29 he gave up trying for the moment, instead bringing the Ferrari in for tyres. The pits were about to become very busy. Lap 30 brought in Piquet (7.92 seconds) and Rosberg; next time round it was Senna's turn (10.12s), and Prost stopped on lap 32 (8.73s). The crucial one, though, was Mansell's, which came at the end of the 33rd, and in just over eight seconds Nigel was on his way once more, back out on the track before any of his pursuers had come into sight.

When they did, they promised much, for Ayrton, Nelson and Alain were now running in a bunch! For Mansell, this was good and bad. "I was about 10 seconds ahead, but the pressure came from the thought that the three guys behind me were the three guys trying to beat me for the championship! One mistake - a spin or something - was going to be very costly."

The plus point, though, was that the three behind him were fighting, and therefore holding each other up. In this period of the race Mansell capitalised brilliantly on that; nearly every time around he was a little further ahead.

The scrap for second, in fact, quickly came down to Senna and Piquet, reviving memories of their tussle in Hungary. Prost dropped a little way behind them, helped in no small part by Patrese, who blocked him for well over a lap. He was still well in touch, but not challenging. As Ayrton and Nelson increased the vigour of their dispute, in fact, it rather looked as if Alain might be distancing himself from an impending shunt...

Senna drove brilliantly, but couldn't keep Piquet by... and then ran dry © LAT

"There was a little bit of that in my head, yes, but mainly I was thinking of the fuel. My engine was not picking up very well, and I was using more fuel than I expected. I could not run with them and get to the end. I knew that, and I didn't want another finish like Hockenheim."

Lap 40, tyre stops all done: Mansell, 13 seconds clear of Senna, Piquet, Prost, Rosberg, Berger (who had not come in), Johansson, Alboreto, Arnoux, Fabi.

We lost Rosberg at the start of lap 42. As the McLaren came by the pits a puff of smoke became a billowing cloud. Into and through the first corner Keke braked hard, then pulled off. His last few races are not being kind to him.

At the same time Warwick failed to appear, his engine having cut out. Before the end Patrese's sister Brabham-BMW would break an exhaust, then quit. Another disastrous weekend for the team, in a quite catastrophic season.

Up at the sharp end the stalemate continued, with Mansell continuing to drive very hard, regularly setting new lap records, and Senna still holding off Piquet. Once, on lap 48, Nelson worked the Williams sufficiently close to the Lotus's gearbox to jink out as they passed the pits. Momentarily it seemed that he had both the line and the momentum to pass into the first turn, but Ayrton was equal to the challenge, and his countryman had to fall back into line. He was never to be so close again. In the background, the wily Prost continued to lurk, keeping a disciplined eye on the fuel read-out.

The other real battle in progress was that between Berger and Johansson. Earlier in the race, you will recall, the Austrian and his Benetton had been a problem for Stefan, but the Ferrari driver had made it through. Now he faced a similar situation again, having stopped for tyres while Gerhard had not.

Time after time the red car looked like going past the green one into the first corner, but Berger - perhaps thinking of his new employer, sitting in the farmhouse at Fiorano, watching on TV - always stuck it out.

As they began lap 45, Johansson tried the outside into the first turn. As the two cars came into sight, the Ferrari was clearly in front and came across to claim the line, but still Berger refused to give way.

The Benetton's right hand wheels got onto the grass, and it's left front hit the Ferrari's right sidepod. In an instant Johansson was in the air, and then both cars were spinning, spinning, into the huge run-off area. Gerhard's race was over on the spot, but Stefan kept his engine alive and motored back to the track, rooster tails of sand behind him. Approaching the Benetton he employed a variety of colourful hand signals to convey speculation about its occupant's mental health.

"Just bloody idiotic," was his comment afterwards. "I was a car's length clear of him going into the corner," And the state of the Ferrari afterwards? "Well, the tyres survived, fortunately, so I didn't have to come in. but he'd punched a turbo air inlet or something. Afterwards the response from the engine was terrible." In the course of the incident, he also lost a place to Alboreto.

As the race went into its final 20 laps Mansell had it made. Unless the Williams-Honda played him false, he was going to win his fifth grand prix of the year, make himself a heavy favourite for the title. Yet he still preferred to push on as strongly as possible, keeping his concentration alive and well by driving hard. On lap 53, indeed, he would record the fastest lap of the race, increase his lead to 18 seconds.

Piquet, in the meantime, doggedly stuck with Senna, Had he been able to snick by, he might well have drawn away, but Ayrton never gave him the opportunity. Forgetting the animosity which exists between the two Brazilians, there were points at stake - perhaps, who knew, a world championship.

Mansell on his way to victory. Cue jubilant scenes after the flag © LAT

Senna was awesome in traffic, blending sublime judgement and tremendous courage time and again as he dived past a backmarker into a corner, putting it between himself and Piquet. This, it seemed to me, was where Ayrton was winning the battle.

On lap 63 he lapped Palmer's Zakspeed into the first corner, leaving Nelson trapped behind. By the time the Williams had made it past, Senna's advantage had grown considerably, and in his efforts to close Piquet's driving became a little ragged. At the second corner, a downhill right-hander, with virtually no run-off - the white car was up on the kerb, and twitchy coming off it. And later in the lap Nelson turned into a left-hander too late, and spun.

"I'd been behind Senna for so long that my brakes got overheated," he said later. "The fronts were almost gone."

That mistake dropped him from a challenging third to a distant fourth, for Prost had gone by when he regained the circuit, and he drove the remaining laps at a subdued rate.

As he took the flag Mansell had both arms in the air, waving in jubilation. Rarely will he know a more satisfying day than this. With his championship lead whittled away in recent weeks, he knew precisely what he had to do in Portugal, and his performance was flawless. From the start he had seized the initiative, simply driven away and left the rest to fight. It was a great drive in every sense, perhaps his best ever.

The Fates, though, had one more card to play, and they cruelly handed it to Senna, who had driven magnificently and thoroughly deserved second place. Towards the end of the final lap his engine coughed, then died of thirst.

"At his pitstop," Peter Warr said, "his read-out had him point one of a lap the wrong side. He drove with that in mind, got the right side again. When he ran out, it was telling him he had 1.4 laps' fuel left..."

Ayrton got the engine started again - enough to be able to crawl over the line, anyway - but by then Prost had claimed second place, Piquet third. And the Lotus driver is now no longer in the chase for the 1986 world championship.

The reigning champion was agreeably surprised to get six points. "The pick-up on my car got worse through the race," he said, "but the main thing was the fuel. I drove as fast as I could with the fuel I had - it was as simple as that. I think today Nigel probably won the championship. I will fight, of course, to the end, but I am 11 points behind and there are only two races left..."

He then climbed into his Sierra hire car, and prepared to face the ravages of chaotic Portuguese traffic control. On Monday he would attend his brother's funeral. In its way this was as brave a weekend as we have seen from Alain Prost.

Remarkable, was it not, that the four potential champions took the first four places. Ferrari took points on reliability; Arnoux and Fabi suffered at the hand of Pirelli; Dumfries, the Arrows pair and Palmer were there at the end, as, remarkably, was Berg's Osella, albeit seven laps down.

The day belonged, though, to The Quartet - except that at Estoril we were really talking about a trio and a brilliant soloist. "I lost a bit of front wing on a bump as I was lapping Tambay," Mansell said. "Otherwise, the race was perfect."

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