The
1989 San Marino Grand Prix was a Formula One race held at Imola
on April 23, 1989.
Race Summary
The only change to the entry list for the San Marino Grand Prix was
the arrival of
Gabriele Tarquini
in the second car minnows
AGS, who had only run
one car in
Brazil after
Philippe Streiff had suffered
career ending injuries in pre-season testing.
At the start Senna got away well but behind him Prost found himself
with a mirror full of Nigel Mansell's Ferrari but the Englishman
could not find his way around Prost's McLaren. Mansell fell off a
little after that and found himself battling with Riccardo Patrese
while on the second lap Ivan Capelli had a nasty accident in his
March. On lap four a moment of even greater heart-stopping fear
took place as fifth placed Gerhard Berger's Ferrari speared off the
track at the lightning-quick Tamburello corner due to a mechanical
failure. Berger hit the wall at an estimated 180 mph and when
his car came to a rest it immediately burst into flames. The
marshalls arrived an amazing sixteen seconds after impact and the
fire was put out ten seconds later. The race was unsurprisingly
red-flagged and Berger was extremely lucky to only escape with
broken ribs and second degree burns; it could have been much
worse.
The race restarted after half an hour and this time Prost got away
much better and got past Senna while behind them Mansell made a
poor start and fell behind Patrese and Naninni. On the run-down to
Tosa Senna was in no mood to sit behind his teammate and made a
daring move to get alongside Prost into Villeneuve and out-braked
him into the Tosa Hairpin, disregarding a prior team arrangement
where the driver leading into turn one would not be overtaken,
adding further to their looming rivalry. The McLarens proceeded to
pull away from the competition while behind them there was more
drama as Stefano Modena put his Brabham into the wall rather
violently, the Italian was unhurt.
As the McLarens pulled away in their own world Mansell, Patrese,
and Nannini were busy fighting over third place. It was settled in
the space of three laps as Patrese retired with a timing belt
failure and Mansell followed shortly thereafter with a gearbox
problem. This left Nannini all by his lonesome in third while up
front Senna cruised home to victory from Prost, who had time to
spin along the way. Nannini led home Boutsen, Warwick in the
Arrows, and Dr. Jonathan Palmer in the Tyrrell. After the race
Boutsen was disqualified for changing a puncture during the
red-flag period but after a protest from the WIlliams team he was
later reinstated.
Classification
Pre Qualifying
Qualifying
Race
Notes
- The race was stopped after three laps due to Gerhard Berger's accident and run a further
55 laps on aggregate timing.
- Olivier Grouillard was
disqualified because Ligier illegally
repaired his car on the grid before the second start. Thierry Boutsen and Alex Caffi were initially disqualified after a
protest from Ligier because they had changed tyres in the pitlane
before the second start, but were reinstated following an
appeal.
- The Alain Prost/Ayrton Senna war began to build up speed, Senna
passed Prost despite the Frenchman claiming that McLaren had a pre
race agreement not to overtake and that who ever got to turn 1
ahead should stay there.
- This race is notable as the most satiated Formula 1 entry list
ever, with a record 39 cars entering the Grand Prix (though only 26
began the actual race).
References
- Unless otherwise indicated, all race results are taken
from
-Honda
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