And look at that!” exclaimed Murray Walker. Eighteen laps from home, we’ll never forget how Nigel Mansell’s world title hopes disintegrated along with his left-rear Goodyear. It happened just after he’d lapped Philippe Alliot’s Ligier, in a shower of sparks. The Williams-Honda bucked at 190mph, Mansell somehow keeping the car in a straight line before it slithered to a stop, nudging a concrete barrier at the end of Adelaide’s Dequetteville straight. So cruel.
How Alain Prost then undercut both Mansell and Nelson Piquet, winning the race and snatching his second consecutive world title – one he admits is the most cherished of his four – enshrined his legend. Lucky? Yes, but there was so much more at play, in a race he recalls as one of his few perfect days in an F1 car. How he at first carefully managed his fuel load in trademark style, easing himself into contention; the puncture that put him on the backfoot; the nothing-more-to-lose charge, a reminder he was quick as well as clever; and then in the wake of Mansell’s misfortune and Piquet’s inevitable better-safe-than-sorry stop for fresh tyres, how he then made it home – just – with both arms aloft, before the McLaren spluttered out of gas. It’s among the most memorably dramatic F1 races of all time.
From left, Ayrton Senna, Prost, Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet at Estoril – F1’s fab four in ’86
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