The place to start in Rio was row 3. It featured Alain Prost, who - all being well - thought he would have won, and Nigel Mansell, who did win. It was a surprise, you could say that. Two days of troubled practice had left Mansell doubtful of a finish, let alone a victory.

But Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger accounted for each other at the first corner, which left Mansell and Prost to fight it out with such as Riccardo Patrese, the pole man, who retired towards the end. The Ferrari, so cranky before the race, behaved perfectly when it mattered, and the new McLaren-Honda lost its clutch, obliging Prost to pass up his second stop and nurse his tyres for a long way. The issue was settled.

Best of all, it was a race. No orderly procession, this. God bless the man who banned turbos. Formula 1 is out of its coma.

They call Rio the ‘Cidade Marivilhosa’, the marvelous city. And it is on the surface. The Verdant hills cascade into Guanabara Bay, overlooked by Sugar Loaf Mountain and the statue at Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado. Down below there is plenty of redeeming to be done. This is 'Sin City', a place for those of an hedonistic nature. You can get anything in Rio, strange diseases included.

Down on the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana you can go blind just looking at the girls. But it isn't just the inhibitions and the G-strings that disappear, wallets and watches go too. With inflation running at an annual rate of close to 1000 per cent and a national debt which makes the Colombian drug barons look like poor men, money is for spending - if you have it in the first place.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the populace is rich and Rio’s lush avenues have a darker side:

crime overcrowding and pollution. If the beachside hotels are the refuge for the rich and famous (and their minders), the crashing of the waves, the lilting samba and the rustle of the breeze in the palms is always offset by the hum of traffic.

Traffic is also a problem out at the Autodromo Nelson Piquet, an uninspiring sort of place built on old swamp land. Getting into the circuit at Grand Prix time is bad, getting round it seems to be equally difficult, particularly if Rene Arnoux is on the horizon. Time and again the fast men, hanging out their lives on qualifying rubber, came across Rene's wobbling blue Ligier. It was extraordinary. Normally a walk down the pitlane will reveal a few odd grumbles, but after both qualifying sessions, the name Arnoux was being spat out at almost every pit. It was either a massive conspiracy against Rene, or he really did pull more hold ups then the average New York Liquor store suffers in a year.

The return of qualifying tyres perhaps highlighted the problem. Gone are the days when you could lap endlessly chopping a tenth here and a hundredth there. It meant that the track, reverberating to the glorious new non-turbos, was often suddenly quiet. There was none of the hustle-bustle of recent years. It was far more explosive action - all or nothing. The drivers would sit edgily in the pits, eyeing the television screens and glancing at their watches, waiting to pick the right moment, then it was one lap out, one flier and one to slow down. That was it.

"It's a question of lucking it," explained Nigel Mansell. "You have only one lap." And almost everything was done in hothouse conditions.

Pre-qualifying was different. At 8am on Friday morning it was relatively cool and times were fast. The two Brabhams were remarkable, dominating the show. It was Martin Brundle who stole the thunder, shadowed by his new team-mate Stefano Modena.

Few of the teams looked as though they were ready for the start of the new season. Osella, Rial, Zakspeed and Onyx were all trying to do too much in too short a time. Coloni and Eurobrun had updated versions of older cars and Scuderia Italia, while ready, had luck against them. Caffi, a man worthy of a guaranteed qualifying spot, had multiple engine grief and was out of the game after 60 minutes.

Gregor Foitek was mighty in the EuroBrun, although the car is greatly improved from the upturned bathtub of last year and predictably Nicola Larini and Bernd Schneider both made the cut (five going through in place of the normal four because of the missing Philippe Streiff). When all the teams get up to their true levels of potential, pre-qualifying is going to be very exciting. As the pre-qualifiers trailed off to their own 'leper colony' in the back of a subsidiary paddock, the temperatures rose and the first unofficial session began. A large crowd cheered Ayrton each time he passed by. The passage of Nelson hardly raised a voice.

Senna and Brundle (World Champions both) traded times, just as they once did in British F3. Then, as ever in F1, it all happened at once: Alain Prost and Gerhard Berger came in with their heavy-hitting times to be joined by a future heavy-hitter Modena. He did just seven laps and came away third fastest. Mightily impressive and it certainly made an impression on his team mate Brundle. Martin is going to have to work hard this year keeping Stefano behind him.

But Prost topped the charts and it looked like business as usual...

Temperature rising. It said 39C on the digital screens as the cars came out for the first official session at 1pm. It was like walking about in an oven and white-skinned Anglo-Saxons began to turn pink. There were soon more red noses than during Comic Relief.

The session was to be the stuff of fairytales. Riccardo Patrese went on a blinder of a lap, as he does from time to time. On Sunday he would break the record for the most Grand Prix starts in a career and pole position would be the perfect way of celebrating. Senna and Berger tried to beat him, but neither could do it. The men at Renault certainly appreciated Riccardo's gesture, Bernard Dudot grinning like a cat which had eaten a tasty canary.

"We didn't think it would be too bad," he smiled, "but we really didn't expect this. F1 has changed a lot. It's very difficult now, so we are very 'appy"

Senna, of course, was planning to upset Monsieur Dudot's applecart for Saturday. He wanted pole and what Ayrton wants, Ayrton usually gets. McLaren had been a bit lost in testing, but with a think-tank of more engineers than Enzo Osella dreams about (and he has large dreams), it all worked out in the end. As, of course, it always does at McLaren...

The 'Phase 1' MP4/5 (as this new car is called in the curiously over-complicated terminology of 'McLaren-speak') was a neat ploy. It sounded mightily impressive, designed to scare other teams, and could prove useful should the whole thing not (to revert to McLaren-speak) interface as anticipated in the prevailing conditions of Rio.

All week, McLaren personnel had been denying (using very long words to sound convincing) that the team was in trouble. It was necessary to keep the whole thing in perspective, they suggested. Most people did just that. It was impressive as a new car and when 'Phase 16' appears at Adelaide (let's not kid ourselves that these cars stay the same), I am sure it will have won many races.

When you work miracles once, everyone expects magic all the time and, within 24 hours, Senna laid on a suitable miracle, brushing aside Patrese's time.

"It was very good," Ayrton said of his pole lap, "but it wasn't perfect. I lifted for a precaution in one of the fast corners when I had to go past a Ferrari. I didn't believe we could go under 1m26s, but yesterday showed me it was possible. It just shows how much F1 has gone forward in a couple of seasons."

It is cheering to be able to report that, with the final qualifying completed, we didn't have an all-McLaren front row (winning too much creates bad publicity - a difficult concept for some to grasp). In fact there were seven teams represented in the top 10 grid positions. Senna and Prost were there, of course, Alain biding his time until race day. Patrese and Thierry Boutsen (still bruised from his testing accident) were second and fourth, Williams sitting on the fence with its FW12C before making the final dive with the FW13.

There was no such compromise at Ferrari. There were some rave men in the Ferrari pit last weekend. It was a case of get it right or get slaughtered. The team has come on.in Leaps and bounds with engine mapping since the early winter tests and the 640 was working well. Berger was third, Mansell sixth.

March was putting its money on known quantities and had the old 881s (with larger sidepods), both Capelli and Gugelmin looked set for more than outside chances of victory. The two seemed pre-occupied with finding the best race set-up... Capelli was seventh, Gugelmin 12th. Arrows was having a mixed old time of it with the completely new A11. Derek Warwick spoke passionately about how good the car could be and proved it with some brave lappery; Eddie Cheever walked around as if his whole world had caved in.

"I've been here 10 days," he groaned on Saturday," and 1 have done 11 laps." Eddie's engineers were going through a dictionary of problems from A-Z, not one was missed. Derek was eighth, Eddie (wince as you say it) 24th.

Down Benetton way, there was a quiet confidence about business. Johnny Herbert stunned Alessandro Nannini with much greater speed than he has shown in testing - a nice psychological touch - but Sandro responded positively. It should be a good fight between them this year. In Rio it was Johnny 10th and Sandro 1lth. Benetton was using the same 'old cars are reliable' theory as March and grid positions didn't seem overly important to the men in green (and yellow, and blue, and ... )

The men in yellow, at Lotus, didn't do so badly when you consider that the lead driver is not fully fit, the second driver is Satoru Nakajima and the car is new and, in places, radical. Once Nelson Piquet is fully recovered and 'the car a little more developed, it should be worth watching. Piquet was ninth, Nakajima (say it quietly) 21st.

Brabham's early progress slowed down as the heat rose. The cars were still very new and needed more sorting, but the basis is there for a winning car, no doubt about it. The drivers were disappointed to be sharing the seventh row.

Further back there were the usual heart-rending tales of everyday folk in the back half of an F1 grid. Dallara had few complaints with de Cesaris, and he had few complaints with the car; Minardi was ticking over waiting for its new car, although Martini showed considerable speed on Saturday morning; Rial had a car which was too new, but a good sorter in Christian Danner; and Tyrrell did what was possible with the unloved 017. Alboreto had most of the problems, leaving Jonathan Painter to give notice that he intends to outrun Michele all year.

Ligier was a sea of new faces and a new car (although the same length of lunch-break still remains). Olivier Grouillard showed Rene Arnoux that the skills of a development driver are useful, even to former Grand Prix winners. It was a good performance by Olivier. A little more testing should produce a lot more speed, at which point Rene will be faster.

At the back neither Zakspeed and Lola were ready for the season and both reckoned a finish would be the ultimate achievement - both cars debuting new F1 engines. Yamaha and Lamborgini, Yes, well everyone has to start somewhere.

There was little suggestion, after the race morning warm-up, of a Brazilian Grand Prix coming down to a battle between Prost and Mansell. Indeed, their names were at opposite ends of the list. Alain thought he had got rid of the understeer which had plagued his qualifying days, and Nigel was thoroughly depressed, having stopped on his very first lap with a recurrence of the gearbox problems of practice. Berger, too. All told, it didn't look hopeful for Ferrari. A lot of people thought they might fly in the early laps; few - least of all the drivers themselves - expected them to be around at the end.

How would the cars, with their semi-automatic gearboxes, get away from the grid? The drivers use a conventional clutch to get off the line, after which the automatic, lever-flicking change comes into play theoretically a particular advantage in the drag race down to the first turn. But would it play up? Before the race Mansell had a word with Derek Warwick (directly behind him on the grid), warning him that the Ferrari might be slow away.

It wasn't. It got away well - but not as well as Berger's sister car, which had a shout at the lead as the pack headed for the first corner. Four months without a race is a long time for these people, which per aps explains why we nearly always have an incident in the opening seconds at Rio. We did this time.

Patrese got the jump on Senna at the green light, but as they went up through the gears Ayrton edged left towards Riccardo, hoping to get the line into the corner. Behind, though, Berger had the Ferrari working to perfection; he had momentum on both the cars in front, and sought a path between them.

Senna was having none of that, thank you, so Gerhard jinked right whereupon Ayrton did the same, in a move reminiscent of his celebrated chop on Prost at Estoril last year. Once again, the attempted intimidation: the Ferrari kept coming... and coming. Side by side, they banged wheels, the Ferrari now half on the grass. Senna might have wished to flick left, out of the way, but found that area now occupied by Patrese, quietly minding his own business, taking his line.

After the dust cleared, the McLaren was without its nose, and the Ferrari, too, had frontal damage. Out came the pack onto the main straight, and the massed stands were mute. No throwing of streamers this time around: I-er-ton was nowhere.

Patrese was still in the lead of this, his 177th Grand Prix, a record. Before the race he and the Williams engineers had decided they would try to go the distance with only one tyre stop. You would not have guessed it from the way Riccardo drove those early laps. After the first he was a couple of seconds up on team mate Boutsen, with Mansell third, Prost fourth.

At the end of the opening lap Senna was into the pits, but Berger we never saw again, the Ferrari driver having pulled off. To no one's surprise, their interpretations of the first corner incident were at odds. "The only way out of the problem," Ayrton would say, "would have been to go straight up in the air. Patrese and Berger trapped me. That's all there is to it."

Gerhard thought there was a bit more to it than that. "Senna chopped across twice to try to make me back off, but he shouldn't try that with me. Never in my life will I back off in that situation... "

Prost, right behind them, had a front row seat for the action. Whose fault had it been? "I think," Alain carefully said, "it's better that I don't make any comment. These things happen so fast, you know..."

The next front runner departed from the scene on lap 4. Boutsen had not been directly involved in the first corner mayhem, but he was very close behind, and afterwards his team thought it possible the Renault V10 had ingested debris - some bits of which hit his helmet. At all events, the engine failed, and he was out. This left Mansell in second place, and at once the new Ferrari driver began to make inroads into Patrese's lead. By tap 7 the 1988 team-mates were nose-to-tail, and Prost - with ominous ease, it seemed - was catching the pair of them.

Before the race, Goodyear people said they expected all their teams the leading ones, anyway - to make two tyre stops, but Patrese, as we have said, had decided to make it through with one, and Prost, too, had given the matter consideration. Two years ago, after all, he won the race with precisely that stratagem. After mulling it over, though, Alain had settled on the two stop option, and, in fact, was the first of the hotshoes to come in, after only 14 laps. In the McLaren tradition, the tyre change was well executed, but dropped Prost - albeit temporarily - to seventh. On his new Goodyears, he swiftly made progress, but very soon he was to regret stopping so early.

I had a slight clutch problem before I came in," he said, "but two or three laps afterwards, I lost the clutch completely. Not funny, hein? I had more than 40 laps to do like that; and, more important, so had my tyres. With no clutch, there was no possibility for me to make another pit stop..."

Mansell, meantime, had gone into the lead, and in dramatic fashion. Patrese, he said later, had been less than willing to give up his position, and Nigel repeatedly found himself blocked in his attempts to get by. The traditional overtaking spot at Rio is the ultra-quick left-hander at the end of the main straight. On the inside, that is. Mansell jinked that way; so did Patrese. So he went to the right of the Williams, passing it on the outside, and raising dust as he did so. Riccardo, out-fumbled, was surprised, let's say.

The Ferrari was in for its first tyre stop at the end of lap 20, which let Patrese momentarily into the lead again - momentarily, because on lap 21 Prost went by him, with Mansell now third. Riccardo came in on lap 24, rejoining seventh.

After all the first tyre changes were done, the position was this: Prost led, but now clutchless and having to baby his tyres to go the full distance; then came Mansell, swiftly catching him, and the quite remarkable Johnny Herbert, justifying the faith which Peter Collins and the Benetton team have shown in him from the first. Only question was, would he have the stamina to go the distance? Rio is as exhausting a Grand Prix circuit as there is for a man experienced and fully fit. But this was Herbert's debut, and with leg injuries er far from completely healed. He had made his initial tyre stop early (lap 12), and it now began to look like a shrewd move.

A good stop it had been, too, unlike that of the unfortunate Warwick. From the start Derek had looked like playing a central role in the race, and when the Arrows pitted on lap 18, it held a solid third place. The mechanics had a problem with one of the rear wheels, admittedly, but 18 seconds is a time disastrous by modern F1 standards, and Warwick was back to eighth, with it all to do again.

And do it he did. By lap 28 he was back up to third, perhaps with better things ahead. But his second stop (lap 37) was also unacceptably slow. "Then," Derek sighed afterwards, "to make matters worse, I stalled the thing, which lost me more time..." A look at the final results made you wonder where Warwick might have finished, had the tyre changes gone to plan. Fifth at the end, he was but 17 seconds adrift of the winner, only 10 behind the second man...

At the front, though, it was all Mansell. The Ferrari driver had retaken the hobbled Prost on lap 28, pulling clear of the McLaren at the rate of two or three seconds a lap. We who watched knew nothing of Alain's problems, of course, and assumed he was playing his usual, disciplined game. The big effort would come in the late laps, wouldn't it? And, anyway, the Ferrari wouldn't finish, would it? Everyone was surprised to see it running still - and none more so than the man in the cockpit.

As the race wore down, though, the V12 sounded as clean and sharp as ever, the gear changes crisp. By the time Mansell came in for his second tyre change (lap 44), he had close to half a minute's lead over Prost. The stop, however, wasn't quite routine. As well as changing wheels, the Ferrari mechanics also changed the steering-wheel. In the course of the previous lap, Mansell had felt it coming loose, the locking mechanism faulty. It wasn't what you needed, he said, through a fifth gear corner...

Even so, he was only a few seconds behind Prost when he came back out, and in a matter of two laps, had retaken the lead, sweeping by the McLaren on the main straight with an case which made you think hard about all those stories of poor horsepower from Maranello's latest. "I think," Nigel said, "that the Honda was a bit stronger out of the corners, but by the end of the straight maybe the Ferrari had a slight edge." Prost said, yes, he'd go along with that.

Only now did it become obvious that Alain had a problem: why else would he not have come in for fresh tyres? Prost after all, simply does not make mistakes when it comes to tactics; he invented the game. But as the race went into its closing stages, there was clearly no question of a late charge indeed, it looked unlikely that Alain would hold on to second.

By lap 50, with 11 to go, the McLaren was barely two seconds ahead of a squabbling trio, comprising Gugelmin (cool and precise from the start), Patrese and... the amazing Mr Herbert. Further back, vigorously disputing fifth place, were Warwick and Nannini. At around this time Patrese, looked especially strong, setting a fastest lap almost a full second inside anyone else's best. But Riccardo's luck rarely holds, and this, his best race in a long time, finished smokily on lap 51. A camshaft pulley had failed.

As a scarcely believing Mansell continued on his way to victory, Prost showed again why he is the best driver on this earth. With no clutch, and with tyres which had been on the car since lap 14. it would have been so easy to make a mistake under pressure - and pressure there certainly was. Gugelmin, willed on by a Brazilian crowd which finally had something to cheer about, was close behind the McLaren, and Mauricio himself had Herbert's Benetton large in his mirrors.

But Prost is Prost. There were no slips. "I think my drive today was maybe one of the best of my life," he later reckoned. "You know, I've won quite a lot of races, but many of them didn't satisfy me very much. Today, in the circumstances, I feel as though I've won." And with the dead clutch? "Not taking anything away from Nigel or Ferrari... yes, 1 think I'd have won quite easily, for sure. This is going to be a very good car. For most of the race - until my tyres got really bad the balance was great."

There were no late position changes. Mansell, self-admittedly astonished, after all his practice troubles, to have finished, let alone won, took the flag a little under eight seconds ahead of Prost, with Gugelmin and Herbert next up, then Warwick and Nannini. "I was stuck for a long time on 13 wins," Nigel said, "and it was starting to bother me. I'm relieved to get on to 14, but 1 certainly didn't expect it to happen today. First race in a Ferrari... it's almost too much to take in..."

The spectators, of course, saved their loudest applause for Gugelmin. They had expected better than a third place finish for the home country at the beginning of the day, but they were pleased that the March finished so well. indeed, had Ivan Capelli's rear suspension not failed before half distance, the team might have had a very fine day, for the Italian had run ahead of his team mate from the start.

There were other disappointments, too. For reborn Brabham, whose sleepless mechanics saw both Brundle and Modena retire, after promising much in practice. For Cheever, who had the misfortune to be behind Schneider's Zakspeed when its suspension collapsed, putting both cars off the road. After an hour in the tight Arrows cockpit, Eddie found his legs buckling as he walked away.

For the crowd, there was disappointment from both its World Champions. They were sad to see Piquet quit with fuel pump failure after 10 laps, but the day had been a write-off long before that, for Senna had shattered their dreams in the opening seconds. It all seemed a little desperate for a reigning World Champion at the first corner of the first lap of the first race. Mansell and Prost, though, had no complaints. F1 is suddenly looking good once again.

This was a race.

Many thanks to Autosport and the writer for the above report. All rights reserved.
The series of historic reports comes to you from the archives of fan Harry Lythgoe
This page prepared 2nd April 1999.