1986 Spanish Grand Prix

This is the complete race as broadcast on LIVE TV.

There had not been a Spanish Grand Prix for five years. The local authorities in Jerez, a town
in the southern part of Spain, built a brand new track to get the Spanish Grand Prix back onto the
F1 circuit. Ayrton Senna was again on pole in his John Player Special Lotus ahead of the two Williams
cars of Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell. The McLarens of Alain Prost and Keke Rosberg were next ahead
of the Ligier of Rene Arnoux and the Benetton of Gerhard Berger. Ferrari was struggling with
Stefan Johansson 11th on the grid and Michele Alboreto 13th.

At the start Senna takes the lead, Nelson Piquet slips into second place, followed by Keke Rosberg and
Alain Prost, and then a slow starting Nigel Mansell in the Williams. But Mansell fought back and began to
charge past the field, and on the 39th lap he overtook Senna for the lead. Nigel then pulled out a four
second lead over Ayrton, but the Brazilian was not finished. Senna began to close back up on Mansell, with
Alain Prost hanging close to Senna. There was already some bad blood between Senna and Mansell, as at
the previous race in Brazil, Mansell went off into the tire barriers and accused Senna of blocking.

With 10 laps to go, Senna challenged for the lead and forced Mansell to lift, which allowed a lurking Alain
Prost to sneak into second place. Mansell decided to go for a desperate gamble, and pitted for fresh
tires with only 9 laps to go. When he emerged from the pits, he was 20 secs behind Senna. Mansell
showed all of his skill as he carved into Senna’s lead at a rate of four seconds per lap. But ahead of him
was Alain Prost, who was not going to give up second place easily. Mansell overtakes Prost, but in the
process he has a slow lap, and loses a little ground to Senna. On the final lap, Mansell was only 1.5 seconds
behind Senna. The final lap was epic, and the cars crossed the finish line side-by-side, the victory going
to Senna by only a .014 margin, the second closest finish in F1 history.

Quality is just “good” on this race (not excellent), a bit grainy, but complete, and one of the rare races
from the 1986 season. Excellent commentary (as usual) by Murray Walker and James Hunt.