On this Week #13 - Another famous Ferrari victory: 35 years ago
Nigel Mansell, being a true Englishman, always liked to fly British Airways First Class. It's hard to know exactly why: back in 1989 lie-flat beds were still six years away: even in First (although you could still get a seven-course menu for dinner).
As a result, Nigel got to know many of the crews pretty well, and on Sunday 26 March that year, he spoke to a British Airways captain that he knew, asking him to linger over the pre-flight checks a little bit from Rio de Janeiro to London. Mansell was racing in the Brazilian Grand Prix but he felt confident that his work would be done just a few laps after the start and that he could head back to the airport swiftly in time to get the early flight.
The Jacarepagua circuit hosted the first race of the 1989 season, and it was a significant one for Mansell, as it was his first for Ferrari. In fact, there were a number of firsts for Ferrari that year, as it was also the first race for the legendary Cesare Fiorio, formerly of Lancia, as Ferrari's sporting director: a role he would occupy until the start of 1991.
Ferrari had finished second in the manufacturers' championship the previous year, albeit an eternity behind the dominant McLaren-Honda team, which won all the races that year apart from one.
So it was clear that some sweeping changes needed to be made: one was the arrival of the hard-charging Mansell, who was the last driver to be personally selected by Enzo Ferrari, before the Commendatore died in August of 1988.
Another was the introduction of an entirely new car concept from former McLaren designer John Barnard, who had actually joined Ferrari back in 1987, but had to wait until 1989 – with the introduction of the new normally-aspirated regulations – to create a car from an entirely blank piece of paper.
The star turn of the radical-looking V12-powered Ferrari F1-89 was its paddle-operated gearshift: something that's entirely the norm now but straight out of science fiction 35 years ago. And while the benefits were obvious, with the driver never having to take his hands off the wheel, it came at the price of reliability, with several alternators failing in particular. This had led to a lot of frustration at Ferrari during pre-season testing – hence Mansell's conviction that at least he'd be able to get the early flight home on Sunday.
“The alternator was driven by a belt from the crank and this kept falling off,” said Barnard, many years later. “It took a long time to find out why, using high-speed photography on the dyno. At this time the V12 only had a four-bearing crank which started to whip at certain revs, causing the front pulley to shed the belt. The alternator would stop and so would the gearbox electronics.”
Ferrari even prepared a version of the car with a conventional gearshift, but Mansell was clearly faster with the paddles, breaking the lap record at Fiorano – and so the radical design stayed. In qualifying at Jacarepagua (the last race to be driven there, before the Brazilian Grand Prix moved to Interlagos) Gerhard Berger was third and Mansell sixth, underlining the basic speed of the package. Mansell even joked: “If we've got even half the horsepower that it sounds like we have, we'll probably win every race this year…”
Despite the hot and humid conditions, Mansell was already up to second by lap three: helped also by a series of misfortunes for others (including his team mate Berger, who collided with Ayrton Senna). On lap 16, Mansell passed Williams driver Riccardo Patrese for the lead until his pit stop on lap 20 – but by lap 28 he was back in the lead, having caught and passed Alain Prost in the McLaren. On lap 45, Mansell came into the pits once more to change five wheels: four on the car, plus the steering wheel, with the gear selector paddle now not working as it should.
With 15 laps to go, Mansell passed Prost once more, who had been forced to commit to a zero-stop strategy (entirely within the rules at the time) due to a broken gear linkage: had he stopped, he would never have got going again.
So Mansell became the first driver to claim a win on his Ferrari debut since Mario Andretti in 1971: a record that would stand until 2007, when Kimi Raikkonen won the Australian Grand Prix.
History doesn't record whether or not Nigel ended up catching the British Airways flight back that evening – but it was unlikely that he cared, as the legend of the Leone was well and truly born. He had just secured one of the most significant victories in Formula 1, because the cars we see today still owe a lot to the revolutionary Ferrari: a car that was truly ahead of its time. Like many ground-breakers, it was perhaps a bit too much, too soon: although it only recorded nine finishes between both drivers from the 16-race 1989 season, it was never classified lower than third, with three wins.
The 641 that followed it in 1990 was good enough for six wins, giving the team its best chance of winning both championships for years. But sadly, it wasn't to be, especially after Ayrton Senna took out Alain Prost at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix….
Arguably, the current technological arms race in Formula 1 all started with the Ferrari F1-89 that made its debut in Brazil. As Barnard puts it: “It was trying to do what they do today. The paddle shift, the torsion bar, the closed-in bodywork around the back that you still see now is, in my opinion, a development of the F1-89.”
