1990 San Marino Grand Prix - Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari

May 13, 1990

By his own admission it was not a story that Riccardo Patrese liked much to remember.  It was a certain race victory, lost due to a lack of concentration and a simple mistake. “Imola in 1983 was a race I should have won. I led, then my pitstop was slow and Patrick Tambay’s Ferrari went ahead. Six laps to go, I get the lead back. And then I relax a little, I say to myself, OK, I have won this Grand Prix. At the Aqua Minerale corner the surface was breaking up, I put a wheel a few centimetres off-line, and I crash. There were many races when I was in the lead, when the car broke down.  But in this case I had a crash that was purely my mistake. You were going to win …… and then you lose and you know that it’s all on your shoulders. You made a mistake.  It’s even harder to accept.”

1983 San Marino GP: Patrese crashes shortly after assuming the lead.

As difficult as this was to face his mistake, there was another element of this failure that twisted the knife a little deeper into Patrese’s heart.

“The tifosi cheered: they prefer a Frenchman to win in a Ferrari than an Italian to win in any other car. I was so angry with myself I didn’t hear them cheering.  But I saw it on TV when I got home, and it made me feel even worse.”

And while the Italian was able to secure a victory later that season in South Africa, the loss in Imola was a wound that Patrese would carry for seven years.  He spent two seasons driving the hopeless Euroracing Alfa Romeo followed by another stint with Brabham.  Towards the end of the 1987 season, when Bernie Ecclestone decided to give up being a team boss, he recommended Patrese to Frank Williams. “When I went to Williams it was like a camera which had finally come into focus.”  He was very well liked within the team and had an excellent rapport with Patrick Head.  His cause was also aided by the fact that he was much easier to live with then Nigel Mansell and more of a team player as well. “You’d call Riccardo up,” Head would recall “ask him to test at a moment’s notice, and he’d say, ‘Fine. No problem. I’ll be there’. He’s not a selfish man, that’s the point, which is quite rare in a racing driver. His ego’s under control, too. Which is also quite rare.”  The relationship with the Williams team was to be the most productive of the Italian’s career.

Riccardo Patrese 1990:  At home in the Williams team.

The 1990 Formula One season was the second season in which the Williams was powered by the first pneumatic valved Renault V10 engine.  It was a mixed year for the Williams team.  When the cars were running reliably they were able to show well.  However, there were problems with the engine and gearbox which restricted good results on several occasions.  The San Marino Grand Prix was a high point.

The dominant cars at the time were the McLarens and the Ferraris, however at Imola, there was some doubt about the staying power of the McLarens, for on this demanding circuit they were on the limit of their fuel consumption. But if the McLarens were not up to their usual immaculate level of performance. the Ferraris seemed set to have it all their own way after dominating recent testing at Imola. As it turned out the Italian cars flattered to deceive.  In qualifying their times were effortlessly beaten by both the McLarens and the Williams.  Ayrton Senna (McLaren) captured the pole position with a time of 1:23.220, with Gerhard Berger (McLaren) second, Patrese third, Thierry Boutsen (Williams) fourth and then the Ferraris of Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost.

Sunday's warm-up showed that the McLarens had much less of an advantage with race tyres and fuel than they had enjoyed in qualifying.  At the lights, Berger made a tremendous start, but unfortunately missed a shift which allowed first Senna, and then Boutsen to move in front of him.  But just as he did so, Mansell's Ferrari darted on to the grass and sent up such a thick dustcloud that confusion broke out behind him. At the end of the first lap Senna led Boutsen by 1.5 seconds, with Berger third, Patrese fourth, Jean Alesi (Tyrrell) holding an aggressive but short lived fifth ahead of Mansell and Prost.

1990 San Marino GP: Berger fighting hard to maintain his lead.

Senna held on in front for only three laps before he suffered a freak wheel failure which caused his tyre to go flat.  As a result he wobbled out of the lead and into a sand trap.  Berger was already chasing Boutsen hard, but the Belgian seemed capable of holding the McLaren until a missed shift damaged the Renault engine, which gave up on lap 17. Berger was 1.6 seconds ahead of Patrese when he moved into the lead and he was able to increase this only slightly. But Patrese had his hands full with Mansell, who had started the race on the softer  Goodyear "C" tyres that the Ferrari's well-balanced chassis could use most effectively.  Prost, on the harder "B" compound tyres, was also trying to catch Patrese, but it would only be Mansell, in a brave move, who would be able to put a Ferrari in front of a Williams at Imola.  The Frenchman was complaining over the radio of oversteer and on lap 28 he made an unexpected stop for "C" tyres.  This allowed Alessandro Nannini (Benetton) to slip by into fourth place.

With close duels being waged up and down the field, the leading cars were losing time in traffic.  As the race started its second half, though, Mansell had carved Berger's lead down to half a second, with Patrese four seconds behind, followed by Nannini and Prost.  On lap 36, at the fastest point on the circuit, the notorious Tamburello curve, Mansell made his move on Berger with frighteningly spectacular results.  As the Briton came alongside he put two wheels on the grass and almost immediately spun wildly.  Despite raising dust and spreading rubber all over the road, Mansell remarkably managed to regain control of the car and carried on.  Almost four precious seconds were lost, but the Brit was quickly shaving down the gap again.  He had reduced it to just over two seconds when the engine, which had been trailing smoke almost since the beginning, blew up to the disappointment of the tifosi.  

With one Ferrari retired and the other languishing in fourth place one would expect that there was little to hold the attention of the Italian crowd.  It was then that Patrese began to close on Berger. The Italian had been driving an savvy race, holding back after a slow start and saving his big effort for the end.  With 16 laps remaining he was close enough to challenge Berger.

1990 San Marino GP: No mistakes this time. Patrese takes his third F1 victory. 

And this time, unlike 1983, the tifosi were cheering him on .....  

As chance would have it Berger was experiencing a technical issue.  As the team had feared he was having fuel consumption issues, made all the worse by a damaged engine piston and this meant that he was unable to richen the mixture to compensate for the loss of power.  Patrese made his first attempt to get past the Austrian at Rivazza, but the tight nature of the corner allowed Berger to defend and it took him half a dozen laps to recover.  However, on lap 51, with 10 remaining, he sailed past the leading McLaren, which was being driven on the limit with brakes and tyres obviously past their best.  Ironically the overtake seemed oddly familiar.  "In fact, when I overtook Gerhard today it was exactly the same place where I overtook Tambay in 1983" he recalled.  "And because of that, when I  overtook Gerhard my first thought was about 1983. I said 'OK, that year I made a mistake - this year I cannot make a mistake.'"  He didn't.  Once past the McLaren he was able to open a gap and took the chequered flag four seconds to the good.  It was the 36 year-old Italian's third victory in a career that then spanned 195 Grand Prix starts.

"It's difficult for me to find the words to express my happiness about this win," he grinned as he spoke in the press conference. "It is a race I really wanted, ever since 1983 when I lost here with four laps to go."  Patrese drove with commendable intelligence, however after the race, surely the least complaining and most gracious of that era's racing drivers typically gave credit  to his team.  A day when something lost had been regained in the finest of fashion.  A ghost vanquished.  A wound healed.  And unlike 1983, the Imola crowd cheered their countryman to the echo.  He deserved nothing less.

1990 San Marino GP: For Patrese, it was lost spoils reclaimed.

        
    

   

1990 French Grand Prix - Circuit Paul Ricard

July 8, 1990

Leyton House Racing (formerly March Racing) looked to be the most promising new outfit on the Grand Prix scene in 1988, its second season of F1 racing, when Ivan Capelli gave the McLaren-Honda drivers a fright on two memorable occasions. Under team chief Ian Phillips and its highly rated designer Adrian Newey, then 27, the only way for the Japanese-funded project seemed to be up. They were a happy group.

Adrian Newey: The start of a great F1 career.

By the 1990 Mexican Grand Prix, though, Leyton House Racing was almost literally flat on its back. The cars were uncompetitive, the crew tight-lipped. And Phillips had been absent since the second round in Brazil, suffering from meningitis. Leyton House thus suffered something of a leadership vacuum. In Mexico both Ivan Capelli and Mauricio Gugelmin failed to qualify and shortly afterwards technical director Newey and chief draftsman Tim Holloway left the team.

Like the boss’s sickness, the problems were all curable – eventually. Unhappily, they appeared to be more fundamental than anyone could have imagined. The CG901 was aerodynamically very advanced. Newey had pursued a design concept pioneered by Benetton’s Rory Byrne, by concentrating most of the car’s aerodynamic performance on its front wings. The principle offers advantages but at the same time it was extremely sensitive to change. Before he departed, Newey completed major modifications for the car and these proved extraordinarily successful at the next round on the calendar, the French Grand Prix.

This was Ferrari’s 100th Grand Prix and victory did not come easily. Alain Prost’s undiminished ability played a vital part, together with a car that stayed healthy despite a persistent electrical problem. The Ricard circuit, hosting the French Grand Prix supposedly for the last time, took a sort of revenge for its rejection by posing physical and technical problems which had already taxed the initiative of drivers and engineers to the limit in two days of qualifying. Although the Ferrari men didn’t get all their calculations right, at least they made far fewer mistakes than their rivals.

Outshining all the big names, though, were Leyton House who staged a spectacular return to form at Ricard and, by staying out when everybody else pitted for fresh tyres. Capelli came within a whisker of an unbelievable victory.

Ivan Capelli

Ricard can be a tricky circuit, and on Friday, Nigel Mansell adjusted his Ferrari to the conditions better than anybody. The result was a time that could not be beaten in Saturday’s changing conditions. Gerhard Berger (McLaren) claimed second on the grid with Ayrton Senna (McLaren) third. Prost, who was on pole here last year, blew the special qualifying engine in his spare car and was pleased to be fourth fastest with a time set in his race car with its less powerful race-spec engine. The Leyton House entries qualified seventh (Capelli) and tenth (Gugelmin), which was an achievement in itself after Mexico. But it would not be until Sunday morning, when the team’s engineers realised that they could run non-stop on Goodyear’s softer “C” compound if the drivers avoided sliding the cars too much. Everyone else – even those starting on the harder and safer “B” compound – was planning to stop for tyres.

The run to the first corner was a duel between Mansell and Berger, with Mansell gaining the advantage. However, Berger deftly darted past him and into the lead at Signes. As they crossed the line at the end of the first lap Berger was 1.1s ahead of Mansell, with Senna only 0.4s back in third place. Alessandro Nannini (Benetton) lay fourth, ahead of Riccardo Patrese (Williams), Prost and Thierry Boutsen (Williams).

Capelli, having made a good start, got a nasty surprise when Prost braked early at the first corner. The Leyton House, with its wheels wreathed in smoke, banged Goodyears with Boutsen, and the Italian began to worry about the vibration that he could suddenly feel through his steering. On lap 10, Senna now past Mansell and into second, was stepping up the pressure on Berger. But with tyre stops planned by all of them, overtaking was likely to be a wasted exercise. Meanwhile, Nannini closed on the three leaders. Patrese lay fifth, stalked by a frustrated Prost. Nelson Piquet (Benetton) was seventh, with Jean Alesi (Tyrrell) and Capelli closing up. Senna did not finally move into the lead until lap 28, when Berger was already heading for his pit and a change of tyres. It took 12.7s , bad enough compared with Prost's Ferrari stop on the previous lap (7.6s) but nowhere near as disappointing as Senna's stop of more than 16s. That left him in eight place behind Piquet, with it all to do.

1990 French GP - Capelli worked his strategy to perfection.

When Senna stopped for tyres on lap 30, it was Capelli - first of the "non-stoppers" - who took over the lead. Team-mate Gugelmin moved into second place and started a defence against Prost that would last for the next 20 laps. On television, the BBC's James Hunt was anxious to point out that the Leyton House 1-2 was no more than a temporary and artificial situation "probably to get their sponsors on the telly" which would be resolved as soon as they made their essential tyre stops. Hunt would later eat those words as he realised, like many team managers in the pits, that the Leyton House boys had pulled off a magnificent bluff.

Gugelmin's day ended with 28 laps to go when his Judd EV engine gave up. Ironically, Capelli had taken his own Judd round to 14,000rpm (1500rpm more than permitted) - and it held out almost to the finish. The most important part of the Leyton House performance was the speed of the cars on the straight. With much better acceleration, especially because his car was quite good through the corner before the straight, under braking, Prost was never close enough to risk an overtake. The only place where it may have been possible was the double-right corner, and it was clear that the Frenchman would do everything he could in the last laps.

Capelli seemed to have enough speed on the straight to hold Prost. But the gap stayed at under 1 second for the last 16 laps, except when traffic allowed Capelli to pull out a bit more. With three laps to go, Prost made his final bid in the double right-hander after Signes. He did not know that Capelli was getting signals that his oil and fuel pressures were sagging, so the overtaking moment was memorable. Although Capelli hung on, he was nursing home a sick Judd. Senna, having battled his way back up to third place, was no threat, being almost 10 seconds back.

So close, yet so far - Capelli has to settle for second.

In his anxiety to greet Capelli's second place, Gustav Brunner forgot the FISA rules and bounded over the pit wall as soon as his car limped across the finishing line. It could have cost the Leyton House team a hefty fine, or worse. As it happened, he was let off with a warning.Brunner was entitled to celebrate, though. "This morning, I would have been happy with just the one point we needed to avoid pre-qualifying in the second half of the season," he enthused. "Instead, we ended up leading for more than 40 laps!"

It was an amazing achievement. From the double non-qualification in Mexico two weeks previous, here were the turquoise cars taking over the lead of the French Grand Prix and dishing out what should have been a hiding to McLaren-Honda and Fiat-Ferrari. It was proof-positive that it takes more than money to win in F1 ..... innovation, hard work and belief can carry even the smallest team to the front and Leyton House surely proved it at Paul Ricard that day.

1990 French GP Podium - what a difference two weeks make.