doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (11/04/85)
This weekend's Australian Grand Prix, run on the streets of Adelaide,
was the last race in this season's Formula One championship series.
Since Alain Prost had already secured the F1 World Driving championship,
the points race was primarily for the Car Constructor's championship.
Ferrari had a chance of beating McLaren, but only if the McLarens both
failed to gather any points and the Ferraris finished 1-2, 1-3 or 1-4.
The McLarens did fail to finish in the points (Prost's engine went out
very early in the race), but Alboreto's Ferrari was a DNF.
The race started with the now-familiar sight of Keke Rosberg and Ayrton
Senna (the two drivers to whom finishing second is worse than a DNF)
madly driving away from everyone else in the opening laps. Senna in
particular seemed to by vying for the "F1 World Hothead Championship".
His string of "bad luck" began when he had fallen about five seconds
behind Rosberg and was trying to catch up. He entered one turn about
20 MPH too fast, drove completely over the outside curb (or "kerb" :-)
and over a traffic island onto the pavement on the other side (he
was awfully fortunate that this was a street course). Amazingly, the
Lotus seemed to be undamaged by the aerial excursion and he hardly
missed a beat in his charge on Rosberg.
The "bad luck" continued when he caught up with Rosberg and was riding
inches behind him, trying frantically to get by. He failed to notice
that Rosberg had pulled to the right toward the pit entrance. He
blindly followed Rosberg to the right, and when Rosberg slowed to
enter the pits Senna ran smack into him, with Rosberg's left rear tire
ripping the right front wing cleanly off of the Lotus.
Because that incident occurred at the pit entrance, Senna had to make an
entire circuit of the track in order to return to his pit for repairs.
Senna refused to slow down in deference to the reduced downforce of a
half-gone wing, and made a number of excursions onto the outside curbs
around the course. Coming up on the pit entrance, he still didn't slow
and ended up sliding off into the dirt, ripping off the remaining (left)
half of the front wing, and *missing the pit entrance again*. He had to
go completely around the track again, this time with no downforce at
all on the front. He succeeded this time, and the Lotus pit crew did an
admirable job of replacing the front wing and all four tires in a 25
second pit stop.
During the pit stop it appeared that Senna got a good talking-to about
his foolish driving, and he seemed to take it to heart; his driving was
much more reasoned after the pit stop.
Rosberg made too many trips to the pits for new tires. On one pit stop
there was trouble securing the left front wheel, and Senna managed to
retake the lead, with Niki Lauda right behind. Lauda eventually took
the lead, but something drastic happened entering a right turn because
the car spun to the left into the wall, ending Lauda's "last F1 race".
Senna took the lead, and Rosberg eventually caught up. Then Senna's
engine went poof, and Rosberg retook the lead, for keeps this time.
The other "points race" in F1 is for FOCA Travelling Expense money.
These funds are distributed to the teams on the basis of the previous
year's points. So the low-scoring Ligier team must have been ecstatic
to see that their cars were running 2-3 behind Rosberg with only a
couple of laps to go -- an almost certain 10 points. Even so, they
apparently gave no team orders, because they let Phillippe Streiff
aggressively challenge Jacques Lafitte. Lafitte was having none of it,
and his car became about 40 feet wide. Coming up on the final lap,
Lafitte blocked Streiff so solidly that it broke Streiff's left front
suspension. Fortunately for Ligier, Streiff was able to limp the car
around the track for the final lap, and to hold onto third place.
Top three: Keke Rosberg, Williams/Honda (third straight #1 for W/H)
Jacques Lafitte, Ligier
Phillippe Streiff, Ligier
Car Constructor's championship: McLaren.
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Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {calcom1,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug