Pre-Qualifying ReportFriday mornings have increasingly been a dramatic time for Formula One this season, and Silverstone was the most dramatic yet: there were notable absences in the paddock. All three of Equipe Ligier, EuroBrun Subaru and Rial Racing had announced that they would be boycotting the British Grand Prix, and their absence on Friday morning confirmed that fact. Thus, Arrows-Lola – the 11th placed team in the World Constructors Championship – effectively received a bye to be two of the 20 guaranteed main-qualifying cars.
This also meant that pre-qualifying was in some ways more competitive than usual, with two teams (Arrows and Rial) who might be expected to progress, not fighting to do so. Only two teams managed to take both of their cars through to the show: Gabriele Tarquini (1st) and Pierluigi Martini (5th) both got through with their Dallaras, and Roberto Moreno (6th) and Olivier Grouillard (7th) shockingly progressed both of their Osellas.
The remaining teams all saw decisive disparities between both of their drivers: Leyton House were pleased with Mauricio Gugelmin (3rd), but mechanical difficulties consigned a blameless Eric Bernard to 17th of 20 cars, nearly two seconds down from his teammate.
Otherwise, the difference between coming in 4th and DNPQing was less than a second, which really put the responsibility for making the cut in the hands of the driver: Stefan Johansson (Monteverdi), Volker Weidler (Onyx), Fabrizio Giovanardi (Coloni), Alex Caffi (Minardi) and Geoff Brabham (Fondmetal) were the plucky pilots who progressed.
At the other end of things, Giovanna Amati came in more than five seconds off the pace in her First-Life, while Jean-Pierre Frey failed to set any time at all after slamming into the barriers on the outside of Abbey Curve; an injury RNG will follow, but his car was totalled.
AGS also had an awful time as their car just refused to work at Silverstone. Comas (16th) and Ferté (18th) secured the team's third straight double-DNPQ.
Main Qualifying ReportAs is always the case on this super-fast Silverstone layout, horsepower is king. This led to two Ferrari engines on the front two rows – Thierry Boutsen’s Benetton on pole, and Karl Wendlinger’s temperamental Zakspeed having one of its good days as he put it in fourth. The leading works Ferrari was Ayrton Senna in sixth… which makes Bruno Giacomelli’s P20 (seven places behind Satoru Nakajima in the next-worst Ferrari-powered car) raise serious questions about whether he is an adequate solution for the rest of Ferrari’s season.
Lamborghini-powered cars also flourished: Stefan Johansson put in a freakish lap to secure P7, Gabriele Tarquini’s Dallara-Lambo in P11 and Mark Blundell’s works Lambo in a suboptimal but non-awful P17.
The unfortunate four cars consigned to “Row 14” were Alex Caffi (Minardi), Johnny Herbert (Arrows-Lola), Geoff Brabham (Fondmetal) and Fabrizio Giovanardi (Coloni), who all fell behind a stellar pair of laps from the two Osella drivers, who managed to haul their creaking FA1Ms to a Row 13 lock-out.
Race ReportSo often, there has been chaos on Lap 1 this year and the British Grand Prix was no different. The 90-degree sweeper at Copse is an easy place to be forced off of the circuit, and that was exactly what Thierry Boutsen discovered when he found himself on the outside of the fast-starting Alain Prost. He next found himself on the outside of the run-off and sat in a crumpled car in the tyre barrier, but was able to make the short walk back to the Benetton garage.
However, if his day sounded bad it was nothing compared to the horror show experienced by Ron Dennis’ Footwork Project Four team. In synchronised incidents, Stefano Modena and Aguri Suzuki each tried and failed to go side-by-side through Becketts: first, Modena was spun out as Sandro Nannini attempted to get back to where his car ought to be, then futher back Suzuki tried to get past Hitoshi Ogawa only to drive into his compatriot’s sidepod and break a wishbone. One of these incidents laid down the debris that would later puncture one of Pierluigi Martini’s Avons, but we really have no way of knowing which. What we do know is that this puncture could have been avoided if the race director had been able to deploy a safety car for marshals to pick up the debris.
As we’ve already established, Silverstone is a power circuit; this can take its toll on fragile machinery, such as Ferrari engines. A spectacular blowout from Satoru Nakajima on Lap 9 was the first of multiple such occurrences: it would be followed by mechanical DNFs for Senna on Lap 22, van de Poele on Lap 32 and the sluggish Giacomelli on Lap 39, all of which left Karl Wendlinger as the only remaining Ferrari-powered runner in the race – but he was running very well indeed.
After falling behind both Mansell and Senna at the start, he had consolidated the fifth place that would absolutely have secured his first Formula One points. When Senna retired, that became fourth, putting him in prime position to capitalise if one of the podium-running trio of Prost, Alesi and Mansell had difficulties. On Lap 45, it happened: the gearbox on Prost’s McLaren gave up the ghost and he had to trundle back to the pits. Wendlinger was up into the podium positions.
On the following lap, things got a lot weirder. First, Nigel Mansell suffered a similar transmission failure, causing him to immediately lose pace. Wendlinger inherited second place, with Sandro Nannini to inherit third place. At least, he would have done, if not for being unsighted when he came across his teammate’s car. As it coasted back to the pits firmly on the racing line, it struggled to put the power down out of Club, Nannini was unsighted and had to take late evasive action to avoid making contact with his crawling teammate.
Nannini spun off into the gravel, and a startled Mansell pulled off the track on the opposite side of the tarmac, creating the bizarre sight of a stricken Williams on either side of the straight leading to Abbey. Their respective drivers each climbed out of the car and headed in opposite directions.
The principal beneficiary of this lunacy was Andrea de Cesaris; the Italian who qualified his Tyrrell in P12 continued a season where he has kept his nose uncharacteristically clean to finish all but one race, and inherited enough positions to climb from sixth to third in the space of two laps as the last car on the lead lap at that point in the race. His teammate Gerhard Berger also stepped up into the points behind Blundell’s Lambo in a career-best fourth place, and Frentzen’s Lotus in fifth.
But of course, the runaway winner – indeed, the only driver of a top car still running to take the chequered flag – was the exciting Jean Alesi, who claimed his first ever British Grand Prix. Although he missed out on the podium, Blundell did at least collect the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy as the leading Commonwealth driver in the race.
There are no changes to the pre-qualifying teams, but if your team wishes to join Williams in boycotting the German Grand Prix if there is no safety car then please do announce it. One would suggest that such a protest from Sir Frank might be a little bit more telling
Jean-Pierre Frey seemed to be limping heavily in the wrong direction to get to the medical centre, but once he was helped to find it he was passed fit to drive again if his team so wished. Not that it matters because First-Life have run out of spare parts and must downsize to a one-car team for the forseeable future (have agreed this with Baker).
The usual 10k reward still applies if anyone wants it.