Weather conditions were dire as pole position taker Prost slid through the initial Sainte Devote variant for the first time. Ferrari’s René Arnoux and Derek Warwick collided behind him, with Warwick’s Renault team-mate Patrick Tambay unable to avoid the incident. Not a great start to the day for France…
Prost’s McLaren, running on Michelin tyres, led the first ten laps, until Nigel Mansell’s Goodyear-shod Lotus overtook him. Mansell built an eight-second lead over five laps before losing control by going over a painted white line and hitting the guardrail.
That gave Alain Prost a lead of almost 30 seconds as he inherited the lead, and he extended it to 35 on lap 21. But then something incredible started to happen…
Ayrton Senna had started in 13th position, having fallen 2.3 seconds behind Prost on a dry track, but in those conditions his Toleman , also with Michelin tyres, was a much more competitive proposition. Lap records on laps 23 and 24 proved he was the fastest man on the track, although the rain intensified at that point and he even had to slow down.
Prost had suffered an engine failure in the opening laps, but it was a brake problem that came to complicate things for him at that point, as Senna closed in and closed the gap. Race conditions also got progressively worse, with lap times dropping as much as five seconds.
It was at this point that Prost started waving his arm out of the cockpit over and over as he went down the finish straight. Race director Jacky Ickx was known for his toughness and had always let the race run in wet conditions, but even he could see the folly of continuing through the pouring rain.
Here we summarize how much Senna closed the gap to Prost in the final ten laps, before the race was red-flagged on lap 32, causing qualifying from the previous lap to count as the final result.
Lap 22 34.210s
Lap 23 31.266s
Lap 24 28.727s
Lap 25 26.141s
Lap 27 21.704s
Lap 28 18.139s
Lap 29 15.369s
Vuelta 30 11.779s
Lap 31 7.446s
Would Senna have won? Looking at Prost’s lap times and brake issues, no doubt. But his car had been damaged when he hit the curb at the harbor chicane, and Toleman’s designer, Pat Symonds , said there was no telling if the damage sustained to his right front rocker arm would have survived the rest of the race.
Another story that is always mentioned about this grand prix is that Bellof was catching up with Senna, while Senna was catching up with Prost. Looking at the distances between them, Bellof did narrow the gap to Senna significantly between laps 27 and 29, but not as much in those final two laps, and was still 13.695s behind the Brazilian at the end of lap 31.
Remember, Bellof started the race in last position and was driving the only non-turbo car on the grid – for one thing he had about 250bhp less, but his car’s power delivery was much more predictable and linear in those treacherous conditions than the turbos. of his rivals. With that advantage and that disadvantage with the rest, he had risen to tenth place in the first three laps and gained many other positions while his rivals lost their way in front of him.
Still, Bellof’s magnificent third-place finish disappeared from the history books when the Tyrrell team was disqualified from the championship. But it was a great display of his interesting talent, which sadly fizzled out a year later in a sportscar race at Spa.
The tragic irony was that the car he collided with, which caused his fatal impact, was being driven by Ickx, the man who decided to stop that Monaco race for safety reasons.
