19 OctoberTyrrell weren't the only team left scrambling for a replacement in the wake of Pirro's injury. A week after the Spanish Grand Prix, Alessandro Nannini was maimed in a helicopter accident over his Siena vineyard, suffering a severed right forearm. Nannini underwent surgery to save his arm, but the demands of Formula One are likely to be too much for such an injury.
Benetton turned to Gabriele Tarquini to fill in for the rest of 1990, and it is understood that he may be considered for a full-time role for 1991 as Nannini was due to drive for them in that year too.
With Pirro out of the running along with Nannini, Ferrari's vacancy for 1991 is expected to go to Jean Alesi. Alesi had been approached previously by Williams, but it's believed that Ferrari have compensated Williams in some form to allow Alesi to join them.
Tyrrell have turned to Johnny Herbert - who has prior experience in filling in at Tyrrell, at last season's Belgian & Portuguese GPs - to take Pirro's place in the #4 car. Herbert had been racing for "Team LeMans" in Japanese Formula 3000 this year, and took 5th in the most recent round to be held at Suzuka on the 23rd of September.
Finally, Claudio Langes has left EuroBrun, but rumours of the team's impending collapse were quietened as Ukyo Katayama was announced to take over the #34 car alongside Weidler for the final two rounds. It's believed that Gary Brabham was also contacted in the hopes of hiring him for the Australian Grand Prix, but Katayama had more funding to offer for the rest of the season.
Competition was tight for the four pre-qualifying positions, but try as he might, Aguri Suzuki couldn't beat the time set by his teammate on Bernard's only flying lap before he quit with gearbox trouble. Weidler was sidelined with an engine fire, and it was left for the
debutante Ukyo Katayama to represent EuroBrun for the rest of the weekend. Grouillard and the Lotuses also progressed.
20 October
Gugelmin can do nothing more than three installation laps, thus granting Alliot the final grid slot. Gachot's engine didn't even last a single lap before blowing up on Subaru's home soil.
At the business end of the grid, normal service had resumed for Ayrton Senna as he picked up his first pole since Spa, but the Brazilian was surprisingly dejected with the result.
Ayrton Senna wrote:They put the pole [position] on the wrong side of the grid, it is off the racing line and it gets dusty there. It is not fair that the driver on pole gets the worse side of the grid.
It was a good day for the substitutes, with Tarquini, Herbert and Katayama getting 6th, 8th & 14th respectively, all beating their teammates (granted, in Katayama's case it was more by default) as a result. It was not such a good day for Ciaran O'Driscoll, however, as the Irishman was once again left stranded with an empty fuel tank in the pit lane of the West layout, just before the bridge between Spoon and 130R.
Ciaran O'Driscoll wrote:I messed up, I had just done the first hot lap [of the run] but there just wasn't enough fuel to do another and then get pack to the pits. I thought I was in a good rhythm though, so I took a chance and it didn't pay off. Looking at Michele's pace, I could have been 12th, but I don't think beating Mansell [for 10th] would have been possible.
21 OctoberDisaster struck at turn 1 for Ayrton Senna! As he had feared, the dustier side of the track led him to bog down at the start, allowing Berger to take the lead! To make matters worse, Boutsen bumped wheels with the championship leader, and Senna was lucky to avoid being forced into the gravel, but dropped to 6th - just where Berger needed him if he wanted to take the lead in the title race.
Behind Senna, Patrese and Mansell also collided and lost their front wings, and Nakajima also needed repairs. However, his compatriot Katayama was flying, climbing up to 7th by the end of the first lap! Caffi, Capelli, Alesi and O'Driscoll (who ended his first lap in 11th) scrapped behind the rookie, allowing him to escape, but it would be a lonely race for him with the likes of Senna, Prost, Boutsen and Berger ahead. On his fourth lap, O'Driscoll picked off his opposition in quick succession, with a slipstream-aided overtake on Alesi into turn 1 and a daring dive down the inside of Capelli into the hairpin right as he got a face full of smoke from the expiring Cosworth V8 of Caffi's Dallara. At this point, Senna had passed Tarquini, and now had his sights set on the triple champion, Alain Prost.
In the end, a simple slipstream-aided pass into the first corner at the beginning of their seventh lap was enough to send Senna past Prost and up into 4th place. Meanwhile, Tarquini was edging away from Katayama, but on lap 8, O'Driscoll took 7th away from the local hero and began chasing down Tarquini, passing him a lap later into the 2nd Degner curve. Mansell, Patrese and Nakajima were all on the move too, and the likes of Katayama were quick work for them. Katayama eventually suffered a broken driveshaft at the exit of 130R on his 16th lap, and his dream of a dazzling debut fizzled out.
Boutsen retired on lap 14 after putting up no effort to stop Senna from taking second the lap before (he had passed Herbert for third on lap 12), and from that point onwards he could focus his efforts on hunting down Berger. Lap 14 also saw the first of the scheduled pitstops as O'Driscoll came in for new tyres to see him through the rest of the race, dropping him between Patrese and Nakajima in 9th.
It took 8 laps for Senna to grind the gap to Berger down to almost nothing, and on lap 21, Berger pitted, hoping to get the undercut against Senna on fresher tyres. Senna's response was predictable - he put in a blistering in-lap without Berger in the way, and left the pits ahead of Berger to the delight of the crowd. Berger hung on, but in the end couldn't find a way past his team-mate. With 69 points to Berger's 60, and 7 wins to Berger's 4, Ayrton Senna had sealed his second drivers' title.
Behind them, Herbert ran a lonely race, with Prost dropping behind him after the Frenchman's pitstop, with his gearbox failure imminent. Nakajima kept up the pressure in the race for 3rd with another point, but the big surprises would be between him and his teammate. O'Driscoll drove a clean race to take another 3 points for Arrows at their main sponsor Footwork's home race, but behind him was...
Olivier Grouillard.
For the first time since the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, an Osella has scored points, just in time for Vincenzo Osella to hand the team over to Gabriele Rumi. The Osella mechanics celebrated as if they had won the title and not just two points, as they jumped into the automatic pre-qualifying spots for 1991 with a chassis design which was nearly two years old.
And with that, Lotus had been kicked back into the pre-qualifying abyss.
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Constructors' Championship:- (C) Marlboro McLaren-Honda: 129
- Scuderia Ferrari: 56
- Camel Tyrrell-Mugen Honda: 53
- Canon Williams-Renault: 32
- Footwork Arrows-Ford: 23 (CB: 1x2nd, 2x3rd, 2x4th)
- SCM Minardi-Ford: 23 (CB: 1x2nd, 2x3rd, 1x4th)
- BMS Scuderia Italia Dallara-Ford: 22
- Benetton-Ford: 15
- Brabham Motor Racing Developments-Judd: 8
- Kronenbourg AGS-Ford: 7
- Fondmetal Osella Squadra Corse-Ford: 2 (CB: 1x8th)
- Ligier Gitanes-Ford: 2 (CB: 2x9th)
- Leyton House-Judd: 2 (CB: 1x9th)
- Camel Team Lotus-Lamborghini: 1
Drivers' Championship:- (C) Ayrton Senna: 69
- Gerhard Berger: 60
- Alain Prost: 32
- Satoru Nakajima: 30
- Nigel Mansell: 24
- Emanuele Pirro: 19
- Riccardo Patrese: 17
- Ciaran O'Driscoll: 16
- Thierry Boutsen: 15
- Pierluigi Martini: 13
- Paolo Barilla: 10
- Gabriele Tarquini: 9 (CB: 1x1st)
- Andrea de Cesaris: 9 (CB: 1x2nd)
- Roberto Moreno: 8
- Michele Alboreto: 7 (CB: 1x2nd)
- Alessandro Nannini: 7 (CB: 2x4th)
- Stefano Modena: 5
- Johnny Herbert: 4 (CB: 1x3rd)
- Stefan Johansson: 4 (CB: 1x4th)
- Alex Caffi: 4 (CB: 1x5th)
- David Brabham: 3 (CB: 1x4th)
- Jean Alesi: 3 (CB: 1x5th, 1x6th, 1x7th)
- Olivier Grouillard: 2 (CB: 1x8th)
- Philippe Alliot: 2 (CB: 1x9th)
- Ivan Capelli: 2 (CB: 1x11th)
- Derek Warwick: 1
