Brazilian GP-Round 1, Sunday, April 12

After testing his new Marlboro-McLaren MP413 TAG Turbo, World Champion Alain Prost was quietly confident of taking his third consecutive World Drivers' Championship which started in the searing heat of Rio de Janeiro. In what looked like being the last year of turbo engine domination, the only team remaining the same as 1986 was Canon Williams Honda who got Nigel Mansell into pole position in practice (spectacular action from practice sessions has now been included for the first time). Otherwise, there were no fewer than fourteen new car/driver combinations, with Stefan Johansson joining Prost in the McLaren line-up, Gerhard Berger moving to Ferrari and Ayrton Senna acquiring Honda power for his Lotus, which was unfamiliarly turned out in the yellow of Camel rather than the black and gold of John Player. Mansell claimed that he was intending to start slowly and avoid the trouble he had found himself in at Rio the previous two years. By contrast, Brazilian Piquet had committed himself to winning in front of his home crowd as he had done in 1983 and 1986. As this video shows, not all the plans materialised, and tyre wear on the abrasive track was a vital factor, providing viewers with plenty of frantic action in the pits as well as on the circuit.