After his first victory in Formula 1 under torrential rain at the second Grand Prix of the 1985 season in Portugal, Ayrton Senna kept on displaying speed in his second year competing in the world’s main motorsports category.
At Estoril, he started an impressive series of four pole positions (Portugal, Ímola, Monaco, and Detroit) in five races. But there was a catch: his Lotus race car ended up letting the driver down on several occasions keeping him from turning his good performances in the practice sessions into Sunday wins.
1985’s tenth race would take place in Austria, the birthplace of three-time champion Niki Lauda, who took the chance to announce he was leaving GP racing for good at the end of the season (he had already left Formula 1 and come back a few years prior). With Alain Prost as his McLaren teammate, the Austrian was unable to keep up with the Frenchman – who, at 30 years old, would become that year’s world champion.
At the end of the qualifying session, Ayrton Senna vented to the Brazilian reporters present in Austria:
“I paid for all my sins in this qualifying session.”
He was referring to the hard time he had in setting up his car for the speedy Zeltweg track, where he wasn’t able to go beyond a 14th place on the grid. Alain Prost took the pole position with 1min25s490. The Frenchman was in second place overall, trailing Ferrari’s Michele Alboreto by just five points. The Italian started in the ninth, allowing Prost to close the gap. Next to the Frenchman, Nigel Mansell rounded out the first row while Niki Lauda and Keke Rosberg shared the second one.
Ayrton and his Lotus team still had to fix and make many adjustments in only a few hours before the race. On Sunday morning, after a satisfying practice session, Ayrton Senna got out of his car with a mischievous smile on his face and said to those nearest:
“We’re going to give them hell!”
And he really did. Strangely, the Lotus responded very well to the track conditions when running on a full tank.
At the first start, Lauda jumped ahead until a crash involving several drivers, such as Teo Fabi, Gerhard Berger, De Angelis, and even the championship leader, Michele Alboreto, interrupted the race.
When drivers were about to finish the first lap, race officials waved the red flag calling for a new start. It worked in Alboreto’s favor since he had barely moved the first time. The Ferrari driver, just like Fabi, Berfer, and De Angelis, would use their teams’ spare cars for the restart.
When everyone was in place on the Osterreichring straight, they restarted the race, and a new protagonist emerged: Ayrton Senna. The Brazilian put his vast repertoire of overtaking techniques to use, closing out the first lap in tenth place. Prost also started well and got back the lead, followed by Rosberg and Lauda.
Rosberg retired in the fourth lap with problems in his Williams Honda engine. Senna passed several adversaries – such as Tambay, Alboreto, and Fabi – until he breached the scoring zone. By the end of the tenth lap, he was in sixth place.
Performing very well, the Brazilian’s Lotus had caught up to Mansell – a hard driver to overtake. The Williams driver passed Elio De Angelis, and Ayrton Senna took the chance to get close to his Lotus teammate on lap 19 and overtake him three laps later.
While Senna tried to get close to Mansell, Prost tried to open a gap from Niki Lauda. Lap after lap, the Austrian was closing the gap between them. On lap 26, the Brabham’s BMW engine slowed Piquet down, and Ayrton climbed to fourth place.
Lauda took the lead after Prost’s pit stop. But the Frenchman was lucky enough to come back in second place since Mansell stopped on the grass due to engine issues. That meant Senna was headed to the podium in third place.
All signs pointed to an easy Lauda win until his McLaren’s turbocharger failed, frustrating the Austrian crowd in Zeltweg. Prost and Senna finished the race, taking first and second places, respectively. It was the second Prost vs Senna in Formula 1’s history – the first was at the legendary 1984 Monaco GP.
Michele Alboreto (Ferrari) was not too happy with Senna, as he had battled head-to-head for the title with the race winner, Alain Prost (McLaren). Alboreto put pressure on Senna at the end of the race, but he couldn’t wrestle the second position away from the Brazilian, who stepped on the podium for the fifth time in his career – the second as a Lotus driver.
At the end of the race, the embittered Italian driver declared: “This Brazilian guy races like a madman as if he were in Formula 3”.
Austrian gp
1º
A. Prost
2º
N. Mansell
3º
N. Lauda
4º
K. Rosberg
5º
N. Piquet
6º
T. Fabi
7º
E. de Angelis
8º
P. Tambay
9º
M. Alboreto
10º
R. Patrese
11º
M. Surer
12º
S. Johansson
13º
D. Warwick
14º
Ayrton Senna
15º
J. Laffite
16º
T. Boutsen
17º
G. Berger
18º
A. de Cesaris
19º
P. Ghinzani
20º
E. Cheever
21º
P. Alliot
22º
S. Bellof
23º
Achenson
24º
H. Rothengatter
25º
J. Palmer
26º
P. Martini
51
laps
26
cars
15
Retirements
1’29”241
fastest lap
1º
Cloudy weather
podium
1º
A. Prost
2º
Ayrton Senna
3º
M. Alboreto
2º
final position
6º
position in championship following the race
14º
starting place
6
championship points accumulated
1’31”666
best lap
I was very relieved to finish the race amongst the points. To be quite honest, I was asking myself which lap the car (which wasn’t doing very well) would break down in.
