1984 San Marino Grand Prix

A dispute between the Toleman team and tyre suppliers Pirelli lead to Ayrton Senna missing out on Friday practice running for his first Grand Prix around Imola. On Saturday his Hart 415T engine developed a misfire leading to Senna failing to qualify, the only time this would happen in the Brazilian's F1 career.^[1]

The 60-lap race was won by Alain Prost, driving a McLaren-TAG. René Arnoux finished second in a Ferrari, while Elio de Angelis was third in a Lotus-Renault, despite running out of fuel on the last lap, and Derek Warwick finished fourth unable to unlap himself in the last lap largely because he was running dangerously low on fuel also and as such, followed Prost across the line so as not to have to do another lap (if he managed he would have completed more laps than de Angelis, promoting him onto the podium). Stefan Bellof finished fifth but was disqualified at the end of the season, so Thierry Boutsen (Arrows-Ford) and Andrea de Cesaris (Ligier-Renault) rounded out the points finishers, despite the de Cesaris running out of fuel in the last lap.

Andrea de Cesaris running out of fuel was the third time in 1984 that a Renault had run out of fuel as the factory Renault of Patrick Tambay had also run out of fuel in the first two races of the season in Brazil and South Africa. It had become fairly obvious over the first four races that 220 litres of fuel was not enough for the Renault turbo to finish the races at a winning pace, especially compared to the Porsche built TAG turbo being used by McLaren's. After the race Warwick said "This isn't motor racing, its a bloody joke. How am I supposed to race when I know I'm going to run out of fuel?" The Englishman's big problem in the closing laps was that having to continually turn the boost down and cut his revs as he was in the negative on his fuel readout had caused his engine to misfire leaving him no choice but to follow Prost home and forget about trying to catch the Lotus of de Angelis.^[2]

The race was not as straight forward for Prost as it seemed. During the race he was having a problem with his carbon brakes overheating, so much so that at one point mid-race it caused his McLaren to spin through the infield as he braked for Rivazza. The spin resolved the issue of whether or not the Frenchman would come in for tyres as it was now necessary as he had flat spotted his soft Michelin 010's in the spin. However, the stop was a quick one and he retained a 20 second lead.