1985 Brazilian Grand Prix

The 1985 Formula One season saw an entry list of 28 drivers competing, with Zakspeed officially joining Formula One with Jonathan Palmer as their driver, though they wouldn't be competing in the opening round as they were going to join the field in Portugal. Zakspeed competed only in the European races that season for financial reasons. The other brand new team that was competing in the 1985 season was Minardi, who had competed in Formula Two from 1980 to 1984 with a custom chassis before stepping up and competing in F1.^[1]

The Toleman team, meanwhile, missed the race due to being unable to secure a tyre contract. Unfortunately for the team, Goodyear refused to supply them with tyres after the manner in which team boss Alex Hawkridge had switched from Goodyear's to Pirelli's in their Formula 2 days, while Pirelli also refused to supply their tyres to the team after it had broken their contract in 1984 to go with Michelin instead. With the French company pulling out of Formula One, this left Toleman without any tyres. Their lead driver, Stefan Johansson was present however and substituted for Stefan Bellof when the German driver was suspended by his Tyrrell team due to a contract dispute.

The opening round in Brazil was the first round of the 1985 championship, this was the 14th edition of the Brazilian Grand Prix since its inception in 1972. It was also the 13th time that a Formula One World Championship had been held there with the 1972 edition being a non-championship race. The race was held at the Jacarepaguá circuit which held its first Grand Prix in 1978 and would host the Brazilian GP from 1981 to 1989.^[2]

Qualifying for the 1985 Brazilian Grand Prix was held in two sessions with the first on the Friday and the second one on the Saturday. In the Friday session, Lotus who did some aerodynamic tweaks to their Renault powered car, similar to the Lola's new CART Indycar, went to the top of the timesheets on Friday morning. But Elio de Angelis wouldn't be able to improve on his time with the driver responding after the second qualifying session, "I am sure I could have retained the pole."^[3] Senna would improve on his lap time but only slightly as he finished behind de Angelis on the grid in fourth.

On the front row of the grid, Michele Alboreto would claim the first pole position of the season with a time of 1:27.768,^[4] a full one second ahead of his time on the Friday and 6/10ths faster than the 1984 pole time set by Elio de Angelis. Alboreto's teammate in Rene Arnoux also improve his time by a second, but the Frenchman had to start the race in seventh place, using the spare car after the Ferrari engine was down on power on his main car. Also on the front row of the grid was Keke Rosberg in the Williams-Honda who earlier in the weekend had a blown turbo from their engine on the Saturday morning. But one flying lap secured Rosberg a front row start with teammate Nigel Mansell starting from fifth.^[3]

McLaren also has engine issues with the TAG-Porsche turbos. The TAG engines were known not to be able to take higher qualifying boost like the BMW, Renault and Honda engines. But in qualifying, try as they may, McLaren just couldn't get the TAG's to run properly at high boost with both Alain Prost and reigning World Champion Niki Lauda struggling to 6th and 9th places respectively. Eighth on the grid was the first of the Pirelli's with Brabham-BMW driver, Nelson Piquet being the quickest. Brabham's long-time Chief Designer and Technical Director Gordon Murray advised that their winter testing had been for the best race tyre and not for taking any pole positions in the first few races of the season (Piquet had taken 9 poles in 1984, but had only finished 7 races).^[3] Rounding out the top ten was Renault driver, Derek Warwick who was 2.3 seconds off the pace. His team-mate, Patrick Tambay who started behind him in 11th advised that Renault RE60 was "four seconds behind the pace when we first tested the car here a month ago. Now it had been reduced to two seconds."^[3]

Pos	No	Driver	Constructor	Q1	Q2	Gap
1	27	Michele Alboreto	Ferrari	1:28.899	1:27.768	—
2	6	Keke Rosberg	Williams-Honda	1:32.135	1:27.864	+0.096
3	11	Elio de Angelis	Lotus-Renault	1:28.081		+0.313
4	12	Ayrton Senna	Lotus-Renault	1:28.705	1:28.389	+0.621
5	5	Nigel Mansell	Williams-Honda	1:31.211	1:28.848	+1.080
6	2	Alain Prost	McLaren-TAG	1:30.253	1:29.117	+1.349
7	28	René Arnoux	Ferrari	1:30.813	1:29.612	+1.844
8	7	Nelson Piquet	Brabham-BMW	1:31.364	1:29.855	+2.087
9	1	Niki Lauda	McLaren-TAG	1:30.716	1:29.984	+2.216
10	16	Derek Warwick	Renault	1:31.533	1:30.100	+2.332
11	15	Patrick Tambay	Renault	1:30.254	1:30.516	+2.486
12	18	Thierry Boutsen	Arrows-BMW	1:32.207	1:30.593	+2.825
13	25	Andrea de Cesaris	Ligier-Renault	1:33.718	1:31.411	+3.643
14	22	Riccardo Patrese	Alfa Romeo	1:32.107	1:31.790	+4.022
15	26	Jacques Laffite	Ligier-Renault	1:37.803	1:32.021	+4.253
16	9	Manfred Winkelhock	RAM-Hart	1:36.239	1:32.560	+4.792
17	8	François Hesnault	Brabham-BMW	1:34.742	1:32.904	+5.136
18	23	Eddie Cheever	Alfa Romeo	1:33.094	1:33.091	+5.323
19	17	Gerhard Berger	Arrows-BMW	1:34.919	1:34.773	+7.005
20	10	Philippe Alliot	RAM-Hart	1:35.726	1:37.409	+7.958
21	3	Martin Brundle	Tyrrell-Ford	1:36.225	1:36.152	+8.384
22	24	Piercarlo Ghinzani	Osella-Alfa Romeo	1:38.272	1:36.743	+8.975
23	4	Stefan Johansson	Tyrrell-Ford	1:37.799	1:37.293	+9.525
24	21	Mauro Baldi	Spirit-Hart	1:41.330		+13.562
25	29	Pierluigi Martini	Minardi-Ford	1:44.046		+16.278