1989 German Grand Prix

The race started with Senna on pole position and Prost alongside him. At the start, Gerhard Berger in the semi-automatic Ferrari made a strong start from fourth, passing both Senna, Prost and his teammate Mansell to lead tinto the first corner with Senna, Prost and Mansell following in succession. At the start, Philippe Alliot went off the track after he was touched from behind by the Minardi of Pierluigi Martini and lost control of his Lola, spinning off into the grass. He was able to rejoin but his race only lasted 20 laps before his Lamborghini developed an oil leak. His new teammate Michele Alboreto was forced out of his first race with Larrousse just past turn 1 on the second lap after his car's electrics failed. Alboreto had qualified 26th and last, only 0.016 ahead of the Minardi of Luis Pérez-Sala.^{[citation needed]}

Berger's lead was to last about a quarter of a lap as a result of the greater power of the Honda V10 engines. Senna had Berger before the first chicane, and Prost outbraked him at the Ostkurve. At the start of the second lap, it was Senna leading from Prost, Berger, Mansell, Thierry Boutsen (Williams-Renault), Alessandro Nannini (Benetton Ford), Emanuele Pirro (Benetton-Ford), Riccardo Patrese (Williams-Renault), and Nelson Piquet (Lotus-Judd).^{[citation needed]}

The McLarens of Senna and Prost and the Ferraris of Mansell and Berger started to pull away from the field, with the Benettons of Pirro and Nannini, and the Williams of Patrese just barely clinging on (Boutsen retired on lap 5 after being punted off by Pirro at the Bremsschikane 2). On lap 14, Mansell had been hounding Berger for 2 laps, Berger had a puncture right when approaching the first chicane, and he went up on the marker, launching his Ferrari in midair, landing on a grassy patch and went across the track, just barely avoiding Mansell and came to rest on the trackside grass.^{[citation needed]}

Prost and Senna were on the limit the entire race and Prost hounded Senna for 16 laps, until he went in for his pit stop for tyres, which was a slow one of 18 seconds (a good pit time during that era was around 6 to 8 seconds) which put Mansell in second place and gave Senna a stronger lead. The next lap, Mansell came into the pits for his tyre change and his pit stop was faster than Prost's but still a poor stop of 11 seconds, which dropped him down back to fourth behind, Senna, Pirro and Prost. Senna decided to take advantage of his lead and came into the pits for his tyre change, his stop was even worse than Prost's, lasting 23 seconds. All 4 wheels were replaced in good time, but team boss Ron Dennis was forced to hold his driver when the left rear wheel changer didn't think he had located the wheel properly and they had to take it back off to get it set right. This dropped the World Champion down to second behind Prost while Pirro, now also in the new Benetton and the only team car left in the race after Nannini's new Ford V8 had succumbed to an electrical misfire on lap 7, had come into the pits for a tyre change and dropped back to fourth behind Mansell.^{[citation needed]}

Pirro crashed into the styrofoam barriers at the stadium entrance on lap 26 and had to be taken to the hospital after one of the barriers had hit his helmet. With Mansell having problems with his Ferrari, Senna and Prost battled for the entire race, as both drivers were driving on the limit. They started trading off fastest laps (the V10 McLaren-Honda's fastest race laps were 1:45.884 (Senna) and 1:45.977 (Prost). The next best race laps were the V12 Ferrari's with Mansell recording a 1:48.722 and Berger a 1:48.931. No other driver in the race lapped under 1:49)^[3] and Prost held off Senna for almost the entire race. On lap 43 on the straight heading into the Stadium section, the new transverse gearbox on Prost's McLaren malfunctioned and lost sixth (top) gear allowing Senna, in the process of setting his fastest race lap, to pass him at turn 11. Prost limped around the track for the next 2 laps well over a minute ahead of Mansell and thus in little danger of dropping back any further while Senna cruised around the track to grab his fourth victory of the season, followed by Prost, Mansell, Patrese, Piquet and Derek Warwick (Arrows-Ford) in sixth.^{[citation needed]}

In the post race press conference, Senna refused to speculate on whether he would have been able to pass Prost if he hadn't lost top gear, instead stating that after suffering four straight DNFs (that had handed his team mate a healthy 20 point championship lead as Prost had won 3 of those races), winning was all he was concerned about. For his part, Prost was of the firm belief that he would have had no trouble holding on for the win had he not had a gearbox problem.^{[citation needed]}

Pos	No	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	1	Ayrton Senna	McLaren-Honda	45	1:21:43.302	1	9
2	2	Alain Prost	McLaren-Honda	45	+ 18.151	2	6
3	27	Nigel Mansell	Ferrari	45	+ 1:23.254	3	4
4	6	Riccardo Patrese	Williams-Renault	44	+ 1 Lap	5	3
5	11	Nelson Piquet	Lotus-Judd	44	+ 1 Lap	8	2
6	9	Derek Warwick	Arrows-Ford	44	+ 1 Lap	17	1
7	22	Andrea de Cesaris	Dallara-Ford	44	+ 1 Lap	21
8	7	Martin Brundle	Brabham-Judd	44	+ 1 Lap	12
9	23	Pierluigi Martini	Minardi-Ford	44	+ 1 Lap	13
10	4	Jean Alesi	Tyrrell-Ford	43	+ 2 Laps	10
11	25	René Arnoux	Ligier-Ford	42	+ 3 Laps	23
12	10	Eddie Cheever	Arrows-Ford	40	Fuel System	25
Ret	8	Stefano Modena	Brabham-Judd	37	Engine	16
Ret	12	Satoru Nakajima	Lotus-Judd	36	Spun Off	18
Ret	16	Ivan Capelli	March-Judd	32	Electrical	22
Ret	15	Maurício Gugelmin	March-Judd	28	Gearbox	14
Ret	20	Emanuele Pirro	Benetton-Ford	26	Spun Off	9
Ret	30	Philippe Alliot	Lola-Lamborghini	20	Oil Leak	15
Ret	3	Jonathan Palmer	Tyrrell-Ford	16	Engine	19
Ret	28	Gerhard Berger	Ferrari	13	Puncture	4
Ret	36	Stefan Johansson	Onyx-Ford	8	Overheating	24
Ret	19	Alessandro Nannini	Benetton-Ford	6	Electrical	7
Ret	5	Thierry Boutsen	Williams-Renault	4	Collision	6
Ret	21	Alex Caffi	Dallara-Ford	2	Engine	20
Ret	29	Michele Alboreto	Lola-Lamborghini	1	Electrical	26
Ret	26	Olivier Grouillard	Ligier-Ford	0	Gearbox	11
DNQ	24	Luis Pérez-Sala	Minardi-Ford
DNQ	37	Bertrand Gachot	Onyx-Ford
DNQ	38	Christian Danner	Rial-Ford
EX	39	Volker Weidler	Rial-Ford		Push-start
DNPQ	41	Yannick Dalmas	AGS-Ford
DNPQ	17	Nicola Larini	Osella-Ford
DNPQ	40	Gabriele Tarquini	AGS-Ford
DNPQ	18	Piercarlo Ghinzani	Osella-Ford
DNPQ	31	Roberto Moreno	Coloni-Ford
DNPQ	32	Pierre-Henri Raphanel	Coloni-Ford
DNPQ	33	Gregor Foitek	Euro Brun-Judd
DNPQ	35	Aguri Suzuki	Zakspeed-Yamaha
DNPQ	34	Bernd Schneider	Zakspeed-Yamaha
Source:[4]

Drivers' Championship standings Pos Driver Points 1 Alain Prost 53 2 Ayrton Senna 36 3 Nigel Mansell 25 4 Riccardo Patrese 25 5 Thierry Boutsen 13 Source:[5]

Constructors' Championship standings Pos Constructor Points 1 McLaren-Honda 89 2 Williams-Renault 38 3 Ferrari 25 4 Benetton-Ford 17 5 Tyrrell-Ford 10 Source:[5]

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.