Start, Australian Grand Prix, Adelaide, 1991

The 1991 season finale which lasted 14 laps in torrential rain

1991 Australian Grand Prix flashback

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James posted the following idea for an article on Skribit:

Which was the wettest Grand Prix of all time?

And Lustigson replied:

Surely that was Adelaide 1991. The race was red-flagged after 14 laps.

There may have been wetter races but it’s not an easy thing to measure. But we do know the rain stoppage made the 1991 Australian Grand Prix the shortest F1 race ever, at a little more than 32 miles. Here’s a look back at that extraordinary day.

Championships and controversies

The world championship didn’t go down to the final race in 1991. It was decided in the penultimate round at Suzuka when Nigel Mansell, chasing title rival Ayrton Senna, spun into retirement at the first corner. That sealed Senna’s third and final world championship title.

That didn’t mean F1 was short of drama ahead of the last race. After winning the title Senna launched into a famous broadside against outgoing FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre, whom Senna blamed for his disqualification from the same race two years earlier, which cost him the 1989 title.

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Senna’s nemesis Alain Prost was also making life difficult for himself. Before the final round of the season the (then) three-times champion was cast out of the Ferrari team for describing his 643 as follows:

In Japan, the car was like a horrible truck to drive. No pleasure at all. I’ve underlined the defects of the Ferrari throughout then season, but no-one has listened to a word.

With no contract for 1992, Prost was out of F1 for the foreseeable future. Another three-times title winner was leaving for good: Nelson Piquet, who was starting his final race for Benetton alongside Michael Schumacher, who was making his sixth F1 appearance.

The drivers’ championship may have been over, but the constructors’ championship was still up for grabs. McLaren, though, looked hard to beat with 132 points to Williams’ 121 – and this was in the days when points were only scored by the top six, 10-6-4-3-2-1, making their job even harder than it would have been today.

26 slots, 32 cars

The entry list for the 1991 Australian Grand Prix makes todays 20-car grids look pitiful. There were 32 cars entered, and before the race got underway six entrants were weeded out in pre-qualifying and qualifying. They were:

Aguri Suzuki, Lola-Ford
Martin Brundle, Brabham-Yamaha
Eric van de Poele, Lambo-Lamborghini
Bertrand Gachot, Lola-Ford
Gabriele Tarquini, Fondmetal-Ford
Naoki Hattori, Coloni-Ford

Suzuki missed out on qualifying by a tenth of a second to Karl Wendlinger, the Austrian making his debut for Leyon House. The remaining 26 cars lined up with the first four rows occupied Noah’s Ark-style by four pairs of team mates: the McLarens (Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger), Williamses (Nigel Mansell and Riccardo Patrese), Benettons (Nelson Piquet and Michael Schumacher) and Ferraris (Jean Alesi and Gianni Morbidelli, the latter substituting for Prost).

Standing start in standing water

Two years earlier Prost had withdrawn from the Australian Grand Prix as heavy rain made the conditions impossible. He surely would have done likewise in 1991, as the conditions were somehow even worse.

As Senna led Berger into the first corner the 24 cars behind them seemed to vanish behind a wall of water.

It wasn’t just the drivers who were having trouble seeing anything. The track-level cameras struggled to pick out the cars – Mansell passed Berger for second early on, and it was only when the Williams driver appeared in second that the commentators noticed. The television director increasingly relied on a camera mounted in a helicopter to spot the drivers.

Near miss

Despite this Mansell quickly caught Senna and even tried to find a way to pass him. In his autobiography Mansell recalled making a move to pass but finding parts of the track blocked by crashed cars:

As I came down the straight I was right on Senna’s tail and ready to pass. I got on the radio to David Brown with probably the strangest question I had ever asked him. “David, can you see on the television? Is it safe for me to overtake?” It was a crazy situation and really very dangerous. The stranded cars were there alright, hidden by the spray.

The cars of Nicola Larini, Thierry Boutsen and Jean Alesi were strewn along each side of the straight, and only the quick reaction of Mansell stopped him from coming to grief on the same straight where his title hopes had ended five years later. But this time, the consequences could have been even more serious.

This was in the days before the safety car was in regular use, and it’s shocking to see stationary cars left in harm’s way and a recovery vehicle parked on the track while F1 driver blast between the wrecks. Patrese collected a piece of someone’s front wing which became stuck beneath the car.

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Red flag

After a dozen laps the intensity of the rain increased yet further. Suddenly Mansell was gone, the car snapping away from him as he joined Wakefield road. He hit the barrier hard, injuring his ankle. Now the organisers threw the red flag.

Alessandro Zanardi was driving the Jordan which, a few races earlier, had famously been left vacant by Schumacher. Zanardi had crashed it twice in his first three laps of practice in the dry, but in the rain he was flying, setting the fifth fastest lap. Had the race gone on a lap longer, he would have scored his first points:

Just before the red flag was waved, I overtook two cars, including Stefano Modena who was driving a Tyrrell-Honda. This was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done. I had been following him for a while and gaining speed, so much so that in the technical sector of the circuit, I almost tripped over him. I couldn’t see where I was going because of the spray off his car. On the straight, with water like that I couldn’t get into sixth gear and drove in fifth with a feathered throttle to avoid the risk of aquaplaning everywhere.

Zanardi was running fifth when the red flag came out, but final positions were determined by the running order on the previous lap, when he’d been ninth.

The teams waited a long time to see if the conditions would improve, before finally giving up. The race lasted 14 laps and fewer than 25 minutes. Half points were awarded to the top six drivers at the end of the 14th lap, before Mansell had his crash, and McLaren were confirmed as constructors’ champions:

1. Ayrton Senna, 5 points
2. Nigel Mansell, 3 points
3. Gerhard Berger, 2 points
4. Nelson Piquet, 1.5 points
5. Riccardo Patrese, 1 points
6. Gianni Morbidelli, 0.5 points

But one driver wasn’t ready to finish just yet. Piquet had spun his car through 360 degrees at Stag Turn, but back on the grid he still wanted to continue. After final word that the race was being cancelled, he implored chief engineer Giorgio Ascanelli to let him do a few final, unofficial laps. Ascanelli understandably refused, and nearby mechanic Steve Matchett observed the final moments of Piquet’s career unfold:

Nothing happened for a moment or two, and then I heard the click of the belt buckle and he gently pulled the steering wheel from the column. Two hundred and four Grand Prix starts, 24 pole positions, 23 race victories, 485.5 points and three drivers’ world championships. It was finished.

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Update: In 2021 the Belgian Grand Prix broke the record for F1’s shortest race

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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16 comments on “The 1991 season finale which lasted 14 laps in torrential rain”

  1. Cor, I remember this well! Great article.

    The thing that struck me in the first video was when it flashed up “60 Laps to Go” – I was thinking “you are kidding, surely?”

    But was it the wettest? Debatable. I think Fuji in 2007 was about the wettest I can remember seeing since this one.

  2. I think Fuji in 2007 was about the wettest I can remember seeing since this one.

    Yep, you have to wonder if they’d been using the safety car in 1991 whether we’d have have the same odd scenario of the cars spending half an hour behind it at the start.

  3. True, a very wet race, how does it compare to the race in 1989 though, that was 2 hours that went the distance in appalling conditions.

    There is an interesting piece with Sid Watkins in the most recent edition of Motorsport that mentions Mansell’s accident in this race. He said that Mansell was not properly injured and as he hopped out of the car, he forgot which foot he was pretending was injured and started hopping on the other foot.

    Truly unbelievable that they would leave stranded cars on the fast straight like that, even back then.

  4. Another point I vividly remember from this race is when Drivers locked up their tyres or were about to spin, you could see the grooves in the tires fill up with white water. As seen in Piquet’s spin.

    Not sure I have ever seen it since.

  5. TommyBellingham
    25th November 2008, 14:41

    Wow that was scary in that video!

  6. There is an interesting piece with Sid Watkins in the most recent edition of Motorsport that mentions Mansell’s accident in this race. He said that Mansell was not properly injured and as he hopped out of the car, he forgot which foot he was pretending was injured and started hopping on the other foot.

    Ah, good old Nigel – never one to let reality stand between him and some amateur dramatics.

    The 1989 race was also very wet – won by Thierry Boutsen after Ayrton Senna, blinded by spray, ran into the back of a backmarker. Nelson Piquet did exactly the same thing.

    The start of the 1991 San Marino GP was also so wet that Alain Prost spun his Ferrari into retirement on the parade lap.

    The 1992 and 1996 Spanish GPs were also very wet – and both the scene of virtuoso performances by Michael Schumacher. At one point in the ’92 race Schuey was catching Mansell so quickly in the much faster Williams by taking alternative lines and finding more grip off the racing line. In 1996 the German was simply unbeatable.

    Or the 1994 Japanese GP, which was started, then stopped after first lap carnage – including Martin Brundle hitting a marshall (thankfully not fatally). Probably Damon Hill’s finest ever drive to win and stay in contention for the championship. The race was red flagged and run as a two parter, with the result being determined by the aggregate time. Hill finished the first part of the race about 10 seconds behind Michael Schumacher so all Schuey had to do was finish the second part within 10 seconds of Hill to win overall. Somehow, Damon managed to pull out enough of a gap at the restart.

    Was it the 1992 French GP that saw heavy rain about halfway into the race, with Jean Alesi staying out for some awesome laps on slicks?

    The most dominant performance in extreme wet conditions has to be Jackie Stewart at the 1968 German GP, winning by more than 4 minutes from Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt. Jacky Ickyx, bit of a rainmaster, was nearly 6 minutes behind Stewart…

  7. In terms of the amout of water on a track the downpour at Sepang in 2001 was possible wetter than this. Although abviously this was overall a wetter race.

    I watched this whole race a few weeks ago on youtube and the saftey standards shocked me! For so many laps there are rescue vehicles and marshalls standing at the side of the long straight…F1 is so lucky sometimes.

  8. Not a long time ago I watched Phoenix 91 race which was one of those typical street races with a lot of retirements (only 8 cars complete the race). Being a street race there were very little places to park retired cars, and both Williams DNF: Mansell with a gaerbox problem near the pit lane exit, they try to put his car outside the track, but there were no space so his nose remained inside and everytime someone exit the pits I keep thinking they would hit it; even worse was Patrese who spined and whose whole car stayed inside the track, half a lap later Moreno’s Benetton hit it (while Patrese was still in the car BTW) and nothing was done about for a few laps outside from a yellow flag in the local till they at least try to put the car in a less dangerous position. I stayed the second half of the race looking at all those cars parked thinking how sometimes I still heard people claiming the SC is unnecessary. Even tough I knew nothing serious had happen or I would remember there was impossible not to keep imagine something bad had to happen under those circunstances.

  9. If you look real closely, you will notice that there is actually an Italian driving for Ferrari in this featured race.

  10. Yeah that has to be the wettest for sure. The Adelaide race was always the most dangerous. Mainly because the drivers were falling asleep at the wheel because the city of Adelaide is soooo boring

  11. Tim – Nice summary of some of the other recent mega-wet races. In terms of races that were stopped early because of rain, Monaco ’84 would have to be included as well I guess. So was Silverstone ’75, although that wasn’t so much prolonged rain as a flash shower that drenched the track and caused a huge pile-up…

  12. Let’s not forget The German GP of 2007, that was a wet one ;)
    But yeah the australian GP of 91 is a bit crazy, seen the full race a while back, just nuts!

  13. yorricksfriend
    26th November 2008, 4:50

    Great article, I live in Adelaide and the funny thing is it never rains like that anymore, what happened in 89 and 91 was a freak of nature. Adelaide’s been in drought for several years we need F1 back so that it will rain again!

  14. Adelaide’s been in drought for several years we need F1 back so that it will rain again!

    LOL!

  15. Thanks for creating an article on my suggestion Keith. It was a great read!

    It was a a crazily wet race and for anyone who is interested, the whole race can be found here:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2918002072802178848

  16. japan GP the year james hunt won the championship. go watch the movie. definitely wettest race ever. and most dangerous.

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