Senna snatches win

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 29

Senna snatches win

NZPA-AFP Hockenheim, W. Germany Ayrton Senna ended a disastrous four-race run without a single world championship point with victory in the West German Grand Prix yesterday. The Brazilian world champion snatched back the lead from his team-mate and Formula 1 championship leader, Alain Prost, with only two of the 45 laps to

goft was Senna’s fourth win of the season but Prost still leads the race for the title. Senna, also the winner last year, had set the early pace but lost the lead just before the half-way mark after his pit stop for a change of tyres stretched to a lengthy 23 seconds.

Prost was out in front from then on but Senna gradually clawed his way back in the closing stages and when he chose to pass on the forty-third lap Prost’s McLaren had no answer. The problem for a frustrated Prost was that he had lost fourth gear. The McLarens dominated the 45-lap race. Although Senna was in pole position, Gerhard Berger got off the grid first in the Ferrari but was quickly overhauled by the two McLarens.

Britain’s Nigel Mansell was third in his Ferrari, well over a minute down.

Italy’s Emanuele Pirro was taken to hospital after crashing his March Judd going into a chicane. He lost control as he applied the

brakes going into a righthander and crashed through three polystyrene blocks by the side of the track before the car eventually came to a halt

Pirro had to be lifted out of his March by track marshalls and was attended to immediately by a doctor. Earlier Berger’s bid had finished when he went off at the same chicane with the two Ferraris — with the Austrian third and Mansell fourth — a couple of seconds behind in leading the chase of the McLarens.

The Ferrari’s suspension failed on the thirteenth lap and ploughed straight on across the grass, taking off momentarily and coming to a halt minus its smashed nose section.