1985 British Grand Prix

The 1985 British Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Silverstone on 21 July 1985. It was the eighth round of the 1985 Formula One season.

At an average speed of 160.9 mph (258.9 km/h), Keke Rosberg's qualifying lap remained the fastest in F1 history until 2002.

On the first lap right after the start, 4 cars went out at Copse. Patrick Tambay touched Stefan Johansson, and Tambay lost his front right wheel and was out immediately but Johansson was able to make it back to the pits. Piercarlo Ghinzani and Philippe Alliot also crashed into each other and were out immediately.

After intentionally dropping to 6th in order to save fuel, Alain Prost stormed through the field, passed 5 leading cars (Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Andrea De Cesaris, Keke Rosberg and Ayrton Senna) and battled with Senna (who made an excellent start from fourth on the grid, had been leading almost every lap since lap 1, but eventually retired with fuel problems) for much of the second half of the race. By the time Prost had finished and won the race, he had lapped every running car in the field. Prost's teammate Niki Lauda also put up a notable drive; he started 10th; dropped to 15th at the start, and by the time he retired with an alternator failure he was up to 3rd.

The race was scheduled for 66 laps, but was stopped 1 lap early in error. Nelson Piquet who finished 4th in his Brabham, was particularly angry with the error. Jacques Laffite, who finished 3rd in his Ligier, had ran out of fuel half way around what was meant to be the last lap and would have been passed by Piquet who did have enough fuel to finish the scheduled distance. If the error had not been made, Piquet would have finished on the podium.