Race Summary
On the parade lap, Senna's gear selector mechanism broke and he had to complete the lap jammed in first gear. The first start was aborted and Senna started from the spare car in the pits. At the second start, Alain Prost led from the first lap, with Mansell in 2nd place. On lap 19, the temperature gauge showed that his Williams was overheating. He entered the pits to investigate, handing second to Gerhard Berger; during the process, his engine stalled. Senna was making a remarkable drive from the rear of the grid, climbing to 21st on lap 1, 15th on lap 4, 8th on lap 10, into the points on lap 13 and by lap 20 was in second place.
Prost pitted on lap 26 without losing the lead, and Senna pitted a lap later. He stalled the engine and dropped to sixth place. Shortly afterwards he was shown the black flag and disqualified for changing cars after the green flag had been shown following the parade lap, a move that was not allowed (McLaren should have known this as Prost suffered the same fate at the Italian Grand Prix in 1986). Over the last 10 laps of the race Berger closed to within 10 seconds of leader Prost, but the Frenchman was merely pacing himself and Berger was unable to catch him.
Piquet, the reigning World Champion, came home third in his first drive for Lotus-Honda ahead of Derek Warwick in the Arrows-Megatron. Michele Alboreto in the second Ferrari and Satoru Nakajima in the second Lotus rounded out the points with 5th and 6th places. The first atmospheric car to finish was the Benetton-Ford of Thierry Boutsen who finished in 7th place.
Read more about this topic: 1988 Brazilian Grand Prix
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