Race
The race started with Ayrton Senna on pole position with Alain Prost alongside him, and at the start, Gerhard Berger had a tremendous start from 4th, passing both Senna, Prost and his teammate Nigel Mansell leading the entire field into the first corner with Senna, Prost and Mansell following in succession. Philippe Alliot went off the track at the start in spectacular fashion as he lost control of his Lola and spun off into the grass.
Berger's lead was to last about a quarter of a lap, as the power of both McLaren's Honda engines showed as Senna passed Berger into the first chicane, and Prost did the same to him at Ostkurve. At the start of the second lap, it was Senna leading from Prost, Berger, Mansell, Thierry Boutsen, Alessandro Nannini, Emanuele Pirro, Riccardo Patrese, and Nelson Piquet.
The McLaren-Honda MP4/5's of Senna and Prost and the Ferrari 640's of Mansell and Berger started to pull away from the field, with the Benetton B189's of Pirro and Nannini and the Williams FW12C of Patrese just barely clinging on (Boutsen retired on lap 5). On lap 14, Mansell had been hounding Berger for 2 laps, but 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.
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 terribly slow one of 18 seconds, which put Mansell in 2nd place and Senna even further away. 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 4th behind, Senna, Pirro and Prost. Then Senna decided to take advantage of his huge lead and came into the pits for his tyre change, and his stop was even worse than Prost's, lasting 23 seconds. This dropped him down to 2nd behind Prost and Pirro had come into the pits for a tyre change and dropped to 4th.
Pirro crashed into the styrofoam barriers at the stadium entrance and had to be taken to the hospital. 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 and Prost held off Senna for almost the entire race- but on lap 43, Prost's gearbox malfunctioned, lost 6th gear and Senna passed him coming into the stadium. Prost limped around the track for the next 2 laps and Senna cruised around the track to grab his 4th victory of the season, followed by Prost 2nd, Mansell 3rd, Patrese 4th, Piquet 5th and Derek Warwick 6th.
Read more about this topic: 1989 German Grand Prix
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