1989 Japanese Grand Prix

The 1989 Japanese Grand Prix (formally the XV Fuji Television Japanese Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held at Suzuka Circuit, Japan, on October 22, 1989. It was the 15th and penultimate round of the 1989 Formula One season. The race, contested over 53 laps, was won by Alessandro Nannini for the Benetton team, from a sixth position start. Riccardo Patrese finished second for the Williams team, with Thierry Boutsen third in the other Williams car.

This race would become one of the most notorious in F1 history, as the culmination of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna's tumultuous two year rivalry as team mates at McLaren. The Japanese Grand Prix decided the 1989 Drivers' Championship in Prost's favour, after a collision at the final chicane between him and Senna put them both off the track. While Prost abandoned his stalled car, Senna restarted his, made a pit stop to change his front wing, and overhauled Alessandro Nannini to take victory. Following the race Senna was controversially disqualified for using the chicane's escape road to rejoin the circuit, handing the title to Prost.

Grand Prix

Grand Prix (French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁɑ̃pʁi], meaning Grand Prize; plural Grands Prix) may refer to:

Sports competitions

Alain Prost

Alain Marie Pascal Prost, OBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (born 24 February 1955) is a French former racing driver. A four-time Formula One Drivers' Champion, only Sebastian Vettel (four championships), Juan Manuel Fangio (five championships), and Michael Schumacher (seven championships) have equalled or surpassed his number of titles. From 1987 until 2001 Prost held the record for most Grand Prix victories. Schumacher surpassed Prost's total of 51 victories at the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix. In 1999, Prost received the World Sports Awards of the Century in the motor sport category.

Prost discovered karting at the age of 14 during a family holiday. He progressed through motor sport's junior ranks, winning the French and European Formula Three championships, before joining the McLaren Formula One team in 1980 at the age of 24. He finished in the points on his Formula One début at the in San Martin Autodrome in Buenos Aires, Argentina (where he took his first podium a year later) and took his first race victory at his home Grand Prix in France a year later, driving for the factory Renault team.

Ayrton Senna

Ayrton Senna da Silva (Brazilian Portuguese: [aˈiʁtõ ˈsẽnɐ dɐ ˈsiwvɐ]; 21 March 1960 – 1 May 1994) was a Brazilian racing driver who won three Formula One world championships in 1988, 1990 and 1991. He was killed in an accident while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. He was among the most dominant and successful Formula One drivers of the modern era and is considered by many as the greatest racing driver of all time.

Senna began his motorsport career in karting, moving up to open-wheel racing in 1981, and winning the British Formula 3 championship in 1983. He made his Formula One debut with Toleman-Hart in 1984 before moving to Lotus-Renault the following year and winning six Grands Prix over the next three seasons. In 1988, he joined Frenchman Alain Prost at McLaren-Honda. Between them, they won all but one of the 16 Grands Prix that year and Senna claimed his first World Championship. Prost claimed the championship in 1989, and Senna his second and third championships in 1990 and 1991. In 1992, the Williams-Renault combination began to dominate Formula One. Senna nonetheless managed to finish the 1993 season as runner-up, winning five races and negotiating a move to Williams in 1994.

1989

1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1989th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 989th year of the 2nd millennium, the 89th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1980s decade. It was a historical turning point for the wave of revolutions that swept the Eastern Bloc, starting in Poland that summer with the beginning of a move towards private enterprise, coming to a head with opening of the Berlin Wall in November, embracing the overthrow of the communist dictatorship in Romania in December and ending in December 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Collectively known as the Revolutions of 1989, they heralded the beginning of the post–Cold War period.

It was the year of the first Brazilian presidential elections in 29 years, since the end of the military government in 1985 which commanded the country for more than twenty years, and marked the redemocratization process's final point. F. W. de Klerk was elected in South Africa, and his regime gradually dismantled the apartheid system over the next five years, culminating with the 1994 election that brought jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela to power. The Echo Boom in the United States reached its peak in 1989–1990.