1988 British Grand Prix

The 1988 British Grand Prix was a Formula One race held on July 10, 1988 at the Silverstone Circuit, Silverstone. It was the eighth race of the 1988 Formula One season.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Silverstone Circuit, many facilities had been added to the circuit, including a Press Centre complex, an internal ring road, debris fencing, wide screens to show live action as broadcast by the BBC, and a 600-metre long hospitality tent for corporate guests. However, the weekend was overshadowed by the death of the RAC Chief Executive Peter Hammond in a car crash on the way to the track.

Qualifying
Nigel Mansell announced that he would race for Ferrari in the season, encouraged to go to the Italian team by a series of high speed accidents on Friday as a result of problems with Williams' reactive suspension, as well as a streak of seven consecutive retirements. With Mansell only 13th in Friday Qualifying and Riccardo Patrese 30th and seemingly set to fail to qualify, some 14 seconds from 26th place, Williams' designer Patrick Head made a snap decision to dump the system until the end of the season. This they did overnight between the Friday and Saturday sessions of the event after previously stating that changing to the more conventional suspension was next to impossible without months of work. Head said in an interview on race morning that "Its a bodge frankly. We've put steel mechanical springs and dampers on. We've changed the front struts into dampers, designed some new bits and pieces which we machined up overnight. We did some new pistons for the front struts...it's a bit of a bodge as I said".

The grid had an unfamiliar look to it. With the McLarens suffering handling problems because of new bodywork more suitable for high speed circuits coming up later in the season (the turbo snorkels on the sidepods were removed at an R&D cost estimated by McLaren to be at more than £150,000), the Ferraris of Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto occupied the front row of the grid. Berger's pole time of 1:10.133 was three seconds slower than the 1987 pole time set by Nelson Piquet and although on pole he was far from confident going into the race stating that the Ferrari's could not live with the McLarens on fuel consumption, his words were echoed by Alboreto. For his part Alboreto secured his first front row start since he scored pole in the opening race of the season in Brazil, it was the last time the Italian would start an F1 race from the front row. Senna and Prost qualified in 3rd and 4th place, the first time no McLaren had been on the front row of the grid since the 1987 Mexican Grand Prix and first time in 1988 that neither McLaren was on pole.

An exceptional performance put the naturally aspirated March-Judds in 5th and 6th, in front of the turbo's of Lotus and Arrows while Mansell and Patrese qualified in 11th and 15th respectively with Patrese almost 18 seconds quicker in Saturday qualifying than he was on Friday. Both Williams drivers expressing their delight at their cars new 'conventional' suspension saying it was amazing how much more confidence they had in their cars knowing that they would now behave the same way lap after lap and not different from lap to lap and sometimes corner to corner as it was with the reactive cars.

Both Zakspeed turbos failed to qualify for the race showing the cars lack of handling and lack of power from the teams own 4cyl engines with Bernd Schneider the slowest of the 30 drivers some 7.9 seconds slower than Berger's Ferrari. His experienced team mate Piercarlo Ghinzani hardly faring better almost 6 seconds slower than the Ferrari. Also failing to make the grid were the EuroBrun of Oscar Larrauri and the Ligier of Stefan Johansson who, as usual, complained of very little grip from his JS31 while the Coloni of Gabriele Tarquini failed to pre-qualify, ironically with a faster time than Schneider managed in qualifying.

Race summary
The race was held in pouring rain, the first wet race since the 1985 Belgian Grand Prix. Senna made an excellent start to tail Berger and Alboreto into the first turn. Alboreto had actually beaten Berger away but with the inside line the Austrian pulled ahead through Copse. Senna was soon past the Italian and unsuccessfully challenged Berger for the lead. Prost's start was awful and he fell back to 9th place. On lap 3, Ivan Capelli dropped back with electrical trouble.

By lap 14, Maurício Gugelmin, Alessandro Nannini and Mansell were fighting for 3rd place. One lap later, Senna finally took the lead under the Bridge chicane, overtaking Berger and lapping Prost, who was running very slowly, at the same time. Using his skill in wet conditions, Senna managed to pull away and build a lead. On lap 20, Mansell passed Nannini for 4th, after which the Italian spun at Club and let Gugelmin through. Two laps later, Mansell passed Michele Alboreto in the Ferrari for 3rd, the Italian was already receiving alarming messages from his Ferrari's fuel read out. On lap 24 Prost retired claiming handling problems of his McLaren. He would cop plenty of flack from the French press who saw it as Prost giving up rather than race on with some French commentators labeling the double World Champion a "coward".

Seeking out the wet parts of the track to cool his tyres, Mansell drove very well to set the fastest lap at an average speed of 206 km/h in difficult weather track conditions. On lap 50, he caught and passed Berger who only 20 laps before had a 50 second break on the Englishman and held 2nd place until the finish, some 23 seconds behind Senna. As he'd predicted the Austrian was suffering with a fuel deficit and was losing places rapidly. On the very last corner, he ran out of fuel and dropped from 5th down to 9th losing places to Piquet, Warwick, Cheever and Patrese in the run from the Woodcote Chicane to the finish line. The same problem happened to Alboreto, who had run out of fuel on lap 63.

Nannini, despite two further spins, claimed his first Grand Prix podium finish helping further justify Benetton's decision to sign him. Gugelmin collected his first World Championship points, and Nelson Piquet and Derek Warwick rounded out the top 6.

Nigel Mansell set the fastest lap of the race with a 1:23.308 on lap 48. This compared to the lap record of 1:09.832 he set during his 1987 win at Silverstone in dry conditions.

Standings after the race

 * Drivers' Championship standings


 * Constructors' Championship standings


 * Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.