1988 San Marino Grand Prix

Results from the 1988 Formula One San Marino Grand Prix held at Imola on May 1, 1988.

Race summary

The McLaren of Ayrton Senna led from the start, whilst his teammate Alain Prost had a poor start and dropped to 6th place. Whilst he was able to recover these places, he could not catch Senna who controlled the gap according to the traffic. Maintaining a lead of 6-10 seconds, Senna slowed on the last lap reducing the gap to 2.3 seconds at the line.

Nelson Piquet battled with an underpowered Lotus to maintain 3rd place ahead of a train of cars. He was lucky to make it to the finish line as the extra boost needed to keep the position cut severely into his fuel quota.

Nigel Mansell made a superb drive from a poor 11th place on the grid to be up to 3rd place by lap 40 before retiring due to a faulty voltage regulator.

Thierry Boutsen's Benetton came home in 4th ahead of Gerhard Berger in the Ferrari and rounding out the points was Alessandro Nannini. He had been fighting for 3rd place with Piquet, but despite being consistently closer in the corners, he had to yield to the Lotus' superior power on the straights. They tangled and Nannini dropped to 7th, but put in the fastest atmospheric lap to climb to 5th. He had to settle for 6th after Berger drove him onto the grass at the Acqua Minerale chicane.

Classification

Notes

*Pole position: Ayrton Senna - 1:27.148cite book| last = Henry | first = Alan | authorlink = Alan Henry | title = AUTOCOURSE 1988-89 | publisher = Hazleton Publishing | year = 1988 | pages = p103 | isbn = 0-905138-57-0]
*Fastest lap: Alain Prost - 1:29.685 on lap 53
*Larini was excluded from the race because his car failed pre-race scrutineering.
*This was the first time since 1983 that a car did not run out of fuel in the closing stages of the San Marino Grand Prix.

References

* "Unless otherwise indicated, all race results are taken from cite web | title = The Official Formula 1 website | url = http://www.formula1.com/results/season/1988/264/ | accessdate = 2007-07-12

F1 race report
Name_of_race = San Marino Grand Prix
Year_of_race = 1988
Previous_race_in_season = 1988 Brazilian Grand Prix
Next_race_in_season = 1988 Monaco Grand Prix
Previous_year's_race = 1987 San Marino Grand Prix
Next_year's_race = 1989 San Marino Grand Prix