1990 United States Grand Prix

1990 United States Grand Prix

The 1990 United States Grand Prix is the 1st race of the 1990 F1 Season. It was won by Alain Prost in his first race for Ferrari with Mansell 2nd and Alesi 3rd.

Pre-Qualifying

Several teams were required to participate in the Friday morning pre-qualifying sessions during 1990, in order to reduce the field to thirty cars for the main qualifying sessions on Friday afternoon and Saturday. At the midway point of the season, the pre-qualifying group was to be reassessed, with the more successful, points-scoring teams being allowed to avoid pre-qualifying, and unsuccessful teams being required to pre-qualify from mid-season onwards.

Nine cars were required to take part in pre-qualifying sessions during the first half of the 1990 season, reduced from thirteen at the end of the 1989 season. The disappearance of the Zakspeed and Rial teams reduced the numbers, as did the reduction of the Osella and Coloni teams from two cars each to one car each. In contrast, EuroBrun expanded from one car to two, and were joined by the only new team on the entry lists, Life Racing Engines, who ran a single car. The fastest four cars would go through to the main qualifying sessions.

The Larrousse team again fielded Lola-Lamborghinis, driven by Éric Bernard and ex-Zakspeed driver Aguri Suzuki, both of whom had driven odd races for the team before. AGS continued with Yannick Dalmas and Gabriele Tarquini, while EuroBrun hired ex-Coloni driver Roberto Moreno and newcomer Claudio Langes. Coloni brought in ex-Rial and Onyx driver Bertrand Gachot to drive the C3B with its new Subaru-badged engine, while the sole Osella FA1M was to be driven by ex-Ligier man Olivier Grouillard. The new team, Life, hired another Grand Prix newcomer, Gary Brabham to drive their L190 car with its unusual W12 engine. The chassis had initially been built for the previous season by the First Racing team, which ultimately did not take part in Formula One.

During the pre-qualifying session on Friday morning, Moreno was fastest by four tenths of a second in his EuroBrun ER189B, already a great improvement over their form during 1989, despite the car being overweight. The Larrousse-Lola LC89Bs of Bernard and Suzuki were second and fourth, this marking the first pre-qualification for Suzuki after failing at every event for Zakspeed last season. Sandwiched between the Lolas in third was Grouillard in the Osella.

The unsuccessful runners included Tarquini and Dalmas in the two AGS JH24 cars, two seconds behind Suzuki, and debutant Langes in the second EuroBrun, a couple of seconds adrift of Dalmas. The other two cars struggled, as Brabham in the Life suffered electrical failure after four laps, the team having been unable to sufficiently test their new car and engine; while Gachot's Coloni broke a gear selector rod on its first lap.

Qualifying

Senna took pole ahead of Berger and Prost with surprises all over the grid. Martini started 5th whilst De Cesaris started 7th and Grouillard started 8th, Mansell however started 17th and both Williams started 9th and 12th. Letho, Morbidelli and Johansson failed to qualify. Philippe Alliot was excluded when a mechanic worked on the car outside of the pit area during Friday's practice.

Race