1985 Austrian Grand Prix

1985 Austrian Grand Prix

1985 Austrian Grand Prix is the 10th race of the season. It was won by Alain Prost with Alboreto 2nd and Lauda 3rd.

Pre-Race

Missing from the grid was RAM driver Manfred Winkelhock who had been killed in a sportscar race in Canada just a week before. His place was taken in the team by Kenny Acheson for his first Formula One race since the 1983 South African Grand Prix.

John Watson who lost confidence after his poor performances retired and was replaced by Piercarlo Ghinzani.

Before Saturday morning practice triple World Champion (and 1984 Austrian Grand Prix winner) Niki Lauda, flanked by a very unhappy McLaren team boss Ron Dennis, announced to the media that he would be retiring for good from Formula One following the season ending Australian Grand Prix to concentrate on running his airline Lauda Air. Dennis was reportedly unhappy as he had paid Lauda a considerable amount of money to make his F1 comeback in 1982 and he had unsuccessfully tried to get Lauda to continue racing into the 1986 season.

Qualifying

Mansell took pole with Rosberg 2nd and Prost 3rd. Brundle failed to qualify.

Race

The race was restarted after one lap (with Niki Lauda having made a great start from third on the grid to lead Prost as the race was stopped). Mansell had got away very slowly in his Williams, but behind him Teo Fabi in the Toleman-Hart barely moved. Elio de Angelis (Lotus) dived left to avoid Fabi and was hit by the Ferrari of Alboreto. Fabi suffered damage as did the Arrows-BMW of Austria's "other" driver in the race Gerhard Berger. Luckily for those with damaged cars (especially championship leader Alboreto) the first lap was declared null and void and the race was completely restarted meaning those with damaged cars were permitted to start in the team spares. Lucky too was Prost who was able to change cars after his McLaren had developed a misfire. Piercarlo Ghinzani became a non-starter in his Toleman after team mate Fabi took over the spare TG185 for the race as he had qualified 6th while Ghinzani started 19th. This left Ghinzani without a drive.

On lap 9 Andrea de Cesaris survived one of the biggest crashes ever seen in Formula One when his Ligier-Renault got sideways at the left hand Panorama Curve and slid onto the outside grass at high speed. The grass, wet from overnight rain caused the Ligier to initially slide sideways before his right rear hit a slight bank launching the car into a series of rolls with de Cesaris's head bouncing around freely in the cockpit. Somehow as soon as the Ligier came to a rest (thankfully the right way up), de Cesaris undid his seat belts and walked away with nothing more than a mud-splattered helmet and driving suit. The crash was the end for de Cesaris at Ligier, with team owner Guy Ligier firing the Italian after he saw a replay of the crash stating "I can no longer afford to keep employing this man" referring to the constant repair bills from de Cesaris's crashes since he joined the team in 1984. When he returned to the pits, de Cesaris told the team that the reason for his DNF was that the car had stalled and wouldn't restart. It was reported at that point that the Ligier team had not seen a replay of the accident.