The 1986 season

Prost Holds His Crown in Adelaide

Williams had the fastest car and two drivers to share the wins, but Alain Prost won the final race and kept his crown by two points.

Turbocharged engines were compulsory in 1986, and in qualifying trim the cars were the most powerful Grand Prix machines ever built. Yet each race had to be run on 195 liters of fuel, so the fastest cars in history spent a good part of every afternoon saving it. Four drivers stood above the rest: Alain Prost at McLaren, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell at Williams, and Ayrton Senna at Lotus. Across sixteen rounds, from Rio de Janeiro in March to Adelaide in October, only one race went to anyone else.

The calendar

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